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My motorcycle safety course said that in a car accident the safest place for you is inside the car in the middle of all of those airbag deployments, but in a mo

My motorcycle safety course said that in a car accident the safest place for you is inside the car in the middle of all of those airbag deployments, but in a motorcycle accident the safest place is to be thrown as far away from all of the spinning colliding sliding bending grinding metal as possible

WrtCdEvrydy 5y ago
I mean, points for being right. We should create Star Trek teleporters so we can use them to avoid motorcycle accidents.
- stavros 5y ago
  I don't think the teleporter would absorb the momentum though. You'd just fly out of it and smash on the nearest wall.
  - Arrath 5y ago
    Okay the mental image of this is pretty funny, I will admit.
  - thatguy0900 5y ago
    The insurance company just needs to lease out one of those giant trampoline bounce houses to teleport all of its policyholders into.
    - _carbyau_ 5y ago
      What happens when two accidents happen at the "same" time? Whoever is running the teleporter would have to have "collision avoidance" strategies I guess. :-)
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    We could teleport you into a fluffy bouncy comfy room with inflatable walls.
  - jhgb 5y ago
    Then how does it slow Enterprise's crew from orbital velocity when beaming them down to a planet?
    - stavros 5y ago
      The ship is on a geostationary orbit, obviously.
      - jhgb 5y ago
        There's around 4 km/s difference between geostationary orbital speed and the surface of the Earth. For a zero inclination circular orbit, you'd need to be at an altitude of ~1855000 km to have linear velocity equal to the nadir on Earth's surface.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- quijoteuniv 5y ago
  Could not connect to server… retry?
rootusrootus 5y ago
One of my older brothers had that policy -- if at all possible he pushed away from the bike as hard as he could when it was clear an accident was unavoidable. He actually used that strategy twice, believe it or not. Worked swimmingly both times, which could just be chance.
- saiya-jin 5y ago
  You have to have proper luck with trajectory (your older brother had it to tell you the stories) - you go fast on a bike, you keep that speed when jumping off it. Then you either hit something hard (probably instant death) or you land and start sliding/tumbling. If you still don't hit anything, you can often even walk away, or end up with minor arm/foot injury. Unfortunately I've seen videos of contrary, ie couple riding same bike, hitting car, flying over it, sliding maybe 50m and still hitting curb so hard their bodies jumped quite a bit in the air. Both dead on spot.
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    I don't remember the second accident, but I still recall the first one. A small car (VW Bug) pulled out in front of him and he t-boned it. He jumped. It was in an otherwise open area, so he rolled. Banged up a bit, but he figured he ended up better than if he had stayed with the bike, which ended up embedded in the car (something about VW Bugs having not much in the front wheel area that was strong, and that's where the bike hit). As I said, it could entirely have been chance that this worked out for the best. I'm not a rider myself, and my brother is not an expert just a rando like me who has had a fair amount of interesting experiences in his life (how he is still alive today, I'm not quite sure, but luck has to be the biggest factor).
- jeffbee 5y ago
  This is one of those feral motorcyclist myths (another one is "loud pipes save lives"). It's just a weird meme that there's some critical point at which it is optimal to throw your bike down and leap clear. That's nonsense. It's always optimal to stay on the bike and brake as hard as possible up to the moment of impact. Always. The energy necessary to get the bike into an intentional low-side dismount so you can jump clear is always better spent dumping kinetic energy into the brakes, with the bike fully upright and the front wheel fully loaded. Another completely insane motorcyclist meme is if you are inevitably going to strike an animal in the road, it's better to hit it in a wheelie, that is, with the front wheel raised off the ground. Again: insane.
briHass 5y ago
The downside to this is that you also need to stop moving slowly. The benefit of airbags/crumple zones is that they prevent your squishy body from decelerating too rapidly. Great if you can get off the motorcycle and slowly slide to a stop in a dirt field, less good if you slide into a barrier or telephone pole.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  At the risk of pissing off the people who care about automobile safety only as far as it enables them to earn internet virtue points... Which decelerates your face more gently, 14" of air space for it to flop around in or 5" of air followed by 9" of airbag? Engineering tradeoff are everywhere. You're absolutely right that slowing down slowly is the name of the game. Failing that, evenly spreading the force is the next best thing.
deckard1 5y ago
Being away from other cars is one thing, but how you get there is another. There are only two ways to go down on a motorcycle. High-side or low-side. Pretty sure most people would prefer low-side if they ever had to pick. I had a high-side crash on a bicycle once. Luckily it was a grass field with soft dirt. Had to go home and change my pants after that one.
TacticalCoder 5y ago
I went "over the bars" twice. Once I was passenger on a motorbike and I flew over the car we hit. The other time I was driving the motorbike and I did brake until the very end, thinking "oh shit, won't do": I stood up on the bike, while still braking. And flew over the car again. Waking up in the ambulance, temporarily blind, not knowing which year it was nor if I had a wife or not, wasn't cool. It took I'd say easily 15 minutes before I could see again: I started regaining sight in the hospital although I clearly remember paramedics talking to me in the ambulance. I'm very lucky, in both cases, I didn't hit anything but the road. Especially not the car. I still rode MX bike on tracks for a while then eventually quite entirely. Now I've got a mountain bike and it's scary enough already!
- jacquesm 5y ago
  How was your wife? And did you stop riding?
i_am_proteus 5y ago
This is half-true. Getting run over by a car after going down is a bad day. The real technique, in my opinion (I have been down a few times), is to use the brakes to take off as much speed as possible while, if you can, bringing both the bike and yourself off the roadway and onto a shoulder or median. And always: legal or not, lane split into stopped traffic so that it's an instinct. More than once the car in front of me has slammed his brakes on and I've split in next to him, only for him to be rear-ended by the car which was behind me. Much better to be next to a car that is rear-ended than to be behind one.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  I always move to the left in the left lane and to the right in the middle and right lanes when stopping or slowing down a lot on the highway to ensure that bikes have some place to go. Usually the car behind me gets it and then you can see a whole seam opening up. This also helps in case emergency vehicles need to pass.

