Darksider - conviction registered | Page 10 | GTAMotorcycle.com

Darksider - conviction registered

That special class of motorcycles does not lean to turn, was specifically designed to operate with a car tire, and was submitted to Transport Canada for certification with a car tire. Can the same be said for a conventional motorcycle? Nothing 'wack' about it.

you could still lean on a conventional motorcycle with a car tire just not as much as a motorcycle tire,you don't put on a CT on to lean,if you really want to lean to drag keens, get a crotch rocket, just like you wouldn't by a pick up truck to move a house,you'll get an 18 wheelers.And if you want to use a pick up truck to move your house and cut up your house to move it, that should be your choice. Law is suppose to be made to protect the ppl, if no one is hurt because of riding with a CT ,it should be our choice and not to be punish for it. There are alot more other dangerous things that needed to be regulated. what tire to put on your bike should be the choice of owner.so this law is "wack"
 
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Wondering if any Spyder owner can chime in. I met a rider last year and he mentioned the rear tire wears out at 25,000 kms or so. Much faster than the fronts. He keeps the air pressure to spec for two up. Dealer said it was normal wear. Center track of the tire wears out while the outer sides look new.


I would think a CT on a motorcycle would have some kind of handling characteristics to get used to? I don't think you'll find a tire manufacture that would even consider testing the merits of a CT on a two wheel motorcycle of any kind simply for the lean factor. If they did, I don't think it would pass the legal eagles that have to consider the manufacturer's liability. Unless they formally worked at GM????? Kidding!!!
 
As for a trike you "should" have the bike certified after the modifications are completed again they don't lean like a single track motorcycle.
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Most Goldwing trike conversions are dome with a Mustang or similar rear axle so car tires and rims match bead profiles and the logic makes sense. However it still is a M/C and should be running a M/C tire by law. Has anyone checked to see if the paperwork is in place so the trike rider isn't forced by overzealous law to use an inappropriate but legal tire/rim combo?

Similarly for sidecar conversions. A M/C tire/rim is designed to corner while leaning with G forces acting quite differently than a tire/rim combo that is designed to corner flat. However the license plate says M/C and it must run a M/C rim/tire.

Re Getting it certified, what mechanic has the legal authority to over rule DOT even if it makes sense?

In a broader sense Biker Cop has opened a can of worms on the erroneous concept that you have the right to add, delete or change stuff on a vehicle and think it is legal because in your opinion, it works.
 
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Read the whole thread, please. All of the points recently mentioned have already been covered.

Folks who ride as shown below aren't likely to notice that their bike has handling problems.

 

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Wondering if any Spyder owner can chime in. I met a rider last year and he mentioned the rear tire wears out at 25,000 kms or so. Much faster than the fronts. He keeps the air pressure to spec for two up. Dealer said it was normal wear. Center track of the tire wears out while the outer sides look new.


I would think a CT on a motorcycle would have some kind of handling characteristics to get used to? I don't think you'll find a tire manufacture that would even consider testing the merits of a CT on a two wheel motorcycle of any kind simply for the lean factor. If they did, I don't think it would pass the legal eagles that have to consider the manufacturer's liability. Unless they formally worked at GM????? Kidding!!!
It stands to logic that it would wear quicker due to power, braking and weight down-forces. Not a can-am obviously.. but my setup has about 25k on the rear and it is done.. the front on the other hand.. maybe 20% wear?

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Handling Lmao... 5% lean? La sigh. I love these forums so many "bikers" makes it very comedic.

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you could still lean on a conventional motorcycle with a car tire just not as much as a motorcycle tire,you don't put on a CT on to lean,if you really want to lean to drag keens, get a crotch rocket, just like you wouldn't by a pick up truck to move a house,you'll get an 18 wheelers.And if you want to use a pick up truck to move your house and cut up your house to move it, that should be your choice. Law is suppose to be made to protect the ppl, if no one is hurt because of riding with a CT ,it should be our choice and not to be punish for it. There are alot more other dangerous things that needed to be regulated. what tire to put on your bike should be the choice of owner.so this law is "wack"

Unfortunately people make bad choices and then blame it on someone else, which results in idiotic lawsuits. As a result people need to be protected from themselves, or at the very least manufacturers need to be protected from people who refuse to accept responsibility for their own mistakes. And you know that happens. A lot. Sometimes people even break the law, hurt themselves, and then blame everyone else for not stopping them from doing it.

