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Motorcyclist survives cliff.


GordonB

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Joe Frickin' Friday

The Shoei sticker on his brace made me laugh.

 

He says he thought the steering locked up on him. My guess is that he had a sudden moment of panic about leaning over. I've had those before: you KNOW that you need to lean/turn harder, but you're scared about doing it, so you end up with one set of muscles fighting against another set of muscles, and it feels for all the world like your steering is frozen. He couldn't even manage to low-side it in the gravel after he left the pavement, that's how hard his brain was fighting itself.

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A classic case showing why some people just don't belong on a motorcycle.

 

He definitely should have spent the GoPro money on riders training.

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I'm glad Matthew Murray is OK, but...

 

Target fixation on the telephone pole, perhaps.

MM says..."about 40 mph"... he was up to 68 at the entry and tipped in at 66 on a posted 25mph turn.

Then his Yamaha tach went up to 10K+, and he was launched at 6K+. I feel he freaked out and the God of Pan got'em.

 

Final word... take it to a track. :burnout:

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I'm glad Matthew Murray is OK, but...

 

Target fixation on the telephone pole, perhaps.

MM says..."about 40 mph"... he was up to 68 at the entry and tipped in at 66 on a posted 25mph turn.

Then his Yamaha tach went up to 10K+, and he was launched at 6K+. I feel he freaked out and the God of Pan got'em.

 

Final word... take it to a track. :burnout:

 

yup. 68 into a blind turn on the edge of the cliff. panicked and target fixated on the cliff edge. the rev up was probably when he finally remembered to pull the clutch in with the throttle still on.

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Near the beginning, the reporter says "27 years old". Then in the last little bit, she says "after six years on the bike, he has given it up..." or something to that effect.

 

I no longer have a copy, but I recall from David Hough's book, that we see increased rates of crashes in riders with a few years experience. And males in their early 20s also had higher crash rates. Perhaps someone can refresh my memory with the specifics.

 

Anyway, as a bystander with limited information, he appears to be in that high risk category.

 

I guess that explains why he hit 68 after passing a 25mph curve sign, and then left the pavement at 50. I'm glad he's ok. But wow. Just a gnat's eyelash from being a statistic.

 

Hough's book is a good one. Read it, if you haven't.

 

 

Edited by elkroeger
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Joe Frickin' Friday
And males in their early 20s also had higher crash rates. Perhaps someone can refresh my memory with the specifics.

 

Yes, men under ~25 are in a high-risk category. It's why insurance costs them more, and it's why car rental companies often will refuse to rent cars to them. But it's not like you reach age 25, and a switch flips in your brain to suddenly improve your judgment. It's a gradual process, and some men begin/end that process earlier or later than others. Entirely possible this fellow was wising up later than his peers.

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My guess is the front end slid, and he felt that an straightened up the bike. We've all done that, only in his case it had a catastrophic outcome. For those who haven't, I highly suggest some training that includes sliding a motorcycle around. Either a dirt, or dirt track school of some kind. I'm also a big fan of track days; you can have those sorts of mistakes and not get badly hurt because of the run-off room. Then, you can go back and figure out what happened, and learn to deal with it.

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Lone_RT_rider
And males in their early 20s also had higher crash rates. Perhaps someone can refresh my memory with the specifics.

 

Yes, men under ~25 are in a high-risk category. It's why insurance costs them more, and it's why car rental companies often will refuse to rent cars to them. But it's not like you reach age 25, and a switch flips in your brain to suddenly improve your judgment. It's a gradual process, and some men begin/end that process earlier or later than others. Entirely possible this fellow was wising up later than his peers.

 

Exactly. I did something very similar at the age of 29. My head was not in the ride as I had gotten some bad news that day. I had no training other than what my grandfather had given me as a small boy with a minibike. I was not used to any roads with curves much less one that snakes along a river. I was with a friend that also had a one liter sport bikes and we were high on the sound of the exhaust note coming from the bikes. I missed a curve due to my own inability to practice good riding skills, as I had none. Thankfully, I missed that culvert that was 6 foot from where I ended up lying in that ditch or I wouldn't be here to post about it.

 

We all make mistakes when we are young.... thankfully, some of us live to learn from them.

