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When "laying her down" is the only way!

4K views 48 replies 25 participants last post by  LoVel 
#1 ·
I know, it's popular to poke fun at people who use that term, but in this case it saved the guy's life -



..it says he walked away with "suspected broken ribs", much better than what could have happened.

It happened on the M20 in southern England yesterday.

One lucky lad I'd say.
 
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#4 ·
I don't agree. According to the article a witness said the rider threw himself off to avoid the collision. The picture shows the motorcycle under the beam. If the sliding motorcycle came to a stop at that location, I believe it would have stopped short of the collision had it stayed on rubber with hard breaking.
 
#5 ·
You have to think the rider knows his own bike and the condition of pads, rubber, and road conditions and the only thing any of us can be is decisive right or wrong hesitating on a bike is what gets us injured, so the rider sees the situation has about 1/2 second to calculate current speed, distance, road and bike conditions, point is he didn't choke, he made a decision and executed it.
 
#6 ·
Sorry, have to agree, he panicked, and could have stopped before the bridge, if it slid to a stop under it. Half a second? That's all we get a lot of the time. "I had to lay it down", is simply saying you crashed. And contrary to the statement, many riders have no clue what their bike is capable of; there are many that still think using the front brake will kill them.
 
#7 ·
I am sure all the debris in the road might have influenced his decision to bail instead of attempting to brake it down, not to mention we don't know the timing here of bridge falling in relation to his arrival....it could have happened right in front of him which could easily influence a panic. It is easy to armchair these things. Anyway, he is OK and that is all that matters. Bike can be replaced.
 
#11 ·
The motorcycle would have been traveling toward the camera. The debris field is on the far side of the bridge collapse. Yes, the rider is okay, but it really doesn't appear that there was any reason for both rider and bike to not be completely unscathed, had the rider not panicked and just bailed.
 
#9 ·
Since staying upright with rubber on the pavement will ALWAYS stop you faster, and the bike is right under the structure, he could have easily stopped before reaching it if he had just remained upright. It's simple physics really. The coefficient of friction of rubber on the road vs. metal and plastic on the road should make the choice a no brainer.
 
#13 ·
I hope that the trucker who hit that bridge goes to jail for a few years.
 
#17 ·
Relax, sparky. It's a discussion forum on the internet. If we didn't adopt differing opinions based on the information provided, then advance those opinions, it wouldn't be much of a discussion, would it?

OP: Wow

1st Response: Agreed.

2nd Response: +1

3rd Response: OMG

Close thread.

Besides, I wasn't the only one to say he probably could have stopped in time. I wasn't even the first one to say it.
 
#18 ·
I wasn't there so I'm not going to criticize what the rider did. He was taken to hospital with suspected broken ribs - very painful but not life-threatening - so his action worked "well enough".

He quite probably had better choices available than "laying her down" but those better choices would be defined by the laws of physics rather than by his expertise, his mental state, his reaction times, his training and what else was going on around him at the time.

What we should all be doing though is building our training, reactions, expertise, etc so that when it all goes really wrong, really quickly, we are able to take advantage of those laws of physics.
 
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#20 ·
There is also this from the article:

Sonny Gladdish, who was just behind the crash when it happened, said the motorcyclist had thrown himself off his bike to avoid the impact.
 
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