Losing Your Fearlessness As You Get Older.

[ZX-7R]

General riding at higher speed is slower these days,even though i have more experience than i did in my younger days.I guess it is not having the lack of fear that comes with youth.As you get older you become more aware of your mortality so take less risks.

Opinions?.
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Current Bike - 2000 ZX-7R

[Fladdem]

I don't have opinions, I'm not scared enough to need them

I'd imagine it will disappear, I know after my bad accident, I've become more wary when going fast and pick my moments better.
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Current:1991 Honda MT50 (Soon to be a H100/MTX/MT5 hybrid), 1976 Honda Cub C70, 2005 Honda Varadero 125, 1993 Yamaha TTR250 Open Enduro , 2010 Road Legal Stomp YX140, 1994 Honda CRM 250 MK III, 1999 Cagiva Mito 125, 1992 Honda CB400 Super Four, Stomp T4 230, 1984 Honda H100s, 2009 Sym XS125K
Past:2003 Aprilia RS125, 1982 Kawasaki GPZ550(FREE BIKE!)
I'm having more fun than a well-oiled midget.

[Itchy]

As you grow older you have much more to loose.

I was once young and fearless. Going after R6s on ratbikes, riding them around with no brakes and severe damage.

Crashing and getting back on. Most famously the big crash that snapped my swing arm. I rode the wreck home and got my other bike .

OTOH though I developed some unconscious skills like manual ABS. It when I felt the front go loose. Without any concious effort I let go of the front brake bike stopped sliding...I'm much more confident in taking risks and squeezing through those small gaps.
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Spain 2008France 2007Big one 2009 We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will. In the end, your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it is worth watching.

[Pete.]

[Howling TerrorOutOfOffice]

Hit thumb with hammer - Carry on.
Hit thumb again - Carry on but learn to focus on head of nail.
Hit thumb - Carry on and learn to use upper arm and not wrist.
Don't hit thumb - Start using other hand.
Hit thumb.

What was the question again?

I'm getting on a bit and each year I ride a little better. I suspect it'll tail off pretty quick in the next 5 years.
Wish I'd started biking earlier but know I would've visited A&E. At 17 I drove my 1.3 Vauxhall Chevette (LDG 13P) like a mentalist.

Now everything goes fuzzy after 140, I like it but is it supposed to happen.
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[NJD]

Experience has taught you that there's a time to have a hoon and a time to rein it in and just enjoy riding for riding. We all like whizzing around on warm days and empty roads but there's a time and a place, if the risk isn't worth taking then why take it?

Personally I'm more than aware that we're all going to be gone some day and that for me I'd much rather it be while riding a bike than any other. I feel sorry for those that spend their lives all like "bikes are dangerous don't you know" and miss out on the fun in life.

[Raffles]

When I was younger I could have given any GP rider a run for their money. Following a few high speed spills, I decided to slow things down a bit.
These days I strictly obey the country's* speed limits.

*Not necessarily this country's
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A good loser will always be a loser.

[charlie74]

youth= you haven't had time to do something stupid and find out it hurts

old age= you can remember what you did in your youth and that it hurt.. but now you don't heal as quick

senile= similar to youth, you just cant remember it hurt or what it was you did ( or where you left your keys)


that's my take on it anyway

[Going]

No, not really. I seem to do more stupid things now than when I was younger. The only reason I don't do really stupid things now just because of the things I could lose or people (I know) that may get/be hurt by such things

[Rogerborg]

Less testostedrenaline. We're just meat machines.
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[M.C]

Well I used to ignore the risks, didn't even read the spill counter, then I had a big accident and suddenly the risks became real You realise you have to ride a bit more conservatively, as someone will do something you can't avoid, or yourself being a flawed human being might f**k up.

But in all honesty, riding was a lot more fun with the naivety...

[Suntan Sid]

For those who can remember life before all this internet malarkey
The information overload and the minutiae of other peoples disasters, provided by the web, merely feeds the paranoia in our ageing brains!
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[rubyhorse2]

cant agree more with OP

i used to do a lot of Downhill MTBing but these days its just XC as i dont want to get hurt anymore, plus it takes longer to recover.

Same on the Motorbike, i used to take a lot of risks, luckily never had a crash. These days i tend to think more about the aftermath of being silly before i actually do it. There is more to lose too, having a career, mortgage, bills and a wife etc as opposed to just having myself to worry about when i was young.

getting old...

[The Shaggy D.A.]

My riding became slower when I stopped riding in groups. Peer pressure, or even perceived peer pressure, means your more willing to ride to someone else's abilities rather than your own.

When you no longer feel the need to impress, you ride your own ride and the accident rate goes down.
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[chris-red]

I've definitely slowed down despite being certain I'm a better rider than I was a few years back.
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[Itchy]

Of course it's entirely possible that you've just become accustomed to the speed and 70mph on twisty roads no longer feels fast any more...


