I'm gonna stick my oar in here. I regularly see idiots tearing around some of the country roads in N.Wilts, a particular choice being the A4361 North from Avebury to Wroughton. It's a nice bit of road, fairly twisty, lots of dips and rises with a long stretch which is fairly fast but with limited visibility in lots of places. Bikers love it, especially on sunny Sunday afternoons. Last Sunday on a sharp r/hand bend at Berwick Bassett a CBR600 travelling south towards Avebury lost control on one of the bends and skidded into the path of a Honda Pan-European going north. The CBR rider was airlifted to Frenchay in Bristol, the other rider, a 60yo from Calne was killed at the scene. I know quite a few bikers, and I know for a fact how easy it is to have a serious accident at quite low speed on a public road, let alone at high speed, especially when there are other vehicles in close proximity. Saying that you take risks on a cycle is disingenuous, you're not talking about a 4-500lb bike with another 200lb of rider on board travelling at 80+ mph. A friend travelling home from work one sunny afternoon on his Suzuki 600 v-twin. On a slight bend the bike just went out chucking him across the road. The two week old bike was trashed, as was his helmet, his armoured nylon jacket had holes worn through between the armour down to the skin. One of the first on the scene was a police bike rider just on his way to work. He investigated the accident scene and said that the only reason he could pin it on was a few patches of Tarmac with the chippings worn away on the crown of the road. The rider was doing no more than 40mph, and the cop said it could just as easily been him, as he rode it most days. Another bad one involved a bike following several cars when one turned left. The biker didn't notice the brake lights due to low bright sun directly behind reflecting off the tail lights until the last second and tried to manouver around the car, but clipped a tail light pitching him sideways off the bike. That would have been fine but for the uninsured Alfa Romeo driver coming the other way who didn't react in time and hit the rider at about 50mph. The rider suffered a smashed shoulder, head injuries, collapsed lung and broken ribs, several fractured vertebra in his neck and back. He stopped breathing at the scene, only surviving because his partner, who's an anaesthetist, got his breathing going again; she was following on her bike. At Frenchay Hospital they were debating taking his right arm off due to the damage to the blood supply but transplanted a section of vessel from his leg and saved it. He is now back at work, and riding his other bike, amazingly, (his Bandit 1200 was written off). He was travelling at approx. 20mph when the accident happened, so another ten on top could have been the decider. It could be argued that more speed would have made the bike more manouverable, he had luggage bags on, heading down to Spain for a couple of weeks riding with a friend and his now wife. I know this is a lengthy post, but I'm trying to show that bad accidents happen at stupidly slow speed, so ragging it around narrow country roads with uncertain sightlines, equally uncertain surfaces and, at this time of year, loads of grockles taking their families out on roads they're unfamiliar with is likely to be a bad combination. The rider who got hit by the Alpha got married last Saturday in his leathers and had a bike convoy to their blessing ceremony at the bike clubhouse at Kemble, the priest being a Harley riding RAF clergyman. A terrific day was had, that didn't look like it could ever happen last June.
