So you are out on the road learning to ride and this fecking brass band follows you everywhere. The riding is fun but that fecking brass band!!!
I do have to thank Traffic Division many moons ago. 1980 250 Super Dream coming back from Brands Transatlantic series. Got pulled on A2 60mph in a 50. Nice manner and we chatted about the racing, hoped for no injuries etc, anyway he said to me the reason I am being done is that he was following me for over a mile and I hadn’t seen him. He said the speed was not the problem, but if I don’t improve my observation it could cost me very dear. He stated he wants me to remember and improve urgently. Well it worked. From that day on.
But, but, but....Speed KILLS! As per the message we’ve repeatedly had rammed down our throats for the past 30 years
That film was released a year after I spent 12 weeks being supervised by 2 serving Thames Valley Police motorcyclists who were volunteered to show a group of spotty teenagers the finer arts of road craft as part of a pilot course offered by Aldershot council in conjunction with the RAC and ACU. We got highway code, traffic law and bike maintenance on a Wednesday evening and then a ride out on a Sunday morning. I was riding an ex Post Office 125cc Bantam and the coppers were on Triumph Saints. I do believe at that time in my life, it was the hardest I had ever willingly worked at an educational course Andy
Wrong again. When that pedestrian goes on holiday in a jet aircraft at 350 mph they do not die. In the days of Concorde, you could go at the speed of sound quite happily. Astronauts go even faster. Hitting static objects is the problem when you are moving at speed. Don't hit anything and there is no problem.
To be even more pedantic - it’s not just hitting static objects but also (and in fact more destructively) hitting objects which are travelling towards you.
<rolls eyes> You said it is stopping too quickly. It's not. That's wrong. People in planes are not pedestrians. Hit a pedestrian at 5mph and they'll almost certainly live, hit them at 100mph and they'll likely die. Obviously people don't die directly of their relative speed.
TBH I thought I was quite the cool one then, don’t worry the cam chain snapped on it and as soon as I passed test officially I was on a CBX
If I was covering every eventuality then I would have also mentioned objects which are travelling perpendicular to you, collisions with which result in shearing forces
