CNN piece on Super Sport Bikes & Helmets

Supid me, I thought folks would only be pissed at the IIHS, and then CNN's manky reporting.

 

can someone post a link to the article.

 

put a pot out and everybody with a spoon wants to stir. i agree we have too many riders wthout enough self-control. darwins theory usually comes to mind when i see them challenging tractor-trailors for a lane, the problem is we all get grouped together. then we all get the short-end of the proverbial stick. ok back to the argument

 

So after reading all the comments I decided to read the article. Seems to me to reasonably accurate, ignoring some incomplete comments on statistic. It certainly goes along with what I have observed on the street.

My thoughts, my insurance company won't insure sports bike at all. Can't blame them, the risk is clearly very high and after all they are a business trying to make money just the same as I am. If you buy one of the "Super Sports" you do it because you want to go fast, going fast generally creates more risk. I don't think anyone can argue to hard about that. The big question; Should they be banned or restricted? I believe yes at least to the extent of when can purchase them. In my view you should be have to prove competence before you are allowed to buy something like the BUSA. I have been riding since I was 14, a long time ago, and have taken rider training courses and I still would not consider myself to be acceptably safe on that type of bike. I am sure that there are some who are but I think they are very rare group. Unfortunately the age group that typically buys these types of bike are relatively young and inexperienced. Combine that with the power and speed of these machines and surprise surprise lots of crashes and fatalities.

I look around in motorcycles shops and find very few of what I would consider beginner bikes. In my view a CBR600RR is no beginner bike and yet they tend to be sold as such. I kind of like the earlier comments about the German licensing system. I think it would be a good idea to restrict access until you can shown experience and competence.

 

Click Here

 

Oh, I'm pissed!!!! I am My squadron's "motorcycle mentor" now (a new program) and was doing a little surfing to get info. Came accross this:
Report

It tells the tale- young 20 somethings are being taken over by "mature" 30's on up. the data speaks for itself- they lumped the 600's and 1000's together in the report to inflate those numbers for "bigger bikes".

 

Hey Nozzle!

I am pissed at CNN and IIHS, but I've come to expect such BS reporting and propaganda from the news and insurance industry. They will always be ignorant, just look at how guns have been reported on!? Which leads me to, yes there is a paralell with the gun/ fast bike propaganda. However, there is major issue with this...we have a constitutional right to own firearms, but not motorcycles. That's the pisser because the insurance industry can lobby politicians to place laws that totally fuck us motorcyclists and the only thing we can do is fight back with our own lobbyists. If we lose, well no court is going to back us. So my anger is directed at the "Fuctards" as KC calls them because they are screwing us all! The smart thing is for us responsible ridrs to ban together and lobby for smart legislation like a graduated license, harsh penalties for driving without a license, etc.

Maybe I should buy a Llama and take it through corners :llama:

Good Thread Nozzle, I like to see what others think on an issue like this:biggrin:

BZ

 

Is the motorcycle industry so small over there that they can simply ban motorcycles?

Graduated licence? I'm from Singapore and we have a graduated licence system (200cc, 400cc, unlimited, with at least 1 year in between each test). maybe it helps but motorcyclist still makes up more thn 50% of traffic fatalities. And the most common age group is 20-35yrs old. Riding with the wrong class of licence or no licence is both a ban, hefty fine and maybe even a jail term.

You can get killed on a 125cc as well as a 1400cc bike. Rider (and driver) education is more pertinent than taking a step back and banning bikes.

 

I think it's dumb for a brand new rider to buy a GSXR 1K but I don't necessarily think it should be illegal. I think the government has a responsibility to protect us from others but not much to protect us from ourselves. Graduated licensing sounds like a good idea and it would bring us a bunch more cool small displacement bikes and also nearly put HD out of business, both of which are good things.:wink: It would also cost us riders a lot of money in depreciation as we bought/sold our way up the ladder. I think a HP restriction is better idea(I think England does this or used to.) You can buy a big bike that is restricted and then have the restriction removed later on. I am not sure I like this one really either. A brand new car driver can buy any car he wants, why would we want to give the government the right to tell us what we can ride? It always looks like a good idea to restrict that other guy but how many of the new riders on this board want to sell their bike and go buy a Ninja 250? Every dealer I know tries to steer new riders onto smaller bikes with limited success. They want to buy what their buddies are riding. Most of them take it easy at first and do fine. A few get in trouble and get hurt or killed. That is a result of their decision and their behavior. I don't want to submit myself to more government interference in my life to save an idiot from his own stupidity and bravado.

 

Another article with an agenda. This time we are back in the sights... The problem is the motorcycle industry has the buying public addicted to the speed/hp advertising bug. If a bike doesn't come out with some rediculous number of hp it gets glanced over. I remember reading articles about the "firebreathers" of not long ago that would get torched by a modern 600 now. Most professional racers think the new bikes are out of hand as street bikes go. They don't find any need on the street but..... they are built and its our right to purchase them. With that right comes responsibility. Rider education is great but will riding in the college parking lot around cones on a Honda Rebel do much to show how a sport bike responds when you approach a corner with too much speed? I think maybe the AMA might need to get more involved to help address this with real advanced training for sportbikes. The availability of the level of performance at dealers now means we have to stop screwing around and police ourselves or as somebody already said the insurance industry will police it for us. Does anybody remember when the R1 first broke 140hp? The insurance was over $7500 annually on one in my area. No matter how much experience you had..... Most companies would not even insure one at any price because the initial losses were so high. We're looking at a scenario like the end of the muscle car era. Insurance companies and government regs brought us some really great cars in the 70's didn't they? 90hp Mustangs and Camaros..... etc. When I lived in Germany motorcycles were set up with governors that limited power and top speed. There are many different ways to address this. I don't want a 180hp bike so I don't care if they exist or not other than reading about them. I just don't want to think I can't purchas a bike like a 1000cc VFR if it ever comes out because some insurance co. decided that a certain displacement means certain loss or death. As derstuka said the bike isn't the problem its the rider on it.

 

the statistics they were using for deaths on bikes shows that the only group that had a rise in fatalities was the touring bikes. they shut themselves down on that one.

 

We don't need more laws, the private sector can manage this problem by either not offering insurance on "supersport" bikes to newbies or by making it so expensive that they cover their liability. They should further take into account, as my insurer does, years of experience and lack of claims made. There are always going to be the folks with more money than brains, point proven by the amount of 30-49 year olds on tourers that were killed while drunk(noted in the article). Insurance companies will hopefully not punish the experienced and they will study the data and apply the rates to the ones that deserve to carry the burden of the increased premiums.