A prime example is something from back when I was a teenager, before this current litigation garbage began. A kid and his buddies broke through the fence at a local quarry, so that they could ride their dirtbikes on property belonging to someone else that was clearly signed 'no trespassing.' The kid crashed and broke his back, becoming paraplegic. The parents sued the owners of the quarry for $5M. They won a judgment for $2.5M which they didn't think was enough, so they appealed. The appeal court said that they didn't deserve a cent. It still cost the quarry's owners hundreds of thousands in legal costs.

Motorcycles lean. Sometimes they have to lean more than others. Go into a decreasing radius corner without realizing it and you'll have to lean, hard, to complete it. That or you stand it up, nail the brakes, and likely ride right off the road.

Wondering if any Spyder owner can chime in. I met a rider last year and he mentioned the rear tire wears out at 25,000 kms or so. Much faster than the fronts. He keeps the air pressure to spec for two up. Dealer said it was normal wear. Center track of the tire wears out while the outer sides look new.

I would think a CT on a motorcycle would have some kind of handling characteristics to get used to? I don't think you'll find a tire manufacture that would even consider testing the merits of a CT on a two wheel motorcycle of any kind simply for the lean factor. If they did, I don't think it would pass the legal eagles that have to consider the manufacturer's liability. Unless they formally worked at GM????? Kidding!!!

Sounds like the rear tire pressure spec might be a bit low, or the wear would be fairly even.
 
Unfortunately people make bad choices and then blame it on someone else, which results in idiotic lawsuits. As a result people need to be protected from themselves, or at the very least manufacturers need to be protected from people who refuse to accept responsibility for their own mistakes. And you know that happens. A lot. Sometimes people even break the law, hurt themselves, and then blame everyone else for not stopping them from doing it.

A prime example is something from back when I was a teenager, before this current litigation garbage began. A kid and his buddies broke through the fence at a local quarry, so that they could ride their dirtbikes on property belonging to someone else that was clearly signed 'no trespassing.' The kid crashed and broke his back, becoming paraplegic. The parents sued the owners of the quarry for $5M. They won a judgment for $2.5M which they didn't think was enough, so they appealed. The appeal court said that they didn't deserve a cent. It still cost the quarry's owners hundreds of thousands in legal costs.

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Is that a different event than the Brampton property where the parents, after losing, had to pay the city's legal bill. Similar situation.
 
The one I can think about, also correlates with that time-frame of Rob's.

I asked these people, both in this smaller session and in the general session later, if there had been any past legal cases or were any ongoing legal suits against their clubs or individual members for damages or injury suffered by hkers who used trails maintained by their members. None were mentioned although I asked for examples a second time. One ATV person finally brought up the 1975 case in Brampton of the teenager who crashed his motorcycle on town property which was signed no trespassing and ended up in a vegetative state. Of course that one resulted in the boy and his parents getting absolutely nothing in compensation. The ATV representative was not aware that the outcome had not been in favour of the plantiff.

http://odsc.on.ca/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3343
 
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The one I can think about, also correlates with that time-frame of Rob's.



http://odsc.on.ca/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3343

It could be the same one. If the crash happened in 1975 it could have been in the courts/news for another ten years. Going with my fuzzy recollection, there was a fundraiser for the family as they had to sell their house to pay legal expenses while simultaneously setting up to handle their kid.

While it's easy to criticize the parents for blaming the city I can, to a limited extent, understand them being in denial, not wanting to accept that they gave their son a tool of potential self-destruction and insufficient training on how to use it. If the husband and wife can continue with blaming someone outside the home instead of each other the marriage has a better chance of staying together and coping with the aftermath.
 
Well, I'm surely re-opening a can of worms here by replying to this thread, but this was a thread that was very relevant to a question at hand since I'm contemplating darkside (and yes, I read all 10 pages of the thread) so it only seemed logical vs starting a new one. But, it trailed off without any legal precedent, just lots of opinions on both sides of the fence.

My reply is a bit long, sorry, but here's my case.

