When the news reporte Fatalit | GTAMotorcycle.com

When the news reporte Fatalit

Paulee

Well-known member
With the hot/humid weather engulfing us, I cant help but notice more and more squids out on the road. Not just sport bike riders but tons of cruiser riders too (I actually see more cruiser riders squidding than any other but thats besides the point). I also cant help but notice that there seems to be a new motorcycle fatalilty/deadly crash every week. With the very vague details thats reported on these incidents It always has me thinking of a few things. Was the rider wearing gear/what type of gear/how long had they been riding?

Especially after hearing about that stunt driver on the set of Deadpool who wasnt wearing a helmet or any gear for that matter, I feel if the news reported these small details it would help educate the public that motorcycling isnt a death wish. That you can mitigate your risk to a certain extent. Obviously there are some things that no one can survive no matter how much gear you're wearing but Ive read the stats on survival rates when it comes to something as simple as wearing a full face helmet opposed to a half face and its remarkable.

What are your thoughts?

*Edit* I realize the title is messed up but Im not sure how to fix it*
 
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Yeah it's been something I've noticed the past few years too.

Not sure if they just report it more or it's really happening more.

Scary these days with hand-held distractions from cagers not paying attention but you have to be extra vigilant for sure.
 
With the exception of the helmet -- FF versus brainbucket beanies, for example -- I'm not sure that gear is going to do much to prevent a fatality in most of the deaths we're seeing.

Leather jackets and pants with strategically-placed armour, proper riding footwear and good gloves go a long way to preventing road rash and the mangling or even spontaneous amputation of hands (of digits) and feet. Even the risk of spinal injuries can be mitigated somewhat by the use of supplemental back armour.

But if someone turns left in front of you because they didn't see you or drifts into your lane due to distraction and you hit them sidelong and/or head-on I don't know that those leathers and CE armour is going to do much to prevent internal injuries that could lead to death (e.g. aortic dissection.)

Squids are risking permanent disfigurement, painful rash and grafts, loss of limbs and digits and perhaps have a higher risk of paralysis etc but, as long as they're wearing a decent helmet, how much more likely are they to die in a serious collision?
 
With the exception of the helmet -- FF versus brainbucket beanies, for example -- I'm not sure that gear is going to do much to prevent a fatality in most of the deaths we're seeing.

Leather jackets and pants with strategically-placed armour, proper riding footwear and good gloves go a long way to preventing road rash and the mangling or even spontaneous amputation of hands (of digits) and feet. Even the risk of spinal injuries can be mitigated somewhat by the use of supplemental back armour.

But if someone turns left in front of you because they didn't see you or drifts into your lane due to distraction and you hit them sidelong and/or head-on I don't know that those leathers and CE armour is going to do much to prevent internal injuries that could lead to death (e.g. aortic dissection.)

Squids are risking permanent disfigurement, painful rash and grafts, loss of limbs and digits and perhaps have a higher risk of paralysis etc but, as long as they're wearing a decent helmet, how much more likely are they to die in a serious collision?

Im really not sure If I agree with you totally there. Ive seen a ton of videos of riders going head on into a car turning left and in a lot of cases the rider ends up getting thrown forwards off the bike and lands either on the car or over it onto the ground. You're trying to tell me when you land being fully suited up isnt going to *Significatly* increase your chances of surviving?

Perfect example is to watch popular motovlogger Yammienoobs crash. He went head on into the front of a Porsche and was thrown 30 feet in the air and was severely injured but fully geared. If he was squidding he would surely have died.
 
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What kills is impact. Leather and most street gear is for sliding. Dont see how it would change ****, other then being dead and rashed to **** or being dead with just broken insides.
 
Im really not sure If I agree with you totally there. Ive seen a ton of videos of riders going head on into a car turning left and in a lot of cases the rider ends up getting thrown forwards off the bike and lands either on the car or over it onto the ground. You're trying to tell me when you land being fully suited up isnt going to *Significatly* increase your chances of surviving?

Perfect example is to watch popular motovlogger Yammienoobs crash. He went head on into the front of a Porsche and was thrown 30 feet in the air and was severely injured but fully geared. If he was squidding he would surely have died.

