MO Poll: How Many Times Have You Crashed A Motorcycle?
I fought the law (of gravity) and the law won
All riders know that motorcycles are inherently less stable than automobiles. So, when we ride our shiny new bike away from the dealership, we begin the life-long task of attempting to keep our motorcycle from achieving its natural position. What is a motorcycle’s natural position, you ask? Why, that would be lying on its side. Our motorcycles depend on us to stay upright. It is our sacred task.
However, we all know that gravity works and you can only bend, not break, the laws of physics. This leads to the old saw about there being two kinds of riders: those who have been down and those who are going to go down. Some would argue that there are there is a third kind: those who are going to go down again.
So, let’s check in with out fellow MOrons. How many times have you crashed a street bike? (Let’s keep dirt out of this because tip-overs are so common off-road.) Since we recognize that riders with more years in the saddle have also exposed themselves to more risk of having their bikes achieve achieve their natural position, we’ll include a second poll to establish how many years our readers have been riding.
This should be interesting.
Like most of the best happenings in his life, Evans stumbled into his motojournalism career. While on his way to a planned life in academia, he applied for a job at a motorcycle magazine, thinking he’d get the opportunity to write some freelance articles. Instead, he was offered a full-time job in which he discovered he could actually get paid to ride other people’s motorcycles – and he’s never looked back. Over the 25 years he’s been in the motorcycle industry, Evans has written two books, 101 Sportbike Performance Projects and How to Modify Your Metric Cruiser, and has ridden just about every production motorcycle manufactured. Evans has a deep love of motorcycles and believes they are a force for good in the world.
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Um probably too many times to count. In the rain, on cold roads, I've been hit by a car - breaking my pelvis and accruing some groin lacerations. One tried to beat a semi onto a merge ramp and he was NOT letting me have it, and there was a berm I had to go over, waffled both my tires. Once it was a little wet out and from a stop I gave it a little too much and washed out. A couple of times there was no way I should have been riding and minute mistakes caused some bad washouts.
I've had 4 accidents, was hit twice by cars and twice I crashed by being stupid (wheelie and going too fast on tires well beyond their useful life).