Is there legal precedent yet on the legality issue? As was hashed out here, the regulations are fuzzy, and when it comes to fuzzy charges, a good defendant often wins unless the crown can prove a point through the fuzziness, which, based on my experience, they often cannot - lets look at the recent effort to clarify the Ontario window tint laws as proof of that - the fuzzy wording of the law, by police officers own admissions, is leading to difficulties getting charges to stick. A quote from the tinted window article I linked to:

The present wording is very open for interpretation and is based on the subjectivity of an officers' observations. This can lead to difficulties in getting convictions in court."


The tire laws that people cited here are equally "open for interpretation", as was clearly mentioned by many people over the course of the thread, and accordingly, it seems to me that a determined defendant, armed with the right defence, could get the charge thrown out of court.

So, I suspect that if these sorts of charges were more commonplace (it seems this was an isolated incident, I cannot find any record, anywhere, of anyone in Ontario having been charged for this specific violation since), it would only take one person willing to fight the charge tooth and nail to get it tossed out, and accordingly, a precedent set. Muddying the waters further was the fact that there probably WAS a tire violation in this case specific to the fact the tire was rubbing, so the charge would probably have stuck on that technicality moreso than the darkside argument itself.

Now, my question is based on an experience of my own last fall where I got into a debate with Canadian Tire, and subsequently the MTO about putting LT (light truck) tires on my horse trailer instead of the ST ("special trailer") defined tire. Despite being armed with a decade of experience to the contrary (read on...) one Canadian Tire mechanic swore up and down that it was illegal, unsafe, stupid, and all sorts of other things, going so far as to refuse to do the job until I pushed the issue with the store manager and he ordered another employee to swap the rubber for me.

A call to the MTO yielded mixed results - one officer sided with the Canadian Tire mechanic, another said he didn't know, a few others said it was fine so long as the tire fit the rim safely and properly, was not placarded "not for highway use", and was rated for the weights placed upon it by the axle and GVWR ratings. This is stuff that IS clearly laid out in the tire laws that many people have linked to in this thread. The LT's I installed were good on all fronts, legally fitting the description as per the law, and they have served me well over many thousands of kilometers towing the trailer loaded heavy with draft horses. I also had LT's installed on my 5th wheel travel trailer which we travelled coast to coast with and probably put 50K on the LT's before we sold the trailer. MILLIONS of other RV'ers also do the same when it comes time to buy new rubber.

Further to the argument, many RV manufacturers are now shipping RV's with the much more robust and far superior LT options on them..right from the factory.

In the RV community many of the same arguments were made over the years, with many of the same heated discussions happening. The ST zealots swore up and down that people installing truck tires on their trailers were crazy suicidal idiots with no sensibilities. "The tires are built differently!" was much of the same argument. Yes, they are, but that doesn't automatically mean that choosing LT's was inherently unsafe.

A decade later, particularly when RV manufacturers also seen the light and decided that the notoriously problematic ST tires weren't worth the hassles anymore and started shipping their own products with the very LT tires that some had cursed for years as "dangerous", along with the fact that 10 years of growing evidence across tens of millions of miles proved them wrong, the controversy died down to all but a whimper now. The arguments were dead in the water...but the facts have taken time to filter down to the zealot crowd, many of whom are not willing to admit there's a veritable mountain of factual evidence, and now even trailer AND tire manufacturer data (and legal precedent, people have fought it in court and won) that dismisses that dismisses their viewpoints as invalid.

It seems to me that the darkside motorcycle debate is still in the formative stages of that same debate, however, when you look at the facts, it seems that the debate against them is losing - darkside has been a thing for a LONG time now, coming up on 2 decades since people started experimenting, and a good slid decade in fairly mainstream use. There is a mountain of evidence that those running darkside experience almost entirely positive results with none of the suggested issues (no, the sidewalls don't wear out prematurely, suffer sudden blowouts at rates anything higher than a traditional motorcycle tire, etc), and a distinct lack of evidence reinforcing much of the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that the anti-darkside crowd like to cite.

So, without reigniting the for vs against argument (I know, good luck with that), I'd like to ask for anyone's recent LEGAL evidence (and court followup) with regard to the issue.

It seems to me, based on Googling, that charges for darksiding are incredibly rare, and as I cited earlier in my reply, I think it would be difficult if not impossible for the crown to make the charge stick based on the current wording of the law, so long as the person charged actively fought the charge...and I suspect that's why we're not seeing the charges laid routinely - as someone else mentioned early on in the thread, the police could wander through any big motorcycle gathering and issue countless tickets for darkside...but they don't, do they? Something they know, perhaps?
 
