Another bike down - "I didn't see him"

OK, it sounds like we're actually talking about the same thing here, but
using slightly different language, which leads to different implications
about the allotment of blame.

You're saying "its partly my fault", which leads me (and it seems at
least some of other posters in this thread) to believe you are absolving
the driver in some way, as though the driver is somehow less than
completely at fault. I notice now that you never actually said that, but
I'm clearly not the only one who _thought_ that was what you were
implying.

I view that scenario as "I may not have done everything I could have to
have avoided the driver, who was completely in error and solely the
cause of the danger". I wasn't "at fault" in any way except perhaps with
regards to my own personal obligations to myself. Nobody else, not you,
not the attending police, not the insurance company, _certainly_ not the
car driver has _any_ grounds to find me "at fault".

Same sentiment, different implications. I think I, and other posters to
this bit of the thread, are finding it hard to distinguish between
Shane-the-motorcycle-rider saying "I'm partly at fault, I could have
done better", and Shane-the-police-officer saying "The rider was partly
at fault, he should've known better".

No, but my defensive riding style or lack thereof has no bearing in the
scenario you described on the culpability of the driver. If they hadn't
fucked up, there would have been no danger for me to need to avoid. Your
(ex?) colleagues job is to ascertain who broke which rules, hand out the
appropriate tickets, and document the event so the insurance companies
and the legal system can take things further if required. In your
scenario, there were no rules broken by the rider, and at least one rule
broken by the driver. I don't want to jump up and down and demand
anything of the drivers, what I want is for you to give the driver the
appropriate ticket, and to put an "N" in the "was the rider at fault"
box and a "Y" in the "was the driver at fault" box on the accident
report[1]. What I'd _like_, but with your "lets talk about what happens
in the real world" approach I realise is "unlikely to happen" is for
your (ex?) colleagues to start handing those tickets out to the drivers
that defensive riders like you (and, I like to think, I) manage to
avoid. How often in your police career did you pull over a driver and
write him a ticket because a rider had to take evasive action when they
fucked up? I've never heard of _anyone_ getting a ticket like that
(though I guess getting a ticket for driving like an idiot isn't the
sort of thing people tend to talk about much...)

Like I said, reading back over the thread, I read something into your
words that you didn't actually write. I apologise for that. Without
wanting to make excuses for myself, I do want to point out that your
phrase "I'd be leading towards the cyclist being more at fault" is
_very_ easy to interpret the way I did, even if thats not how you meant
it. Cars hitting bikes is a very emotive issue in here, so careful use
of language can help stop ambiguous remarks turning into shitstorms...

Yep, its served me well. Thanks Zebee (and all the other aus.motocycles
and syd-ride and ducatimonster.org folks who gave me similar good advice
when I was starting out...)

big

[1] And, to be fair to the NSW police, the only time I've ever required
this, Sgt Peter Spence in Braidwood did exactly that, thanks!

 

I'd be amazed if riders who carry, say, a set of shim gauges and a
couple of spare valve stems aren't underrepresented.

-----sharks

 

Actually john we do but it's hidden in Clem's underpants.

 

Yep, see my apology in my other response.

This though is another case of your language being easily
mis-interpreted.

The regulars in here all know you're a cop (or now it seems ex-cop), and
it seems they _all_ jumped to the conclusion that your "did he have his
headlight on?" question was "Shane-the-police-officer gathering evidence
of wrongdoing on the riders part", rather than
"Shane-the-motorcycle-rider trying to add to his pool of knowledge about
accidents and the circumstances surrounding them".

I'm 100% sure that if Zebee or Clem or IK had asked that question, it
would have been assumed to be the latter (though if any of them had
actually asked it, I'm pretty sure they would have worded it differently
enough to make that clear.)

I suspect even corks or Mad-Biker could have got away with asking that
question without being quite so badly mis-understood and bringing down
the shitstorm that happened here (partly because corks is usually
incoherent enough that nobody understands what he's asking anyway, and I
get the feeling Mad-Biker thinks _very_ carefully before launching into
a discussion where the group will think of him as "Nathan-the-cop").

