DVLA Bollocks

I've been to the DVLA site, I've googled, and I still havn't got a f+cking
clue.

I'm not 16, or 17, or even under 21. I have had a car driving license for 30
years. WTF have I got to do to ride a bike under 126cc on the road legally.

Ta,

MikeD

 

Get a provisional motorcycle entitlement added to your licence if it isn't
there already , then do a CBT course

--
Alex

Hermes: "We can't afford that! Especially not Zoidberg!"
Zoidberg: "They took away my credit cards!"

www.drzoidberg.co.uk www.ebayfaq.co.uk

 

1/ have a bike class provisional licence entitlement, automatic for
full car licence holders

2/ pass a CBT (compulsory basic training) course BEFORE venturing on
road

3/ have a roadworthy and legal bike, 12bhp I believe 125 cc are the
limits.

notes

a/ for **** sake buy a full set of leathers, gloves, boots, you
wouldn't believe the number of tosser I see every day, irrespective of
L plates or not, who are improperly dressed and just waiting for an
appointment with A&E

b/ you're old enough to go the DAS or Direct Access route, which means
3 to 5 day course straight to a full bike licence, which when passed
you'll be limited to something like 33bhp / 500 cc for the first year
or two then unlimited

c/ I *think* I'm right in saying the CBT entitlement only lasts for 2
years then you're off the road for a year unless you sit and pass the
full test, I dunno if the car licence will alter this

d/ full car licence + bike provisonal I belive allows you to ride a
trike / robin / outfit, provo bike licence only is now much more
limited than it used to be and these things are severely curtailed.

e/ DVLA are worthless as a source of information which, if wrong, you
see you the wrong side of points of your licence or a ban, plod,
specifically traffic plod, are a million times more useful, but a
__good__ bike training instructor, ideally plod motorcyclist is to be
regarded as the oracle

f/ for fucks sake do not buy a modern 125, do what I did for the kid
and buy an old "proper bike" eg honda cd125, teach them to rebuild and
maintain it, and then ride it (the flames will ensue about this point
alone, I am sure, but learning to ride while avoiding visits to A&E is
my only concern for the kid in question, I don't give a **** how much
cooler they would look on a 2 grand modern 125)

HTH etc

 

Safety nazi. Let him choose what he wants to wear, just as you have
the choice. Full leathers on a 125? Don't make me laugh.

A matter of choice innit? If he's got enough money to buy a new bike
and ensure he has sufficient breakdown cover and patience if/when it
breaks down, that's up to him. I don't see why every bike rider should
know how to strip the fucking engine down.

--
_______
..'_/_|_\_'. Ace (brucedotrogers a.t rochedotcom)
\`\ | /`/ GSX-R1000K3
`\\ | //' BOTAFOT#3, SbS#2, UKRMMA#13, DFV#8, SKA#2
`\|/`
`

 

Mike Dodds wrote

Suffer.


You must understand that motorcycling, and scootering for that matter,
are very exclusive clubs and we don't just want anybody to join.

Over the years, as legislation has been suggested or amended, we have
lobbied and occasionally been successful and had the bar raised.

We have no intention of making it easy for you, precisely the opposite
in fact.

When you can prove yourself worthy we accept you. A part of the proof
is the suffering.

 

Good stuff snipped.

Thanks, now I understand. Just got to decide whether I can be bothered with
all the hassle or just get fitter and ride the pushbike 18 miles to work and
back each day...

 

I suffer every day when I sit in the queue for the Forth road bridge while I
watch bikes bypass the queue and then go through without paying the toll. Is
that OK???

 

Speaking of which, a mate works in a bike accessory shop. He said he was
talking to a customer in the front of the shop when he heard a sportbike
coming down the street wound up tight. He saw a 2005 Gixer Thou fly past
wheeling and watched the rear wheel pass the front. The resounding crash
sounded quite impressive, apparently all the plastic bits were
transformed into tiny pieces when the bike bounced off several
stationary objects. The rider, very worse for wear, was carted off by
ambulance (only wearing a helmet).

 

Way, way OTT and verging on the hysterical, on several levels.

To get started you need the following:

A decent textile jacket. I have a Bering warm, waterproof with good
crash resistance (I know from experience). Although I normally wear a
Belstaff in the summer and take my chances.

Gloves. A summer pair and a winter pair. Again my experience with
Bering is good.

Stout boots (docs, caterpillars and the like are all suitable). I've
never owned a 'proper' pair of bike boots and still have my feet after
nearly 20 years of idiocy.

Helmet. Expensive is not necessarily better. Lozzo is your man for what
type is what. I think Nitro is the VFM lid of choice.

