a bitter pill at bikesafe london today.......

[gavin]

had a good day at the ace, cant say i learned that much to be honest, only the affirmation that my riding isnt that shabby, and that, in my head i now know that i roll the dice of luck a bit too much riding in london, and it was nice to meet some coppers in not the usual circumstances.

one of the things they talked a lot about was filtering, and how filtering accidents were on the rise - a fact they quoted was that recently they had to close the hanger lane underpass due to an accident, and they happened to have a mobile gatso and some other recording equipment on the bridge at the target roundabout on the a40, heading into london - the car traffic was moving at 11mph, the fastest bike they recorded was 76mph between the cars! and 50% of the bikes were travelling at the 50mph limit between the cars!

anyway, i rode off home at the end of the day, following 4 of the cops north round the A406, they all peeled off at the M1 north turn with a wave to me and i continued on the north circ, half a mile away at the junction with the m1 south / a41 the road was seriously jammed up, i started filtering through the cars and knew there was an accident because they were all ducking out of the 2 right hand lanes.

when i got there, it wasnt a pretty sight, an early zx6-r was lying almost broken in half between the lanes, looked like it had gone down filtering and been run over by following cars. there were a few police attending the rider who was lying under a space blanket, with his helmet partly pushed off, a wpc holding his head straight and trying to talk to him, but he really didnt look well.

i picked my way past as there was nothing i could do to help and carried on. a few miles later i saw the ambulance trying to pick its way through the cars near the friern barnet retail park, i wondered how long it would take to reach him, if it would get there in time.


after the bikesafe day at the ace it was deeply upsetting seeing all that. please everyone, ride safe, do the bikesafe course, do some further training, dont be a statistic.

if hes known on here, im sorry if the details upset anyone, just telling it how i saw it, and i really hope hes not badly hurt.

[headlamp]

I saw the accident too, and was going to post whether anyone knew who it was - the bike looked like a green Ninja to me and was really smashed up - police still in attendance at 6.15pmish when I went past. Apparently the air ambulance was called and landed.

I've seen a few accidents on the North Circular involving bikes and this was definitely one of the worse. If he was filtering he may well have been going at a fair wack through the traffic to cause that amount of damage to the bike and sustain those injuries, or he was coming off the M1 and caught a car as it was veering off to the A41. This is a dangerous junction - apparently the 9th most dangerous in the country
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Using a mobile phone while driving a car should be made a capital offence!

[vfr800]

I do that junction every day and I can verrify that it is a nightmare to get through safely, it's a real test of your observational skills.

Hope the injured biker is ok though !
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don't take it easy 'ride it like you stole it'

[wilbur]

Fuck. Hope they are OK.

[Deano]

all my accidents on the road have been whilst filtering.
at the end of the day ride at what speed you want but if you hit someone no matter how late they indicate its still gonna come down as your fault.

i'm hoping to do the bikesafe course on my scooter soon-ish for £30 and the benefits it gives you for your insurance it certainly is worth it.

[Major_Grooves]

I filter for miles everyday round the Oxford ring road. Sometimes I wonder if I am pushing it too much.
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About me|@Major_Grooves|My company|Digg|Flickr

[gavin]

it was about 5:15 when i passed the scene, probably not long after it happened, one police car on scene, two others got there as i did, so it must have just happened.there were at least 3 cars stopped in the outside lanes, with another 5 or so parked up on the left hand side.

it was a terrible mess. i would like to find out what happened to the guy, if anyone knows please post up............

[DAF]

I often catch myself going faster than is probably wise when filtering; will sometimes find myself filtering between traffic which is doing 50 without realising; it's easy to get carried away. I try and limit myself to an absolute limit of 35mph but it depends on the amount of space between lanes and the speed of surrounding traffic. Assuming a sensible upper limit, I take the view that the speed differential between you and other traffic is more of a factor.

When I looked into the idea of further general training, one of the websites I looked at (it was either IAM or Rospa) described filtering as "lane splitting" and simply said something like "It's dangerous, don't do it". Fine if they want to take that stance but it doesn't help people in the real world and is less likely to make me take further training, which is a shame.

They didn't talk that much about filtering when I did my bikesafe last year except, from recollection, to say don't do it above 20mph.

BTW Gavin; who was your rideout with on the course? Did they take you out towards Denham? Some nice twisties around there.
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2005 Yam Fazer (FZ6-S)

[TheDonUK]

I have been extra worried lately about filtering, literally looking at every car i pass in my prephiral expecting them to pull out...

The thing is i will filter at any speed, if cars are doing 70 and i feel i can go faster i will filter at 90... as others have said its the difference between your speed and the moving traffic, if czars are stationary im doing 10mph ish maybe a bit faster witha low gear to keep that exhaust nice and loud... I have been meaning to do a bikesafe course, but my bike is not upto scratch, leaky forks, broken speedo, smokes a bit... i dont want unwanted shit... indicators dont work

[syl]

[headlamp]

A bit of a sad update I'm afraid...just got the local paper - the accident wasreported and the rider - a 27 year old male from Southall died from his injuries.
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Using a mobile phone while driving a car should be made a capital offence!

[Scouse]

[mr.z]

Theres no legal term for filtering afaik, its overtakeing, so its all a bit vague.. it'll never get made illegal or else the bike cops will be stuffed i'd imageine..

Personally i'll only filter when the traffic is stopped, and slowly at that, its the only way to be 100% sure some twat wont do a u-turn in front of you or change lanes without looking (90% of them seem to do this) or other assortment of stupid behaviour, another thing makeing it worse is because your bending the rules at the time your often put partly in the blame

Just read the last post
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>RidingSkills<->Tech Tips<->MyBikes<

[Pete.]

Poor beggar.

RIP and condolences to the rider's family
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a.k.a 'Geri'

132.9mph off and walked away. Gear is good, gear is good, gear is very very good

[ram_doom]

RIP this has been such a completely shit year with regard to biking casualties
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TL1000s, KDX200

[Scouse]

[Syx]

[gavin]

[h00dwink]

[natv4]

[Scouse]

Yeah fair enough he might of been riding like a good boy and that. So I'm sorry if I'm wrong for my comment there. I'm all for respecting losses of life, it's just some people seem to go a bit ott with their paying their respects to people they don't know and its stupid.

[headlamp]

[tintin]

A couple of points I picked up about filtering on my Bikesafe course.

They showed us pictures of an accident where a bike had been filtering up the side of a line of cars towards the front of the traffic lights. He was only doing about 10mph but a car next to him pulled out to filter to the front and turn right (as he was entitled to do). He nudged the bikes handlebars which pushed him off into the path of a car coming towards him. The damage to the bike was minimal but result was a dead biker. Now you can argue that the car driver should have noticed the bike but as all the traffic was still moving towards the red lights it was also the biker that should have noticed the car moving as well.

The lesson was, whenever possible, to keep as far away from the line of traffic you are filtering past. I do this whenever possible in London, I'll move right into the other lane. I'm staggered how close other riders, usually on scooters, ride next to the stationary traffic. It also allows you the see pedestrians coming through the trffic more easily.

Sorry to hear that you had to witness such a distressing scene, it shakes you up, but maybe it also slows you up and makes you think twice before taking a chance.
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The older I get the better I was