WrtCdEvrydy 5y ago

I mean, points for being right. We should create Star Trek teleporters so we can use them to avoid motorcycle accidents.

stavros 5y ago
I don't think the teleporter would absorb the momentum though. You'd just fly out of it and smash on the nearest wall.
- Arrath 5y ago
  Okay the mental image of this is pretty funny, I will admit.
- thatguy0900 5y ago
  The insurance company just needs to lease out one of those giant trampoline bounce houses to teleport all of its policyholders into.
  - _carbyau_ 5y ago
    What happens when two accidents happen at the "same" time? Whoever is running the teleporter would have to have "collision avoidance" strategies I guess. :-)
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  We could teleport you into a fluffy bouncy comfy room with inflatable walls.
- jhgb 5y ago
  Then how does it slow Enterprise's crew from orbital velocity when beaming them down to a planet?
  - stavros 5y ago
    The ship is on a geostationary orbit, obviously.
    - jhgb 5y ago
      There's around 4 km/s difference between geostationary orbital speed and the surface of the Earth. For a zero inclination circular orbit, you'd need to be at an altitude of ~1855000 km to have linear velocity equal to the nadir on Earth's surface.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
quijoteuniv 5y ago
Could not connect to server… retry?

rootusrootus 5y ago

One of my older brothers had that policy -- if at all possible he pushed away from the bike as hard as he could when it was clear an accident was unavoidable. He actually used that strategy twice, believe it or not. Worked swimmingly both times, which could just be chance.

