Staying connected on the move – Palm Centro smartphone

With all the hype over the new Palm Pre and the release of the iPhone on Orange, it’s easy to overlook the Palm Centro smartphone.

It’s not exactly new, having been originally put on the market in the US nearly two years ago, but if you want a phone with a keyboard that does basic email tasks, can browse the web and runs the odd application too, then the Centro is still worth a look.

First up, it runs the Palm operating system. People either seem to love it or hate it. Personally, having experienced a couple of versions of mobile Windows, I’m happy enough with the Palm.

As an operating system, it’s old and rather unsophisicated. But if unsophisticated means “not particularly pretty but functional and relatively bullet-proof” then I’ve no complaints.

The current fuss about the iPhone ‘apps store’ amuses me, as the Palms has allowed add-ons for years, many of which are freeware and of surprisingly good quality too. Be warned that some older applications can break this latest version, which is v5, so you have to be a bit careful when testing what works, but a reset always brings the phone back to life if you do get a lock up.

If you don’t fancy add-ons, then built-in you get a decent range of functionality.

The phone and text functions work as you would expect. The contact manager is part of a PIM suite. The PIM functions synchronise with a desktop client which runs well under XP. Palm Desktop is a bit old fashioned looking and feeling, but it does work, and the hotsynch function works well.

The media synch function also works but is slow. When you do get media uploaded to the phone, there’s a Palm JPG and video player, though it’s a bit limited, and a more functional version of the Kinoma the movie player is also installed, along with PTunes music player.

I’m not someone who gets on with ear-bud style earphones, so the ability to play music via the rear speaker was an unexpected bonus, and I was suprised quite how good the rear speaker is when playing music. Compared with a decent set of speakers or headphones, it’s tinny of course but it is usable. One downside is the 2.5mm jack, which means you’ll need an adapter for most headphones.

Email is quick and easy to set up, and worked perfectly with my POP3 account, allowing me to send and receive anywhere the phone could pick up a signal. Blazer, the web-browser, is hardly blazingly fast, but the “turbo” setting that turns off graphics speeds things up significantly. It’s not particularly good at rendering pages, but it’s usable.

You also get Googlemaps, which when updated to the latest version allows for a “where am I” function which triangulates between mobile phone masts and traffic updates, which could come in handy.

It’s easy to switch between the various built-in applications using the touch screen, or four pre-programmed buttons.

In the hand, it’s a fairly small piece of kit and light, not much bigger or heavier than my old Nokia. It’s distinctly smaller than some of the Blackberries.

The downside of that is a relatively small screen, though it’s very bright and crisp. I run it on the lowest setting for backlight which aids battery life and it’s quite big enough to use to show trainees video clips under indoor lighting. I also read ebooks on mine and text is quite clear enough for reading to be a perfectly acceptable experience, but fuzzy PDFs are a struggle.

The 320×320 touch screen is just big enough to use with a finger, though I generally prefer to avoid prints by using the stylus, which neatly locks into the side of the phone. Many reviewers have commentated on the bendy stylus. It’s not broken in a year’s use and after a bit you get used to it – but it would have been better had it been more robust.

Oddly enough for a Palm, there’s no ‘graffiti’ character recognition application though the rubbery keys provide enough tactile feedback so that although keyboard is on the small side, it’s perfectly functional for short emails and memo-writing, and far better than predictive text. If you feel the need, bundled with the phone is a version of “Documents to Go” from Dataviz, which allows reading and editing of Word and Excel documents, though to be honest, why anyone would want to escapes me!

The 1.3Mp camera captures images at either at 1X or 2X digital zoom, and can record VGA video but don’t expect masterpieces. The colour is washed out in daylight though it functions OK under lights.

There’s also a microSD slot on the side of the phone but be careful not to put the card in upside down. It’s difficult to shift once it’s wedged in place. Even the right way round a long fingernail helps get the card out again.

Usually I have the Bluetooth function switched off to save battery life, but when I’ve used it, it’s synched with a couple of devices easily enough though I couldn’t get it to work with my Bluetooth bike headset. No big deal as I don’t particularly want to answer the phone whilst riding, and I only spent a couple of minutes trying to get them set up, so I dare say it’s fixable.

A year into ownership, and battery life is holding up well. It generally need charging once a week, either rapidly via the mains adaptor or a USB connection, which takes a little longer via the hotsynch cable.

One word of warning – if the battery goes completely flat, it won’t charge on USB, something that stuffed me on holiday last year. I thought the phone was broken! I actually took it into PC World and asked if I could plug it into the power cable to their display model. It immediately came alive, and I was able to continue to charge it later via USB.

People have also complained about the flimsy battery cover. Again, a year on I’ve had no problems.

Downsides? You don’t get wifi or GPS, and data connection is via the relatively slow GSM/EDGE, but the pros are that it’ll work where you have a mobile phone signal. Oh, and you only get black in the UK.

Data download costs, of course, but my Orange plan offers a day’s browsing for £1 or 7 days for £5 which is reasonable for occasional use.

However, you should be aware the Orange plan runs midnight to midnight, whatever time of the day you sign up, and the “your data plan has expired” mail isn’t sent till mid-morning, some nine hours after your plan has actually expired! The first couple of times I used it, I assumed that you got 24 hours access, and wondered why I ran out of credit!

