Play silly games racing... This is the outcome

[anonymous-user]

Hungrymc said:

Durzel said:

Hungrymc said:

garyhun said:

Durzel said:

J4CKO said:

Indeed, the biker saw someone up for a bit of a play, rather than the potential threat he turned out to be, he wanted to show how much faster his bike was as well.

But given how vulnerable bikers are, why would you even entertain it? You'd have no idea of the mentality of the person behind the wheel. The wheel spinning might have been benign, the driver might have accepted defeat gracefully, but he might - as in this case - be offended and behave rashly.

Do this sort of thing enough times and you'll come across someone like this Civic driver, who may or may not have intended his swerve to make the rider come off, but he made that move anyway. It's insane to put your life in the hands of people like this. You're rolling the dice every time you participate.

Agree with Durzel. I would never entertain such a thing on a bike; it's dangerous enough out there without adding to it.

Unfortunately, as a motorcyclist, you are very vulnerable and most of us try to ride accordingly. But your comment doesn’t really make practical sense as all of us as road users are constantly putting our lives in the hands of others.... single carriageway roads? 120mph closing speeds with no separation? Walking on a footpath? Crossing the road? That’s why standards need to be upheld.

The only way to definitely avoid drivers like this is to stay off the road. Luckily, his actions are bad enough that he should be behind bars for a spell making the roads safer for everyone.

Those things are normal driving behaviour though. If we're being pedantic then yes every time you get on a bike, or in a car for that matter, you run the risk of someone T-boning you because they're not paying attention, or just because they feel like it. All of us need to get to places by necessity though, so you have to accept that baseline level of risk.

My point is that if you participate in competitive driving or riding on the road you're effectively stepping outside of the norms of driving/riding and into a mano-e-mano scenario where you are depending on the skills, temperment and acquiescence of the other driver/rider. As said before do that enough times and you'll eventually come across a nutter who doesn't want to lose, and makes reckless moves like this - either deliberately or in the heat of the moment. In either scenario as a biker you are guaranteed to come off a lot worse.

It's bad enough doing this sort of thing in a car, but on a bike you'd have to be suicidal I think. Nothing excuses what the Civic driver did in the case of the video linked in the OP, but the biker put himself in harms way by participating. He would still be riding if he just let the Civic driver get on with it. Not being a biker myself, I always assumed defensive riding was the de facto way to ride on a day to day basis?

The first thing that catches my eye is “competitive” driving. The biker did put himself at risk by overtaking (in my opinion, the poorest riding was filtering to the front past a car that had just overtaken him and clearly planned to travel faster - that was worse than the speeding to me). If you look at the overtake, the poor bit was that it was the first time he had opened the throttle more than 1/3 so he may be making it difficult for the driver to understand the level of acceleration he is using as it’s far more than at any time during the video and hence surprising closing speed (the bike wasn’t racing - certainly not up until that point, and at that point, he short shifts the first few gears with little / no throttle)

The biker deserves points, the driver deserves time behind bars.... I assume everyone agrees that ?

There are lessons for the biker to learn, but the tone of the OP and some of the posts focused on what the biker should have done is like blaming someone who bought a Golf R for their house broken into and car stolen. I think we need to stop excusing and justifying the real offenders.

That analogy makes no sense at all.

A more accurate one is it’s like buying a golf R, ragging the tits off it on your local road and then putting a sign on the roof saying ‘I’m fast, steal me’ and giving instructions on how to find the keys.

A biker purposely putting him or herself in the situation in the video is simply madness, especially when there are tts like the car driver on the road.

[Hungrymc]

garyhun said:

That analogy makes no sense at all.

A more accurate one is it’s like buying a golf R, ragging the tits off it on your local road and then putting a sign on the roof saying ‘I’m fast, steal me’ and giving instructions on how to find the keys.

A biker purposely putting him or herself in the situation in the video is simply madness, especially when there are tts like the car driver on the road.

My analogy makes no sense ? Okey dokey

Im open to other opinions on this. I keep trying to put myself in the bikers position. I don’t ride like him so it’s difficult. The one thing I wouldn’t do is filter to the front, past a car that has been traveling quicker than me. And if I did by some error of judgment, I would have gotten well ahead and clear as the lights change.

I guess the sign that the biker has missed is that the wheel spin is actually road rage, not racing / arsing about / having (questionable) fun ?