I find it a little hard to understand what you're doing here, I don't
quite know what you come to aus.motorcycles for... You obviously don't
come here to be abused, but you must realise that the almost inherently
adversarial nature of the typical police/biker relationship is going to
mean that abuse is reasonably likely at least from some people in here -
thats a pity (and thats not just in here, you knew you were going to
have to deal with that when you signed up), but you've got a killfile
and a delete key, and I'm sure you've developed a think enough skin
during your career to ignore abuse. You do keep coming back though,
presumably because you think there's something you've got to offer or
something you can get out of the group, and I suspect both are true. But
you need to realise we know a little of your background - and many of us
are going to scrutinise your posts assuming you're posting as
Shane-the-cop. If you want to be able to ask questions like "was his
headlight on" without starting a shitstorm, you'll need to be careful to
make sure we _know_ you're asking as Shane-the-motorcycle-rider (and
you'll have to deal with the fact that some people probably won't
believe you anyway).

Hmmm, I'm rambling, aren't I?

big

 

That explains all the extra bodies at the wreckers lately.

 

In aus.motorcycles on Tue, 13 Jun 2006 20:10:42 +1000

I haven't seen the latest stats for this last year, but are you sure
the death *rate* is rising, or just the absolute number?

The number of scooters alone has increased 4 fold in the last 2 years.
There are more riders on the road, so the absolute number is going
to increase.

(Which is why riders over 45 are not having more crashes, they are
having fewer despite the absolute number going up. There's a shitload
more riders over 45 now than there was 5 years ago. Welcome to the baby
boom blip...)

The question is, has it increased as a percentage of licences?

Next question is single vehicle vs multi. Are more snotting themselves
rather than being snotted? Is the training needed more "stop thinking
you are Rossi" than "this is a car, try not to let it hit you"?

When rider training was introduced it led to a 20% drop in reported
crashes. I"m not sure about fatalities, and that's a dicey measure
anyway when it comes to bikes as the difference between dead and
"hello nurse" can be a split second and a degree of angle or the
width of a tree. A crash that's identical to one that killed someone
last week might "just" put the next guy in a wheelchair, and isn't
counted.

Before we can say compulsory rider training "is not working", have we
to know

a) if the fatality rate as a percentage of registered bikes or licenced
riders is up or down.

b) if the kinds of crashes - single, multivehicle, urban, rural - have
changed so that the increase is across the board or concentrated on
multi vehicle urban crashes where compulsory training is focused

c) if the injury crash rate, not just the fatality rate, has changed as
fatalities are a dodgy way to determine problems.

d) if the trend is statistically significant over 3 years or so, as
the numbers are so small that one bad incident can seriously skew a
single year.

Once we have that, then we have a better chance of deciding if training
isn't working, or if something else is at root.

Zebee

 

Shane hasn't got as much of a credibility problem as NZMSC... but yeah some
people are going to give him a hard time for a while.

To be honest I wouldn't have picked most of these recent posts as 'Shane'
posts they could have been anyone.

At least you're not strumming a uke and singing Tip Toe through the Tulips


G-S

 

Whereas BMW riders with coffee plungers are clearly a subset into
themselves.

Boxer

 

Yeah, but I'm not sure they're underrepresented!

-----sharks

 

I wouldn't worry, mate, it's mostly been Disinformation!

-----sharks

 

The Postman delivers again.

JL

 

Damn lies and statistics.

The number of registered motorcycles is also rising at a rate far faster
than the rise in fatalities. If you do the math you'll find the per head
of population rate has fallen dramatically since the implementation of
the compulsory learner scheme.

You also need to start analysing where the fatalities are occurring, the
learner scheme has dropped the under 25 fatality rate by about a factor
of 10 IIRC, the over 40's returning bikers are dying like flies however.

Mostly because they haven't been on a bike for 25 years and go and buy
something with the handling characteristics of a truck then add their
heavily overweight wife on the back. Unsurprisingly they get into
trouble on corners after a heavy lunch dulls their mental capacity.

JL

 

<considers what he'd have to do to find out the evidence against him>
Ewww ! Not worth it ! Whatever you've got on me I'll take the risk !