 

Shawn

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"Failed to negotiate curve" is the number one cause for single motorcycle accidents. One's where only the MC is involved.

 

Going into the corner too fast, target fixation, are the major causes. IN addition to probably not taking proper training.

 

The story I saw on TV, he claimed "I'm never riding motorcycle again". Well good. You suck. Stay off the bike.

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I guess the state placing guardrails on sharp mountain curves would detract from the natural beauty but anyway at his speed a guardrail would have stopped the bike but not him. Then again, a guardrail as a visual "guide" (as opposed to open sky) may have caused him to slow a bit on the curve, but who knows. The 25mph sign was a visual guide, too.

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I took a friend mountain biking a while back, and a piece of advice I gave him was 'don't look where you don't want to go'. And I've always felt that my dirt bike skills give me a big advantage. It's not a shock if the bike starts to slide. I was on a curvy road where some road maintenance was being done. I came around a corner into a little patch of gravel, the front wheel started to go, and my dirt riding skills immediately took over. I did have some luck though, I had just switched bikes with my friend. He was on my Harley, and I was on his V-Strom. I'm not sure I could have saved the Harley!

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I am impressed he stayed on the bike till the end. I may have missed something, but from the GoPro he appeared to stay in the saddle with hands on handlebars for most of it.

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"My guess is that he had a sudden moment of panic about leaning over. I've had those before: you KNOW that you need to lean/turn harder, but you're scared about doing it, so you end up with one set of muscles fighting against another set of muscles, and it feels for all the world like your steering is frozen."

 

After seeing you coming and going on the Cherohala, I know which set of muscles won...

:/

 

Pretty sure his steering locked up

:eek:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

at the bottom of the cliff.

:lurk:

Glad he lived.

Happier no one else was involved.

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Joe Frickin' Friday
Thank God he survived.

 

A bit of luck in his favor: his ballistic trajectory appeared to match very nicely with the slope of the hillside. At the end, he didn't SPLAT against the ground, he tumbled through the sagebrush.

 

A little more speed instead, and he might well have gone to the bottom of the hill and slammed hard against the ground, to fatal effect.

 

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If he said his "steering locked up" then apparently he was trying to "steer" his bike around a sharp curve at 50mph.

 

Regardless, he's a lucky lad that he was able to climb back up to the road.

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Reminds me of Milton Berle's line from It's A Mad Mad World when the car drove off the cliff -- "He just went sailing right out there!" Not funny when it's real, of course, and I'm glad the guy will fully recover.

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..and a piece of advice I gave him was 'don't look where you don't want to go'. And I've always felt that my dirt bike skills give me a big advantage.

 

Dirt bike skills are good to have, they can save your butt when things go awry on the street. But not always in the dirt like this fellow discovered. This may have been posted, don't remember, it gets interesting about the 5 min mark. Language may be NSFW.

 

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I looked at the YouTube video from the perspective of a 70's dirt bike rider. Motocross bikes. Husky, CZ, Bultaco, Montessa. I would have been doing wheelies down that road. Looks like that guy drove off the road, and if anyone did not belong on a bike...that guy was one.

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I understand he's paralyzed now. Terrible. But for the gear he might be dead. Hope he can somehow make a full recovery.

 

Nevermind. I watched a different motorcycle going over a cliff crash.

Edited by beemerman2k
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Language may be NSFW.

 

 

That was something at the five MM! :eek:

 

Werid but something I find interesting in life, what's going to be your last spoken words? Glad he didn't need to keep them but I do admire his. (he was doing) Hopefully not for a long time, but I may use them. :rofl:

 

 

Pat

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The Shoei sticker on his brace made me laugh.

 

He says he thought the steering locked up on him. My guess is that he had a sudden moment of panic about leaning over. I've had those before: you KNOW that you need to lean/turn harder, but you're scared about doing it, so you end up with one set of muscles fighting against another set of muscles, and it feels for all the world like your steering is frozen. He couldn't even manage to low-side it in the gravel after he left the pavement, that's how hard his brain was fighting itself.

 

Been there, done that except the voice screaming "LEAN, LEAN, LEAN" in my helmet resulted in a successful negotiation of the turn.

 

Our brain is a wonderful thing till it FARTS!

Edited by Bud
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