[The Duke]

On my way to church today (must be why I'm alive to report this to you), I was cruising (way too fast) on a foggy morning (duh...that mean high levels of moisture on EVERYTHING, including the roadway, Duke!), when I had to stop for a stoplight. I see it turning yellow, so I put on the brakes, but I'm still going WAYYY to fast to make it stop. So what do I do...put on more (rear) brake!. I heard the gentle sound of me shaving a few hundred miles of longetivity on my rear tire, and felt the oh so gentle slide of it drifting to my left. At the last minute, instead of riding out the slide and possible highsiding or stopping in the middle of the intersection, I hooked a right at the intersection and accelerated through the turn....no highside, and nothing achey now (except my sphincter muscle).

Note to self...fog=more moisture on the ground=SLOW THE HELL DOWN!!!

 

[prekarious1]

glad you pulled through without any damage.
Sounds like you might want to rely more on your front brake and practice some emergency stopping. Don't forget to use the engine to slow you down as well. Atleast everything came through for you this time.

 

[pug]

Make sure you are braking with equally both and front.

 

[Nexus242]

I'd have run the yellow and red next time. IF you were that close to entering the intersection you would have made it thru with a quick horn beeps and throttle increase before the other side went green. Turning at the point you were at could have been more incline to making you low side at the apex and still put your ass in traffic. So remember these city rules of the road.

Green light - stop, look L-R and then go
Yellow light - go faster
Red Light - Stand on it!!

 

[LayinLo]

STAND ON IT = :shock: :twisted: :biker:

 

[themeatmanlandry]

Good show, Duke!

Ain't it funny how tight the rectal tissues get under these circumstances? Some idiot lost a load of sand blast media (ground slag) in a turn in the forest up here in TN. I've slid through it 3 times now, forgetting about the spill. It's little, tiny, dark green pieces of glass, strewn for about 100 feet, under some trees, in the middle of a curve.

FWIW, the last slide (yesterday morning) was the easiest to recover from so far.

Hate the ground slag!! :evil:

 

[inspiron]

In one of my motorcycle safety courses, we took our bikes out onto a dirt trail, and one by one accellerated up to a traffic cone, then stomped on the rear brake. The instructor told us to stay on the *rear* brake until the bike came to a complete stop, and to stay completely off of the front brake. He wanted us to learn that if we keep our head up, looking where we want to go, that "our butt knows what to do" to keep the bike straight. It's true - if your rear starts sliding out, stand on the rear brake until the bike stops. The worst that can happen is a low-side, which is not good, but still way better than a high-side!

 

[Clint]

Yeah, but learning proper threshold breaking and modulation is better than both. Practice, folks.

 

[jaydog19833]

I have gone through one(maybe two) lights that turned red only because I was going too fast to slow appropriately. Not good, but in those particular situations it was safter to scrape under a yellow/red light than skid to a stop. Ya know what I'm sayin?

 

[SDSUsnowboards]

All good points. Try not to go so fast you can't stop in time to begin with. not to say I don't speed myself , but I don't go so fast I have difficulty stopping for a yellow. There is actually over a second between your light going red and the cross light turning green. however avoid running red thinking that because some people (like me) anticipate green and will already be in the intersection the second that light is green going the road speed.

 

[Uncle Bob]

Practice, practice, practice your threshold braking techniques.

I am so sick and tired of riders running dark yellow and red lights because they don't know how to stop their bikes !

Check out the FAQ page for braking methods and practice them.

And need I add to ride only as fast as conditions allow!

 

[RookWV]

If you ride at 60mph then you should PRACTICE your emergency stopping from 60mph.

If you ride at 80mph then you should PRACTICE your emergency stopping from 80mph.

If you ride at 40mph then you should PRACTICE your emergency stopping from 40mph.

Practicing emergency stopping from 15mph does little to help you when you consistently ride at 60mph. You need to be able to judge your stopping distances from the speed you typically ride.

 

[inspiron]

:bluethum: +1