However when we start buying Goldwings and hanging around in country pubs to corner young riders and bore them to death with our riding stories... that might be a cause for concern.
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Spain 2008France 2007Big one 2009 We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will. In the end, your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it is worth watching.

[Snowdonia Rider]

A few things have lost me my fearlessness over the years...

Experience, having a crash, seeing crashes etc, makes you think twice. Big crashes that is, the spills when I was 17 on my CBT didn't phase me at all.

Kids, my eldest is 6 and my youngest has just turned 1. There have been a few times where my kids popping to my head have slowed me down or stopped me doing something daft.

Licence, I've had mine nearly 15 years now (car that is, DAS over 2 years). Somehow, amazingly, it's clean, it'd be a shame to spoil that now after all these years. All the extra things you have to do now to get a licence compared to when I first did it. Never mind an extended one if it was after losing a licence! No thank you!

And maybe the fact that there is a bazillion more cameras around now than there was when I first got on the roads.
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[andyscooter]

Not slowed down much but have learnt to read te road a lot better
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[gorillaonabik...]

In my 20s and early 30s, I didn't care if I lived or died. I hit like a train on the rugby pitch and in a punch up, you would have had to kill me to stop me. I rode like death didn't exist. No-one was faster than me on the street.

Now, I want to live so I ride with pipe and slippers. Most of the time.
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FZR400 (blown engine), ZXR750 (blown engine), ZX6R (accident), CBR600 which had engine issues after which I learned to change gear..., CBR900, CBR924 (stolen), CB600, CB1300 (everything blew up), BMW K1300GT (written off, hit from rear while stationary), Bandit 1250 for a couple of months, Triumph Sprint ST 1050 (nicked) and somewhere in there, I wrote off a Ducati 748 at Cadwell.

[DJP]

Dunno about losing fearlessness – I was never that brave!

Hence I've not fallen off in 30 years.

What has changed is the general driving standards which, at risk of sounding like an old fart, have gone right downhill.

So while you'll wait a long time for me to crash, my chances of being taken out by someone else appear to have risen considerably.
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[Rogerborg]

[DJP]

[Enduro Numpty]

I don't know about riding slower but I do know that I don't have to get the bike I'm riding absolutely flat out anymore. I can't see me ever getting my Fireblade to it's top speed and have no great interest to be honest. That said, bikes go a bit quicker than they did 30 years ago. Just back from a 4000 mile trip to Europe and never had the FJR close to the red line even once but cruised at 130+ on Autobahns.

In answer to the original question ..... I don't know

[mailee]

I think it's down to the fact that we don't bounce like we used to....bits break!

[notbike]

I think it's just experiences over time that make people stop and think at some point.

The train of thought I get sometimes when I realize I've done something risky/stupid and have gotten away with it is "my luck will run out next time" or "that could have hurt a lot" whereas before it used to be "HA HA THAT WAS SO FUCKING CLOSE" *cue adrenaline buzz*

That adrenaline buzz for some reason now gets replaced with images in my head of myself splattered across whatever I was about to hit or my bike exploding into little bits. Scary unfulfilling stuff that leaves you feeling a bit vulnerable.

The whole "grannying-it compared to when I was a young'un" thing can happen gradually with small incidents like near misses, or really quickly with something major like a bad crash, I imagine.

Actually, nothing can trigger it at all and it can just be a product of you sitting down and thinking of the consequences and then realizing that we're essentially squishy meat with consciousness and that everything around us is a lot harder and scarier when we're going that fast.

My knee/wrist hurt for about half a year (no idea why, just gradual onset of weakness/pain) and throughout that time I was thinking "man if I crash, I wonder how much it would fuck up my already weak knee/wrist" - felt massively more vulnerable, and as though if I did fall off, the first thing that would happen would be my knee or wrist snapping. Not sure how irrational that fear was but it was probably a good thing in terms of mindset.

I think that's what did it for me, realizing I wasn't this hard unbreakable thing and that really we're quite weak vs anything over say 20mph, and even that speed can fuck you up if you hit an immovable object.

Also just seeing the aftermath of fatal crashes at speeds you didn't think could really kill anyone and realizing your own mortality.

Having said all that, and only speaking for myself here (dunno how many of you want to admit it), when I first started riding I used to grossly overestimate my ability on a bike and was "gassed up" and didn't really pay any attention to crashes/crashing/the consequences. Though that is probably dependent on the age you start riding. Starting when you're in your thirties and have a wife/kid/career/mortgage is massively different than being a single teenager with no responsibilities or cares other than your next uni assignment hand-in date and what porn you're going to "procrastinate" to instead of doing said assignment.

Anyway, I've lost my train of thought, I feel like I've gone on a massive tangent

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