I'm with Blackfin. With the exception of a helmet, most gear won't affect whether you die. If you hit an immovable object (or a car without going over), gear won't help (other than helmet maybe). If you slide, gear obviously helps save your skin which may then occasionally keep you from losing so much blood or getting an infection, but very few people die by sliding. If you believe gear keeps you alive, you need to come up with crash scenarios where the gear actually prevents a fatal injury and there just aren't many such scenarios.

IMO most of the time, gear (again with the exception of helmets) drastically shortens your recovery time but does very little to minimize fatalities.

Yammienoobs was saved by the frunk and going over the car. The suit did nothing for his survival.
 
@Blackfin

If a car turns in front of you and you smash right into it, you're going to fly. This is where a ton of luck comes into play. If your body, for example, flips and your head and nothing else hits something, you could very well smash/bend/break your neck/spine and die regardless of whether or not you have gear. If you, say, get flipped into a sign post you may very well be cut in half regardless of what you are wearing.

However, if you do a clean flip and land on your back, the difference between having proper gear that absorbs the impact and road rash is getting up with perfectly fine to beat the **** out of the offending driver, or a visit to the hospital and possibly death.

I know there are tons of idiots that try to justify going squid because they truly believe gear won't save them. Those of us who have gone down multiple times knows proper gear makes most things feel like surfing on a cloud unless you break something in the process. I can confidently say I would be dead, more than once, if I hadn't been wearing gear.

We only get to live once, so take calculated risks and push as hard as you can.

The media, btw, will never mention gear. They aren't here to educate anyone, they're here to push political views or sensationalize **** by fear mongering. People chew up death and destruction much more than the chew up successes.
 
Additionally, age plays a large part in surviving trauma. There's a trauma scale that basically sums it up. What would put a 20yo in the hospital for a week would put a 50yo in the morgue.
 
油井緋色;2518427 said:
@Blackfin

If a car turns in front of you and you smash right into it, you're going to fly. This is where a ton of luck comes into play. If your body, for example, flips and your head and nothing else hits something, you could very well smash/bend/break your neck/spine and die regardless of whether or not you have gear. If you, say, get flipped into a sign post you may very well be cut in half regardless of what you are wearing.

However, if you do a clean flip and land on your back, the difference between having proper gear that absorbs the impact and road rash is getting up with perfectly fine to beat the **** out of the offending driver, or a visit to the hospital and possibly death.

I know there are tons of idiots that try to justify going squid because they truly believe gear won't save them. Those of us who have gone down multiple times knows proper gear makes most things feel like surfing on a cloud unless you break something in the process. I can confidently say I would be dead, more than once, if I hadn't been wearing gear.

We only get to live once, so take calculated risks and push as hard as you can.

The media, btw, will never mention gear. They aren't here to educate anyone, they're here to push political views or sensationalize **** by fear mongering. People chew up death and destruction much more than the chew up successes.

Couldnt agree with you more, not to mention almost all motorcycle accidents are either single vechicle incidents or low impact crashes where gear is most important
 
油井緋色;2518427 said:
We only get to live once, so take calculated risks and push as hard as you can.

#YOLO
or
#WOLO?

The way I've always seen it when it comes to gear is that I've seen better riders than me go down due to their own error or something tripped them up, so I'd rather go down with gear than nothing at all should that happen.
Something unexpected like oil or gravel spilled across a highway ramp can also cause the bike to go down before you know it.

What people want to wear is their own decision.
When people (newer riders) ask for help or my opinion on riding, I'd always push to wear gear, but in the end, it's really up to them. I'm not the boss of them.

If a crash is going to be fatal, unless it had something to do with a head injury (due to lack of helmet protection), or back injury (due to lack of back protection), chances are you'd be dead anyway.
 
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I got an airbag vest this year and wear it every ride. It's light enough that once on I don't notice it. It lets air flow, it's Hi Viz. It may help if I ever have an accident and it increases my odds of survival so I'm happy with it. It wasn't cheap and hopefully soon they will be much cheaper, but I can say it has brought me some peace of mind while riding.

On another note....squid might be fine for some but I'm so accustomed to wearing my gear on a bike that it really doesn't feel that bad unless you're stopped and waiting around in full sun for ages. I have a cheap evaporative cooling vest that works well and one of those cooling bandanas that I wear around my neck to cool the carotid down. When I'm moving I'm absolutely fine and my Klim stuff vents really really well.
 