saiya-jin 5y ago
You have to have proper luck with trajectory (your older brother had it to tell you the stories) - you go fast on a bike, you keep that speed when jumping off it. Then you either hit something hard (probably instant death) or you land and start sliding/tumbling. If you still don't hit anything, you can often even walk away, or end up with minor arm/foot injury. Unfortunately I've seen videos of contrary, ie couple riding same bike, hitting car, flying over it, sliding maybe 50m and still hitting curb so hard their bodies jumped quite a bit in the air. Both dead on spot.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  I don't remember the second accident, but I still recall the first one. A small car (VW Bug) pulled out in front of him and he t-boned it. He jumped. It was in an otherwise open area, so he rolled. Banged up a bit, but he figured he ended up better than if he had stayed with the bike, which ended up embedded in the car (something about VW Bugs having not much in the front wheel area that was strong, and that's where the bike hit). As I said, it could entirely have been chance that this worked out for the best. I'm not a rider myself, and my brother is not an expert just a rando like me who has had a fair amount of interesting experiences in his life (how he is still alive today, I'm not quite sure, but luck has to be the biggest factor).
jeffbee 5y ago
This is one of those feral motorcyclist myths (another one is "loud pipes save lives"). It's just a weird meme that there's some critical point at which it is optimal to throw your bike down and leap clear. That's nonsense. It's always optimal to stay on the bike and brake as hard as possible up to the moment of impact. Always. The energy necessary to get the bike into an intentional low-side dismount so you can jump clear is always better spent dumping kinetic energy into the brakes, with the bike fully upright and the front wheel fully loaded. Another completely insane motorcyclist meme is if you are inevitably going to strike an animal in the road, it's better to hit it in a wheelie, that is, with the front wheel raised off the ground. Again: insane.

briHass 5y ago

The downside to this is that you also need to stop moving slowly. The benefit of airbags/crumple zones is that they prevent your squishy body from decelerating too rapidly. Great if you can get off the motorcycle and slowly slide to a stop in a dirt field, less good if you slide into a barrier or telephone pole.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
At the risk of pissing off the people who care about automobile safety only as far as it enables them to earn internet virtue points... Which decelerates your face more gently, 14" of air space for it to flop around in or 5" of air followed by 9" of airbag? Engineering tradeoff are everywhere. You're absolutely right that slowing down slowly is the name of the game. Failing that, evenly spreading the force is the next best thing.

deckard1 5y ago

Being away from other cars is one thing, but how you get there is another. There are only two ways to go down on a motorcycle. High-side or low-side. Pretty sure most people would prefer low-side if they ever had to pick. I had a high-side crash on a bicycle once. Luckily it was a grass field with soft dirt. Had to go home and change my pants after that one.

TacticalCoder 5y ago

I went "over the bars" twice. Once I was passenger on a motorbike and I flew over the car we hit. The other time I was driving the motorbike and I did brake until the very end, thinking "oh shit, won't do": I stood up on the bike, while still braking. And flew over the car again. Waking up in the ambulance, temporarily blind, not knowing which year it was nor if I had a wife or not, wasn't cool. It took I'd say easily 15 minutes before I could see again: I started regaining sight in the hospital although I clearly remember paramedics talking to me in the ambulance. I'm very lucky, in both cases, I didn't hit anything but the road. Especially not the car. I still rode MX bike on tracks for a while then eventually quite entirely. Now I've got a mountain bike and it's scary enough already!

jacquesm 5y ago
How was your wife? And did you stop riding?

i_am_proteus 5y ago

This is half-true. Getting run over by a car after going down is a bad day. The real technique, in my opinion (I have been down a few times), is to use the brakes to take off as much speed as possible while, if you can, bringing both the bike and yourself off the roadway and onto a shoulder or median. And always: legal or not, lane split into stopped traffic so that it's an instinct. More than once the car in front of me has slammed his brakes on and I've split in next to him, only for him to be rear-ended by the car which was behind me. Much better to be next to a car that is rear-ended than to be behind one.

jacquesm 5y ago
I always move to the left in the left lane and to the right in the middle and right lanes when stopping or slowing down a lot on the highway to ensure that bikes have some place to go. Usually the car behind me gets it and then you can see a whole seam opening up. This also helps in case emergency vehicles need to pass.