Quote)
Now, my question is based on an experience of my own last fall where I got into a debate with Canadian Tire, and subsequently the MTO about putting LT (light truck) tires on my horse trailer instead of the ST ("special trailer") defined tire. Despite being armed with a decade of experience to the contrary (read on...) one Canadian Tire mechanic swore up and down that it was illegal, unsafe, stupid, and all sorts of other things, going so far as to refuse to do the job until I pushed the issue with the store manager and he ordered another employee to swap the rubber for me.

A call to the MTO yielded mixed results - one officer sided with the Canadian Tire mechanic, another said he didn't know, a few others said it was fine so long as the tire fit the rim safely and properly, was not placarded "not for highway use", and was rated for the weights placed upon it by the axle and GVWR ratings. This is stuff that IS clearly laid out in the tire laws that many people have linked to in this thread. The LT's I installed were good on all fronts, legally fitting the description as per the law, and they have served me well over many thousands of kilometers towing the trailer loaded heavy with draft horses. I also had LT's installed on my 5th wheel travel trailer which we travelled coast to coast with and probably put 50K on the LT's before we sold the trailer. MILLIONS of other RV'ers also do the same when it comes time to buy new rubber.


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I have a mechanic friend licensed for everything on wheels. He has a run-flat car tire on his bike and has won motorcar racing championships. He isn't afraid of risks.

I once asked him about using a car tire on a trailer and he said "NO way". I can't recall why but will ask him when I see him.

I'm not sure what is covered by the term "RV". A motor home is a truck chassis with accommodations so therefore different from a trailer. What about the difference between a trailer and a wagon?
 
I once asked him about using a car tire on a trailer and he said "NO way". I can't recall why but will ask him when I see him.

A car tire (P rated) is not an light truck (LT) rated tire. Big difference between them. Car tires are indeed not rated for trailer use (mainly because lack of weight carrying capacity that would make them useful for most trailers, as well as comparatively soft sidewalls (that can accentuate sidewall flex and trailer sway accordingly) compared to either ST's or LT's, so I'd agree with him on that.
 
Ever lean into a corner with the trailer/rv?

I don't understand why people still argue that a car tire works on a bike. Just because a power washer can clean tiles doesn't mean that's how you clean your kitchen.
 
Is there legal precedent yet on the legality issue?

As stated in the first post on page 1, Bike Cop charged a rider of a Kawasaki Vulcan 900 for using a car tire on the rear and a conviction was registered for the offence under Section 70 of the HTA. As no names were stated, it's rather difficult to try and find the judgment.
 
With all due respect to our rights to free speech, there are a great many people on this forum giving advice who have no idea what they are talking about.
There is currently a post on the General page where someone asks if he can ride a motorcycle with just the bill of sale.
Everyone knows or should know you can't ride or drive a vehicle on the street without a plate, temporary or permanent.
If you don't have a registration, you most likely don't have insurance and insurance is also mandatory.
Yet there are some who have replied saying that you can do this.
When riding a motorcycle you tilt while turning. This is why bike tires have tread running up the side of the tire.
Car tires don't have this.
Is this legal, it would appear not.
Is it safe, it would appear not.
 
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A car tire on a bike? Why? Just why?


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As stated in the first post on page 1, Bike Cop charged a rider of a Kawasaki Vulcan 900 for using a car tire on the rear and a conviction was registered for the offence under Section 70 of the HTA. As no names were stated, it's rather difficult to try and find the judgment.

IF the charge stuck, which is up for debate (again, it likely would not have had the offender challenged it), is the question. It came out in the wash that the tire was damaged by rubbing somewhere which *is* contrary to the laws (and is clear) which muddied the waters. He would have got the same charge had be be running a legit motorcycle tire that was too big and also rubbed - accordingly the charge had less to do with tire type, as not proven / clear by law, and everything to do with the fact it rubbed and was becoming damaged as a result.

He also had a lot of other crap that hit the fan at the same time so I suspect the "improper tire" charge was the least of his concern in the end.

To to the other responses, the "should you/shouldn't you" discussion has been beat to death so continuing that debate isn't the ultimate goal here when I bumped this thread, it was trying to narrow down the legal side of things. If we could all try to keep it on that rail that'd be more productive.
 

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