I got an airbag vest this year and wear it every ride. It's light enough that once on I don't notice it. It lets air flow, it's Hi Viz. It may help if I ever have an accident and it increases my odds of survival so I'm happy with it. It wasn't cheap and hopefully soon they will be much cheaper, but I can say it has brought me some peace of mind while riding..

Airbag vests may help prevent a fatality. Thanks for bringing those up. I still think the typical leather/textile sliding gear with some padding does very little to prevent a fatality.
 
Im really not sure If I agree with you totally there. Ive seen a ton of videos of riders going head on into a car turning left and in a lot of cases the rider ends up getting thrown forwards off the bike and lands either on the car or over it onto the ground. You're trying to tell me when you land being fully suited up isnt going to *Significatly* increase your chances of surviving?

This is what I think, in general. There will always be exceptions but look at it this way: Consider two scenarios:

Case 1: A fixture is used to suspend a person oriented supine (so lying face-up) 20-metres in the air. A free-fall drop from that height will result in an impact velocity of around 70kph.

In test one, a person wearing full gear is positioned on the fixture and then dropped onto a hard, asphalt surface. In test 2, a "squid" configuration is used; the test subject is wearing a good helmet but has a wife-beater, shorts and sandals on.

In this scenario I don't think the extra leather will change the outcome much; I think both will die from internal injuries (dissections, ruptures etc). The leather outfit doesn't offer a magic crumple zone or absorb "perpendicular" impacts all that well. Any armour padding can spread the impact out but the internal organs are still being wrenched on their connective tissue and bouncing off ribs and other organs.

Case 2: A "human cannonball" cannon is setup a few feet off the ground and calibrated to accelerate its human cargo to 70kph muzzle velocity.

In test one the subject is fully geared whereas test two's subject is a squid. I think we'd agree that a "sliding" crash of this nature is going to end badly for the guy wearing the wife-beater and sandals, right? The ATGATT guy might get up, dust himself off and walk away. The squid's in for skin grafts and maybe worse.

Perfect example is to watch popular motovlogger Yammienoobs crash. He went head on into the front of a Porsche and was thrown 30 feet in the air and was severely injured but fully geared. If he was squidding he would surely have died.

Not familiar with that crash though it sounds nasty. It sounds like in flying over the car this was a "case 2"; there may have been some impact with parts of the bike (tank, handlebars etc) but for the most part it was a horizontal/sliding/tumbling deal. Had he hit the side of an SUV (so more of a "case 1" incident) he probably wouldn't have survived, gear or not.
 
Not familiar with that crash though it sounds nasty. It sounds like in flying over the car this was a "case 2"; there may have been some impact with parts of the bike (tank, handlebars etc) but for the most part it was a horizontal/sliding/tumbling deal. Had he hit the side of an SUV (so more of a "case 1" incident) he probably wouldn't have survived, gear or not.

Idiot vlogger failed at steering, crossed the centre line and ruined a perfectly good Porsche.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh8jhgRNmV4
 
The main argument here seems to be if you're gonna die, gear won't help so why bother...

So what if you're in a crash that isn't life threatening? What percentage of your skin are you comfortable leaving on the road? I'd prefer to keep as much as I can and I dress accordingly.
 
The main argument here seems to be if you're gonna die, gear won't help so why bother...

So what if you're in a crash that isn't life threatening? What percentage of your skin are you comfortable leaving on the road? I'd prefer to keep as much as I can and I dress accordingly.

100% agree. I have no interest in having gravel scrubbed out of a huge rash when it is so easily prevented.
 
I know someone who had gravel scraped from their back with a wire brush, followed by skin grafts. Eff that.
 
Idiot vlogger failed at steering, crossed the centre line and ruined a perfectly good Porsche.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh8jhgRNmV4
No, I think i was a boxter

Wow. smh...
In all fairness to GreyGhost, the harsh comments toward YN are well deserved. It was the second Daytona 675R that he'd written off with serious collisions in a year, both self inflicted.


OP mentioned cruiser guys squiding more than sport bikes. While I've noticed that alot of cruisers squid, I'd also say the circumstances are slightly different. A 40yo squid on a Harley is more likely to be wearing jeans atleast and only doing 60. A 25yo squid on a gixxer(brah) is more likely to be in the afore mentioned cargo sorts, wife-beater and sandals, and doing 120+.
 
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