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reckless...


Zathrus~SPARTA~
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I happened across the video below. The guy who had linked this video wrote;

 

Anyway, I saw this video the other day and was amazed at just how stupid these two bikers were. My girlfriend, who has been a nurse for over 25 years, has a name for guys like these: organ donors. I don’t have a problem with speed, but these guys are putting other innocent people on the road at risk

 

I have to agree completely with his statement. I only watched the first 3 minutes and saw two near fatal mistakes barely avoided. I did have two guys like this pass me in South Carolina racing down a 4 lane state highway with no divider. I was doing around 45mph which was the speed limit... the two bikes passed me like I was standing still with what I would estimate was more than 100mph faster than my 45mph.

As I came over the rise, something caught my eye as wrong... I saw a bike sliding down the oncoming lanes, twisted horrifically.... then off the far side and flipped about 8 times out into a field. In front of me was a car who had tried to make a legal left turn. One bike missed the car that needed to make it's legal left turn... the other bike tore the front bumper, fascia, everything up to and including the left half of the radiator support was gone from the car and scattered over several hundred feet down the road along with what appeared to be a motionless rider. The bike appeared to finally stop more than 1/2 of a mile from the original impact point several hundred feet from the road in a field.

 

To give you a more accurate visualization of the ferocity of this impact, this occurred in 1995. The car this bike hit was a late 1980's 4dr. sedan. It was a uni-body only up to the to firewall, where a "front frame engine cradle/suspension assembly is bolted on. The front of those had a steel bumper mounted to a steel frame with two large shock-absorbers built into the bumper mount. This motorcycle tore the steel bumper, mounts and the left half of a frame mounted radiator support completely off of the car.The people in the car were staring in shock, not comprehending what had just happened, I am sure they never saw these two bikes closing on them from behind at over 100mph. It was so senseless what had just happened... there are proper places to race... and places that should never be used to race. I love speed as much as the next guy, but needless risk of yourself and others in this manner is just really dumb... and pointless. If you need to race... hit the track, they are available everywhere for nominal fee.

 

I am fairly certain that DaiSan and others will confirm that it is already extremely dangerous on a bike just going at or near the speed limits based on conversations with him in the past.... More than tripling the speed limit on a public road is inviting disaster of many kinds.

You may have the reflexes to deal with most problems you encounter at those speeds, but you cannot depend on that other driver down the road who even though he might notice you suddenly appearing will likely not realize your only 1.8 seconds away. It is pretty easy to see how that driver may make a decision that kills you and them because of that.

 

 

If I find out anyone is riding like this that I know... I am gonna slap them up side the head! :yes: <---- old man talk :bleh:

Edited by Zathrus~SPARTA~
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yes.. I suppose you could call that "inappropriate"... I doubt anyone of us here could claim honestly we have never exceeded the speed limits by a lot at some point in our life.

 

But as an example of just how close to the edge these two bikes were, at approx. 2:57 minutes the bike with the camera is pushing very hard to catch this guy in front. hard enough he has been pulling the front wheel off the ground at each shift.

He pushes a bit too hard, and as he enters the next turn, there is a car coming, if you freeze the video, he is on the wrong side of the center line of the road with car only feet away, he

pushed the bike over hard to miss the car, the bike crossed to the right edge of the road in less than a second, you hear him exclaim in fear as he nails it hard trying to keep it on the road, it does stay on the road... but If he had run out of HP or traction at that moment he was done... it was leaving the road into trees at high speed.

In addition, I lost count of the number of times either he, the other guy, or both had to make this road 3 lanes wide.

 

There are numerous events that were fractions of a second from likely fatal disaster in this video... things happening in less than a second, that if the slightest thing went wrong... he and possibly others were dead.

To me that is reckless and negligent at best.

Edited by Zathrus~SPARTA~
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Ah the good old days. Back in the 90s I worked at Lake Mead National Recreation Area, near Las Vegas, and also near Nellis Air Force Base. So on moonlit nights after midnight we'd head out to Northshore Road, fire up the radar, and roll down the windows in order to hear them coming. You could see the headlights coming for miles, and hear them about as far. Yes, every fighter jock that ever watched Top Gun had a need for speed. Our cars would do about 125 and we chose areas where the roads were relatively straight. Some times you'd get them, some times you wouldn't. Using multiple cars helped. People tended to run less with lights in front of them and lights in back. I never would get much above 110 at night as the risk wasn't worth it, but usually didn't need to. Yes, some copped and attitude for reasons unknown, but when I would tell them the direct phone number of the base commander's office by memory, they decided it was much easier to shut up and take the ticket than to yak on, get a ticket, and have to visit the colonel. The ones that thought they had gotten away were often met at the gates of the base, then had to visit the colonel. The desert at midnight is a relatively much safer place to ride than the road in this video. Most people don't know that Nevada has the largest population of wild horses in the country -- over 25,000. Really, really, really scary to have one of them run in front of you in the middle of the night.

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ho ho... yes Elvis.. here in the Arizona it is the same.. the number of different large animals that will just ruin your night if they step out in front of you is.... a bunch. Wild Horses, White Tail Deer, Mule Deer, Javelina, Mountain lion, coyote, etc. etc. etc. the list is long... and they would all ruin your evening if you hit them at high speed. because the smallest one is 30 to 40 pounds (coyote) the rest of them are going to be 60 pounds and up.

Driving fast at night here is... a bit suicidal really. It is too easy for something of a dangerous mass to unexpectedly end up in your way.

 

We had a guy hit a goat that got out of a farmers pen and then onto the highway... he was doing about 90mph in small unibody sedan. This goat came out of a clump of brush, he didn't see it until right before he hit it.

When he hit this goat that weighed about 60 to 70 pounds. The impact lifted the front end enough that air got under the car...enough that he had insufficient contact between the front tires and road to maintain control. So off that side of the road he went into a ditch that buried the nose and started the car flipping end to end about 14 times... spent 6 weeks in the hospital. I went to check his car and the passenger compartment had held up pretty well. But the entire unibody from front to rear had about 20 degree twist in it. The roof had buckled with the twist, but had not given down any. So the entire chassis had absorbed an enormous amount of energy as twisting one some 20 degrees requires significant force

 

When I ran the test track at a car plant in the midwest, it was a 2.2 mile oval. We had a 10 foot fence all the way around that test track. With another 10 foot perimeter fence beyond that. You had to go through two gates to get into that track. In spite of 10 foot fences... and frequent checks at night to verify the track is in fact clear, I think we still totaled at least 6 different cars on deer that would end up on the track over a 5 year period during night time testing. It is impossible to keep larger animals off of roadways... they can jump things that would surprise you. Especially with deer, if one spooks and bolts across the road, the rest will follow regardless of headlights coming which is how our video cameras recorded the accidents that did occur on our track. Invisible to the drivers until they bolt across in mass.... there is no way to miss all of them.

Edited by Zathrus~SPARTA~
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