Bike/Car Drags - why do you bother?

No, it's not an ego post, and it's been quite surprising how many posters
from aus.cars have accused us of that. It's already been pointed out (by
motorcyclists) that there are cases where a car will outperform a motorcycle
(eg - the lap records at Eastern Creek and Oran Park are both held by cars),
so this isn't a "bikes are always superior to cars" type troll post.
(However, the egos at aus.cars are a bit more fragile than I expected.)

From a standing start however, bikes have a clear power/weight advantage,
and so the question was - what motivates *some* car drivers to constantly
try to engage us in drag battles?

Manning

 

Idiots will try it.
Most car owners would not even bother!

 

I sometimes do it just to see a bike rider absolutely floor it. Damn
some bikes are quick!

--
Ben Thomas - Melbourne - Australia
Current car: silver manual Holden Astra SRi
Dream car: black Lamborghini Diablo

Respect for the man in the ice-cream van.

 

Hehe - well you just made yourself a whole bunch of new friends over at
aus.motorcycles

Cheers Manning

 

lol, should be interesting - that'll get 'em fired up for sure!

Damien
GPX250 (stolen) -> CBR600

 

You mean an Econovan CAN'T pop a mono? Bullshit, we don't believe you, we've
seen the photos.

Damien (you just aren't trying hard enough)
GPX250 (stolen) -> CBR600

 

Why does the guy in a bog stock gemini drag me in a flash looking turbo
commodore ? It ain't always about winning.

 

Well to start with maybe your turbo astra will result in a baby blade
getting flogged to beat you (although I doubt it would beat you) but the
litre class bikes and the motherships like the ZZR1200, Hyabusa and ZX12R
would require very little throttle input to comfortably see 100 - 200 metres
gap from you.

The other thing is bikes have a much higher usuable rev range and most fours
make their big power in the mid and upper ranges between 6 - 12 000 rpm. So
if you hear a bit of revving it might only just be up to about 6000 rpm to
set things off a little.

I have had a good lesson courtesy of a porsche once, he let me know that
they can mumbo when they want to, however, the performance gap is still
sufficient for me to be able to kick the Zed down a gear and roll on 1/2
throttle and still pass it. I can understand the desire of some cagers to
drag off the smaller bikes, they are so little, sound little, etc. Where
porsches etc have an advantage is in overall top speed and the ability to
corner faster - four contact patches will always be better than two.

No matter what a bike rider tells you, through a mountainous twisty road its
nearly impossible to pass and blow off a motivated, and well sorted high
performance sports car, sure you can walk away on the straights and out of
corners but they make up for it in sheer cornering speed available. Ive had
a little Toyota GT4 corolla hound me through the twisties once, definately a
lesson well learnt.

Another chap mentioned wanting to have the idiots out the front where he can
see them, I agree that is a good thing when your surrounded by 1500kg of
metal and components, because your easily seen and theres a lot of metal
between you and the rear of the car, so if noddy isnt watching and rams you
in the butt, a compo claim is about the worst you will suffer. Not so on a
motorcycle, the risk of having an idiot behind you and able to see you is
better than being sandwiched between idiot at the front and non attentive at
the rear. Again it comes down to space, if we are up the front and clear, we
have more options- we can accelerate out of trouble and we are more easily
seen by the cars - ie no problems with blind spots.

Some riders get cranky when they are cut off by cars but I think you have to
recognise how little you are and how easy it is to not see us, although it
never ceases to amaze me how every car driver sees the police bikes..... its
all about programming and threat assessment.

Why do guys pull wheelies next to vans at 100km/h ? Much like why a dog
licks his balls really - because we can.

 

Take it outta the trailer then!

Hammo

 

Blame Tom Cruise...

 

but then Shane....you reply with 14 lines

?????


--

MH

"the Kiwipete hall of fame"

lame duck who leeches on society
leeching on taxpayers and leeching on society
Maggot
you useless piece of shit
you lazy fucker
leech!
dull dumdrop
bludger
you dirty piece of scum
Moron

 

F*ck that! I nailed a riced up Mitsubishi FTO P-plater with me Spada while I
was on me Ls. Fair enough he had a mate with him, but I had my gym gears
with me too.

 

Given that we've had some articulate and insightful answers from aus.car
folks such as Toby so far, no I don't think so.

Based on a lot of collective experience, yes it is. It's the best one we've
ever found.

Have all

Not "right" behind us - a LONG way behind us. We can usually do this without
going over the speed limit, too.

Me, I'd rather have people who can't drive in front of me and

Ride a bike for a few days and see if you still agree with your statement. A
skilled rider scans his mirrors every 2-3 seconds so we know what is behind
us, but we do not like having anything at the side of us where we are most
vulnerable to random movements. Car drivers are all too infrequently poor
judges of braking distance, and they frequently fail to see a motorcycle
anyway, so we don't like having anything behind us either (a common reason
why we will lane split even when we can't get to the front of the pack - it
protects our rear.)

You treat all drivers the same way, nobody can drive properly and they

Well I agree with you here.


Cheers Manning

 

lol!
says he who comes out with stuff like:

"So why do you persist? Is there a genuine belief that you stand a
chance,
even when a brief consideration of the simple physics of power/weight
ratios
indicates there isn't one?"

nice one...

Charlie

 

yeah, I'll just stop worrying about my blind spots and stick to mirrors
now eh... that suit you just fine?

Charlie

 

With you on the babyblade, maybe.

 

That statement should've been appended with a "..., re!"

("my gym gears"... chuckle)

 

Hey aus.cars!

Long time no see...how's the 242, Forg?

 

conehead is of the opinion:

Or for that matter, a neck? You'd think that cagers believe that their top
bubble would snap off if they turn it, stiff-necked pricks that they are.
If you can't see where you're about to go (and what you're about to kill),
move your fucking head! It rotates, it moves back and forth. And if that
still isn't enough, get out of the fucking 4WD! You don't need a 4bie to
get the kids from your deluxe penthouse villa to the shops 400 metres away,
for fucks sake!

Oops, time for the medication again...

- Matt

 

Manning is of the opinion:

I'll second that statement, having had a cager write off my bike (quite a
forcible impact) by just not stopping when I (and the rest of the collection
of traffic) was. Being a half-dozen cars up the road would have been a much
safer solution.

- Matt