I wear denim jeans quite happily but a pair of leather jeans are a good
thing but remember there's a big difference between fashion leathers and
bike leathers. Even then some of the big name stuff are nothing more
than a criminal rip off.

Waterproof trousers. These are *fucking* important.

If you're on a race track then there's an argument for full leathers,
back protectors etc but it's a 125; you need to be comfortable and warm
with your skin covered.

 

Champ, was that you?

--
_______
..'_/_|_\_'. Ace (brucedotrogers a.t rochedotcom)
\`\ | /`/ GSX-R1000K3
`\\ | //' BOTAFOT#3, SbS#2, UKRMMA#13, DFV#8, SKA#2
`\|/`
`

 

Ace said...

And a hypocrite IIRC Mr Fawkes has had his collar felt a couple of times
for not wearing a lid in the name of 'personal freedom'. Obviously this
freedom doesn't extend to other people.

Yea, but you're not a proper biker...

 

ha ha ha

**** off

 

you're a moron who clearly cares more about how he looks than anything
else, and as a result you will end up in A&E and ultimately making
friends with rick hulse.

full leathers = comfortable and of course warm in winter = being in a
fit state to ride safely and alertly, the protection the offer if you
drop it is a valuable by-product, and if you think a 125 doesn't go
fast enough to get hurt feel free to bail out off the back of the kids
cd125 outside the entrance to A&E

I know you don't, and that is why this forum is full of numbnuts riders
who can't even manage to tension or lube their chains properly and only
discover brake disks falling off the bike by chance, they all figure,
like you, they don't need to know how to do the job themselves as long
as they can pay some other fucker to do it, not that they do pay some
other fucker to give their bike a regular once over every week, oh no,
that would be a waste of money.

safety nazi?

no, I just have some respect for another potential bikers flesh, enough
respect to try to give him the benefit of a shit load of miles of
riding so that hopefully he can stay right side up and enjoying the
life long enough to start building enough of his own experiences to be
able to make his own informed judgements.

the only reason you don't see why every rider should know their own
machine intimately is because you haven't buried enough people who you
knew personally who didn't, or scraped up the remains of enough people
who you never knew and now never will who didn't.

bikes and other bikers (male and female) have given me some of the best
experiences of my life, certainly contributed to a very large part of
what makes me smile when I recollect the good times I've had and good
times I plan to have.

the only enriching experience I've found you get from numnuts riders is
watching them grow and learn the craft to the point where the biggest
dangers they face is the road, and not themselves, and at that point
you can go ride with them without worrying about them involving you in
an accident that didn't have to happen, and start enjoying the real
benefits of being a biker.

I was around when all the MAG stuff started, we had stories about the
dim and distant future in the 21st century when motorcycles in
particular and internal combustion engines in general were outlawed,
and the outlaws would go out in the dead of night with their illegal
benzine running their illegal motorcycles on abandoned roads away from
the computer controller highways and autopiloted vehicles, because we
all believed that big brother evil government and cynical monopolistic
businesses would be what made our chosen lifestyle illegal and a part
of history.

Who could have predicted it would be neither government nor business,
but people, in the shape of clueless numbnuts bikes that gave the
lifestyle such a bad name amongst insurers and other road users that
motorcycling is again becoming as socially acceptable as jacking
opiates in a WI meeting.

yeah, it's his flesh, his life, but it's my fucking lifestyle, and it
don't need ill informed numbnuts wannabe lusers buying flighty unstable
aprilia 125s and having nothing left over for leathers, which don't
look as cool as skater clothes anyway, dumping it big style at the end
of the road and winding up in A&E with brachial plexus lesions, and
world and god telling me as a result how fucking dangerous motorcycles
are blah blah blah.

don't get me wrong, I am soooooo fucking lucky to still be in once
piece after all those miles, but that luck was heavily weighted by good
practice and good experience and knowing what the **** was going on
with the machine underneath me.

there is a world of difference between kicking the threaded bar that
you replaced the engine / footrest mounst with when you dropped it back
in with your heel at 20 mph on an old villiers and trying the same
thing on a tricked out 2004 aprilia today on modern roads with
pointless disk brakes just waiting for a newbie to panic and lock them
up and more attention paid to the fucking decals on the tank than
accesibility of the rear brake adjusters or other everyday maintenance
items.

bottom line here is the bloke who asked for the advice is mid forties,
and no riding experience worth mentioning, and he didn't think I was
being a safety nazi.

other point here is learners who get a go on a modern 125 and then get
a go on a "proper" 125 like the honda I bought for the kid will, when
allowed to by being removed from the presence of people such as
yourself who they feel they need to impress their street cred upon,
will almost universlly say they prefer riding the old bike around,
because it feels safer and more forgiving, and eventually they start to
realise this means more fun too, because all of a sudden they are
confident in the machine they are riding no doing anything sudden and
"unexpected".