I honestly didn’t see the video as aggression up until the incident (I didn’t see the faces in the Civic, but didn’t hear shouting or see gestures). I saw it as two people riding / driving poorly together and would have assumed both were enjoying it.

[Taylor James]

Hungrymc said:

garyhun said:

That analogy makes no sense at all.

A more accurate one is it’s like buying a golf R, ragging the tits off it on your local road and then putting a sign on the roof saying ‘I’m fast, steal me’ and giving instructions on how to find the keys.

A biker purposely putting him or herself in the situation in the video is simply madness, especially when there are tts like the car driver on the road.

My analogy makes no sense ? Okey dokey

Im open to other opinions on this. I keep trying to put myself in the bikers position. I don’t ride like him so it’s difficult. The one thing I wouldn’t do is filter to the front, past a car that has been traveling quicker than me. And if I did by some error of judgment, I would have gotten well ahead and clear as the lights change.

I guess the sign that the biker has missed is that the wheel spin is actually road rage, not racing / arsing about / having (questionable) fun ?

I honestly didn’t see the video as aggression up until the incident (I didn’t see the faces in the Civic, but didn’t hear shouting or see gestures). I saw it as two people riding / driving poorly together and would have assumed both were enjoying it.

It makes no sense because the Golf R owner in your analogy has not committed any crime and is a completely passive party.

The biker in the situation under discussion broke the speed limit and was an active participant in the events that unfolded.

As was said at the beginning of the thread, the biker had numerous options to disengage. He chose instead to actively engage in an obviously inappropriate sequence of events that was always likely to end badly.

[LarsG]

I think the Police will prosecute them both for racing. Bye Bye licence.

[Durzel]

Hungrymc said:

My analogy makes no sense ? Okey dokey

Im open to other opinions on this. I keep trying to put myself in the bikers position. I don’t ride like him so it’s difficult. The one thing I wouldn’t do is filter to the front, past a car that has been traveling quicker than me. And if I did by some error of judgment, I would have gotten well ahead and clear as the lights change.

I guess the sign that the biker has missed is that the wheel spin is actually road rage, not racing / arsing about / having (questionable) fun ?

I honestly didn’t see the video as aggression up until the incident (I didn’t see the faces in the Civic, but didn’t hear shouting or see gestures). I saw it as two people riding / driving poorly together and would have assumed both were enjoying it.

You could make an argument that the Civic driver thought the biker was racing him, whereas the biker was just "riding enthusiastically" on the same bit of road. That argument carries weight when you consider that if he really was on a Hayabusa then he wasn't really trying that hard at all. I remember having people race up behind me when I was in my 458 because they either had something to prove or thought I was looking to race them (??), when I was just idly driving around.

That said you'd have to be a bit of an idiot not to realise that you have a stark choice to make when presented with someone literally spinning their wheels at the lights next to you. It's not like the biker found himself embroiled in this outcome, he made himself a participant in it. I would go further and say that someone who spins their wheels at the lights looking for a race is probably going to be behave badly in any race that then ensues, which is what happened here.

I still struggle to get my head around the fact this guy was on a superbike. It doesn't look like it at all from the video, it looks like he wasn't really trying at all, but at the same time he was trying enough to put himself in danger?

[Hungrymc]

I see your point Durzel, but there are different perspectives, I’d probably pull up behind a 458 to admire a beautiful car. If the driver opened it up, I might go with him.... but it wouldn’t be competitive, would only be admiring a nice car and enjoying seeing it being used (and using whatever car or bike I was on).

I’ve been riding and driving long enough to have had many times when riding / driving near another vehicle being used spiritedly. Every time that there has been opportunity to talk afterwards it’s been really pleasant, just another enthusiast doing their thing.

i see your point that the wheelspin could be the start of something (I’ve been close to many cars sliding and bikes on the back wheel or on their knee and it’s never been an aggressive move). And I would not have filtered past him having just been overtaken at some speed. If I were in that situation, I’d maybe Judge it as Ill tempered and would certainly then avoid. But the weight of responsibility is still massively with the Civic driver, I just find it hard to grasp why people resist that.

Final point, The Civic is likely to be stolen. Very unlikely to leave the scene of that accident in his own car, if it Is his car, what odds drink or drugs, if none of them, an absolute violent scum bag ? Personally I find it very hard to see the responsibility of this individual - deliberately causing and then fleeing a nasty crash - being diluted because someone was naive enough to put themselves near him. Biker deserves points, driver deserves jail.