JL

 

I wouldn't have asked if you had.

Nice article, unceremoniously shot to pieces in the followups from
a range of qualified respondents:

<http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/eletters/328/7444/857>

Interestingly, a lot of the arguments put there by academics are
exactly the same as the arguments being put here by
practitioners.

GB

 

What have you got against the Mail Lady?

Theo

 

Iain Chalmers wrote:

Er yeah, you are. All nice words Big, but in my view the cold
reception this guy has received here (and is likely to *continue*
to receive here and in every other motoring group that he's fool
enough to show his face in) is the direct and specific result of
his past behaviour.

This isn't digg.com or delicious with thousands upon thousands of
fifteen year olds with short attention spans and their groupthink
"OH NOES! THE RIAA SUED MY FRIEND'S SISTER'S BOYFRIEND's NINETY
YEAR OLD MOM... ooo look, new iPod!" mentality. This is usenet,
with actual grownups, many of whom have been here longer than
the world-wide-web has, with actual experience, actual
qualifications, actual friendships, actual *groups* and lots of
individual and group memory.

This prick spent countless YEARS on aus.cars playing tag-team
whack-a-mole with his mate Shifty (or whatever the **** his name
was), persistently and consistently trolling, inciting all-out
wars, delivering his universal "I'm a cop and you're guilty even
after you prove otherwise". He has single-handedly made a greater
contribution to the divide between "us" and "them" than every
teenager-hassling cop in an overpoliced country town combined
ever made.

He's an out-and-out prick, he's always been an out-and-out
prick. It will take a LOT of work to change that, it might not
ever change. I do know that waltzing into aus.motorcycles and
picking another fight is NOT how it's gonna get changed.


With a long and extinguished (thanks Clem!) career such as
shane has had on usenet, the one thing he does NOT get to pull
is "I was a cop then, I was just doing my job. I'm not a cop
any more, so lets just pretend none of that ever happened."



It didn't work at Nuremburg. It doesn't fuckin' work here
and now.



There's another issue I take with this prick too. He comes in
here all mister-swinging-dick, clearly still wearing his cop
hat (except when a quick Nuremberg Defense suits the particular
argument he's running at any given point in time). The fact that
he's worked so hard at driving the wedge between cops and
"the rest of us" and then wants to show up in here is, in my
view, a direct attack on and a direct insult to people like
Mad-Biker and corks who are, by all accounts, perfectly good
blokes.



He might *think* he's changed. I guarantee that he thinks what
he's doing is right. This isn't a two bit web forum with the
attention-span of a gnat (sorry, no pun intended) however, and
I'll wager that not too many folks are in too much of a hurry to
forget a spot of 'ethnic cleansing' just because "I'm not a
cop any more".



GB, did I just invoke Godwins?

 

Well this is usenet and it's always going to be a mixed bag. There's
always gonna be some idiots and some that others don't agree with and
all of us have good and bad days.

The people that impress me the most are the ones who stay reasonably
cool headed even when the argument gets hot. Zebee, for example, does
this very well and is also well informed, and able to disagree without
getting personal.

I have no prejudice against cops; they're people too and the ones I've
come across just try to do their job fairly. That's just my experience.

I would like to think that we're all here to communicate, get good info,
help each other and debate the issues important to us. If we can do
that without spitting it would be good but hey there's always going to
be the odd hothead. For myself, it's better for me not to replt or press
the send button unless I'm pretty calm.

Straight-out insults, I feel, are better left hanging without a
response. Sticks and stones and all that. Otherwise my blood pressure
just gets too high.

 

Well I thought you might like a change from abuse....I actually want you
to know you're welcome here, as far as I'm concerned anyway. I was
hoping what I said would be heard by all.


I think my

Yeh but I'm really only saying what works for me.....

 

No,I'm over there. This is the Sydney Sydney not the Melbourne Sydney.

JL

 

Incress in registrations is over 20% according to Motor Vehicle Census at

http://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/Auss...ECA2570BB007F094B/$File/93090_31 mar 2005.pdf