I reckon as long as you use them responsibly you'll be ok.....as in don't be threatening and use them only at low speed.
I'm with the Baron on this issue... Same for the bellends with blue LEDs on their bikes. You are not the police, if you're filtering then you pay attention and don't ride fast enough between lanes that you make your safety someone else's responsibility. We can all get cut up by the SMIDSYs but if they genuinely DSY then all the Polite jackets and blue LEDs in the world won't help. Ride like they're all out to get you, because whether they mean it or not... They are. Wearing a Polite vest just marks you out as a tool, I'm sorry to say. Whatever floats your boat though, you can probably get a corduroy oversuit and fit a Neighbourhood Watch sticker on your fairing if you try hard enough. At least that'd be funny...
Especially if you give it a couple of "emergency tone" blips. 7k usually wakes them up or gets them off Angry Birds... (That Mivv you love so much only needs 3k )
Flip on your full beam when filtering and give the odd blip of the throttle to wake up sleeping / social networking oiks... Works just as well. That said, if the OP is happy then the OP is happy. At least he didn't get the hi viz vest or the blue sidelight bulb(s)... drilling the 999 fairing though :Shifty:
I commute about 40 odd mile a day. Shit happens at times. Some of the chicks on phones just temps me....how ya doin
A tool, mmm ok, I'll take that, it is at the end a forum and we can all format a picture if an individual, however keeping bike sunny side up is my main goal. Just read a person on here and his brother who've big recently had very ugly incidents and just maybe 1% was that nano second the car driver in his bubble didn't quite take in the detail Read post again I USE IT OFF ON MOTORWAY not all time there's been 2 very serious incidents over last few weeks reported on forum, and If I can get home without a near miss I'm happy. It's a forum we all have opinions , it's all about helping fellow bikers to stay safe, and saying what works for you.
How does "polite" written on your back stop somebody pulling out in front of you? You can guarantee the Polite mob potter about at few MPH under the speed limit which can be annoying until you get close enough to see its a knob and not a man with a pocket full of tickets
The jacket seems to be infuriating a few on here, it's not aimed at motorcyclists, u see cyclists wearing it, horse riders, small children being walked to school wearing them, I would gladly wear the same style without the word Polite, but it does make you noticed Be a safe be seen etc. Yes it doesn't stop someone pulling out, I've got my views on aiding that, having done the IAM advanced and being a CBT and DAS instructor, but I'll keep that to myself, it seems to a few in here that I'm a safer neighbourhood, corduroy wearing Nob that never speeds You couldn't be further from the truth, I'm off to get a power ranger dark black leather 1 piece, so I blend into the ether like all the other victims of Smidsy
i saw a woman serving in Tesco the other day wearing a yellow hi viz vest,,, wtf !!!! tbh with everyone wearing them nowadays the visual impact has long since gone..
The article in Ride hinged upon intent, are you deliberately trying to appear like a police officer. Polite on it's own is OK, particularly if you want to look like a knob, but alongside a chequerboard bike and blue lights you will be in trouble.
i oft wonder how they feel when pulled up beside a real plod,, are they consumed by embarasment,, or pride ????
Not at all riding a full blown GREEN ZZR1441 Yoshimura system is not intending to be anything other than a motorcyclist that, the THREAD had distracted from strobe LED lights to a full blown onslaught on a certain jacket, I initially pointed out that the Jacket aids being visible when filtering, I then get an onslaught of people calling me a nob, FUCK THIS FORUM PLEASE PUT ME IN THE SIN BIN, better still I'll come off it
Sorry about the "tool" comment, I let my forum-child drive for a second there. Your response is perfectly valid, and in terms of being seen I don't think I've felt or seen anyone criticising the use of a hi-viz vest, sam browne belt, daytime use of headlights and even high-beams or the wearing of a jauntily coloured hat... it's the "Polite" bit, because that's deliberately positioned and designed to give the impression that the wearer is a Police rider. That's the bit that antagonises bike riders and other road users alike, and in some cases might attract a bit of negative aggression (a la Baron) rather than the intended effect, which is presumably (based on your response), "hello, I'm here, please don't kill me". An illustrative example of why I don't like these myself would be that I have more than once been swooshing along a favourite bit of road at progress-making speeds and have seen either blue lights catch my eye or a flash of hi-viz with white/blue chequers and typically a white lid and had that horrible churning "oops" feeling and returned to NSL before being passed by just another member of the public with "safety aids"... that's happened on the bike and in the car/van. It's annoying because I was progressing safely within my own limits and appropriate for the conditions and situation and while someone else's progress-making-ride has not been impaired or upset my own journey has, and I'm left with that flustered feeling. I don't experience a huge amount of anti-bike aggression in Lincolnshire, or anywhere else, to be honest... you get the odd one but that's life. My own technique is that I always ride with my lights on, if I'm filtering for more than a few moments I flip my full-beam on and I watch other road users like a hawk, riding defensively to probably an absurd level. I don't choose to wear hi-viz myself but then I don't commute regularly on my bike and I tend to ride for pleasure so I fully accept that if I were doing so, especially during the shorter days, then that might be a prudent move. The worst thing and the biggest risk to our safety as riders is (IMO) mobile phone use. This is the single common factor in most terrible driving / near miss moments recently and I see *SO* many people in cars, vans, lorries texting, taking pictures and using the Internet... seriously, I don't even mean chatting on a voice call. Coming into Caistor a couple of weeks ago there was a black Fiat 500 with a young female at the wheel... in a NSL zone I pulled out to pass, having indicated and ascertained that it wasn't unsafe to zip by and as I moved over the white line she repositioned to straddle the white line... at first I thought she was unhappy about my overtake and I adjusted my speed and position to assess the situation and then I saw the bright green iPhone 5C in her hand, she hadn't seen me at all and I would say that even if I'd been on a white / fluoro BMW with blues and twos going she'd have remained oblivious. That's what we're up against and that's the scary stuff... So I'm sorry for inferring you're a tool, it was more of a general "grrrrr" at your chosen method of increasing your visibility and the "Moses" comment - which kind of confirms that you're aware that other road users might be moving out of your way as a response to your deliberate misrepresentation of what you are, as opposed to just being helpful because they've seen your bright vest and want to allow a bike to do what a bike can and a car can't. Go safely dude, however you choose to do so. As you rightly said there are two riders made very uncomfortable by incidents in the last couple of weeks from the same family and from this forum. I hope AirCon and his brother are both on a strong path to recovery, and certainly their reported accidents served the purpose to make a few of us acknowledge our vulnerability and to ride with this front and centre. GWS guys.
I genuinely am sorry for offending you mate, I was trying to keep my post irreverent and humorous. If it fell short of the mark and made you feel like I was being nasty then please know I wasn't trying to be, and I'm sorry.
well that makes a change - you've blown me away Fire3500, nothing but respect for your above two replies ^
i cant understand how having a kid on police sign stuck on your back is going to deter peeps from cutting in font of you !