 

stationary objects. The rider, very worse for wear, was carted off by

OK I'm confused again, why was an ambulance wearing a helmet. Or if that's
wrong why was the rider bollock naked apart from a helment, is that part of
the suffering...

 

You haven't got any prior appointments this afternoon, have you? Get
out there and do some!

 

Bwaahaahaa. You don;t know me at all, do you?

You what?

It'll be 30 next year.

And shorts, tee-shirts and sandals on occasion. Or even less, in your
case.

Must be long overdue, as according to him it would seem to be
impossible to ride other than in full leathers anbd survive a single
trip. We must have been doing something wrong.

Good, weren't it, and I was hardly even trying.

--
_______
..'_/_|_\_'. Ace (brucedotrogers a.t rochedotcom)
\`\ | /`/ GSX-R1000K3
`\\ | //' BOTAFOT#3, SbS#2, UKRMMA#13, DFV#8, SKA#2
`\|/`
`

 

You EOSMing?

--
_______
..'_/_|_\_'. Ace (brucedotrogers a.t rochedotcom)
\`\ | /`/ GSX-R1000K3
`\\ | //' BOTAFOT#3, SbS#2, UKRMMA#13, DFV#8, SKA#2
`\|/`
`

 

two points

1/ it was a hell of a lot more than a couple of times, never quite
actually shared a cell with fred but damn close, and it was a hell of a
long time ago and my total motorcycle mileage was some unknown sum but
way less than 100k, the words "young and fucking stupid" spring to mind
for many of the antics of yesteryear when I didn't know any bloody
better. (dino motor in a featherbed frame anyone? then see how it
stacked up against your mates of 900ss ducatis (the real ones) on the
road? <shudders at the thought>)

2/ the human head is really well designed aerodynamically, shades and
greek sailors hat = 90 mph with no bugs in your eyes, no buffeting and
no neck ache - corollary being my mate, who shall remain nameless, but
who has one arm and rides a very tasty 1000 cc outfit, looking back
after overtaking an audi at 90 ish, WITH a helmet on, waaaaannnng,
specs get tugged off in the wind and sit askance across the face and
helmet, rendering rider blind... until he took his one arm off the
bars, at 90+ in the outside lane of a dual carriageway, and re
positioned his specs.... like I said, very well sorted and very tasty
outfit, but the "safety" helmet caused turbulence which caused a
problem that wouldn't have existed with a bare skull. SO not everything
is black and white

 

nope, "go buy a full set of bike leather" is an easy instruction for a
newbie to get right.

I hear what you're saying, but only an experienced buyer can spot a
pukka one from a junk one, whereas any generic 99 quid pukka leather
motorcycle jacket will outclass the majority of textile jackets.

yes, stout boots are an adequate substitute, but they are all designed
to be worn on the feet of people walking, bike boots are designed to be
worn on the feet of people riding, with the elements hitting them near
horizontal and at great speed, and provide additional ankle support and
calf protection.

cheap is often better, slightly loose fit, swing up chin guard like
plod uses are great "best of both worlds" option.

*good* quality denim jeans (doesn't mean expensince or fashion)
actually slide and protect nearly as well as leathers, but leather bike
trousers are cut to the correct tight fit, cut to suit the sitting on
the bike position and are padded.

any old cheapo waterproofs will do if worn over leathers, even in the
worst weather, speaking as a dispatcher now who used to do minimum 1500
miles a week, the 10 quid one piece waterproofs did me all winter,
stopped water and wind (wind is good to stop in winter, stay warm that
way) especially when you got the missus to gaffer tape the ass of them
so they didn't slide around on the saddle.

yeah, it's a 125, which will do *well* over 30 mph, at which speeds in
an RTA fatalities suddenly leap as a propertion, and ditto non fatal
injuries...

the other REALLY SAFE things about racetracks that do not apply to far
more dangerous roads is I've yet to see a silver volvo on the school
run or a fucking repmobile coming the other way on a racetrack, you
don't get many diesel spills either, or manhole covers, or such a large
proportion of the traffic being cars and lorries and buses and fucking
pushbikes crossing against red lights... street furniture, sharp kerbs,
railings at roadside, I could go on..

yup

serious question, which stands more chance of success.

1/ sending someone who doesn't ride to a motorcycle clothing shop and
telling them to buy a full set of leathers

2/ telling them to ignore safety nazis, theres all sorts of things like
gore-tex and stuff that is really good.

worst thing that can happen in option 1 is the buyer walks out looking
like a clone of eddie lawson, yeah it's funny, but at least he'll be
safe on the 125 and the only avoidable injuries he will suffer will be
verbal.

 

I stand corrected, knew a 33bhp came in there somewhere.