There are probably better smartphones out there and there are simpler, cheaper ‘just’ phones. But the Palm Centro is around £160 SIM-free and unlocked, which to my mind is a reasonable price for a reasonably functional smartphone.

Nice video, smart bike, shame about the cornering line!

Ducati have produced a video teaser for the up-coming 796 Hypermotard.

Beautifully filmed and a nice looking bike but not so sure about the cornering line demonstated!

Hats off to Ducati, but head off for their test rider.

Eeek!

CD ROM Orders

e-BOOK ORDERS – CDROMs to be replaced by Download option

Because of the postal disruption and until further notice, Survival Skills e-books will be delivered via download, rather than posted out on CDROM.

There have been long delays on a couple of packages that have been posted, already and delays look set to get worse.

If you’ve recently ordered e-books from me to be posted out, please contact me via email, with your order details and I’ll get back to you with the download details.

Does retro-reflective kit work? Not really.

We’ve reached that time of year again, when the clocks have changed and many riders are now riding home in the dark.

Probably not entirely by coincidence, it seems Sussex Police are involved in a new ’safety’ campaign which involves stopping riders who aren’t wearing hi-vis kit and handing out “a free neon jacket”.

A sceptic might say that compared with the costs of running “Bikesafe” courses, handing out cheap dayglo vests costs peanuts, whilst at the same time they are “seen to be doing something”.

Anyway, are these vests any use? I’ve posted on this issue time and again, but it seems a good time to review it.

First thing I’ll point up is that if you have a fairing or a top box/passenger/ruck sack, then the a vest (as opposed to a sleeved jacket) is just about useless.

Second thing I’ll point out is that the most visible bits of the rider are helmet, tops of shoulder, the arms and the legs. It should be obvious a vest isn’t ideal, even if you don’t have a screen or some obstruction on the rear. You’d be better with flourescent gloves, lids and boots, and a full sleeved jacket, rather than a vest which is just about the worst design garment for a motorcycle rider.

One forum member suggested: “On my commutes I’ve been impressed how much visible bikes are at a distance as most seem to have some sort of reflective that catches the cars headlights. It may be a little on the boots, in the seams of the clothing, on a high viz vest, on a helmet etc but to my mind it makes them much more visible.”

OK, retro reflective for night time – the fluorescent materials that make a hi vis garment work in daytime rely on UV light from the sun, so the body of the garment fades at night; in fact orange bibs appear brown under sodium lighting.

And if it’s dark enough for retro reflective to work, you have your lights on, in any case.

But anyway, what makes retro reflective work is a light source shining directly onto the material. Now think where the source of light is… it’s a set of headlights SHINING DIRECTLY at the retroreflective material.

Yes retro reflective gear will show up miles away when the car is on full beam and there’s nothing around you, but just how often do you have to take evasive action when the car is miles away? It might JUST help the driver remember he saw something (pedestrian? cycle? can you be sure at a distance?) that would be useful to remember a few moments later, but the ability of the driver to see, interpret and pigeon hole for future use is not something I’d rely on. Oh, and if there’s nothing else around you, won’t they see your lights, in any case?

So what about the situation where you’re blending in with other vehicles, where your lights might be ‘masked’ by other vehicles’ lights as is likely to be the case in traffic?

Well, a moment’s thought should show you that the driver shining light in your direction is on dip. If that’s the case, then your bit of retro-reflective kit needs to be low down to reflect the light! High up like a vest, a Sam Browne belt or a jacket and it’ll be above the dip cut off and any reflected glow will be feeble at best. And in urban areas with a lot of street lighting the effectiveness of the retro reflective gear is further diminished.

Yes, there will be a bit of light scatter from the dip beam as no reflector is perfect, but you want the reflective stuff to shine bright.

Let’s look at some likely situations that riders think retro reflective is useful.

If the car is coming towards you, then it’s in the other carriageway anyway and as such it’s unlikely to be a problem unless it’s overtaking into a clear road, in which case the retro reflective kit could help if you’ve got a feeble headlight.

But if the oncoming driver is looking into a row of vehicles, how likely is your reflective stuff to outshine the HID headlights on the car behind? Simple answer is that “it won’t”.

And does it really matter if they are just going straight on because they’ll pass in the other carriageway? There might be a problem near a junction if you are the “gap” through which an oncoming driver intends to turn right, but realistically, if he’s not seen your lights, he probably won’t spot your retro reflective – it’s likely to be below the line of his dipped lights. So it’s your wits that will save you from the other driver’s mistake, not your retro reflective gear.

But if you’re worried about being seen from behind, then ask yourself, If the car is behind you, your bike should already be visible ahead via your outline, reflective numberplate and your rear lights.

But, rear end collisions DO happen, so there’s no harm in stacking the odds in your favour. From the rear, retro reflective is much more likely to be visible in a stream of traffic, as directly ahead of you will be other red tail lights, which aren’t nearly as bright as the oncoming HIDs.

So, with a view to being seen from behind, my aerostich has two big panels on the backs of the calves and they show up spectacularly well compared with “traffic pattern” vests.

I’ve got a pic of me on the bike being followed by another bike with a camera at twilight, when vision is often most difficult. You can clearly see the retro-reflective in the calves, but the “traffic pattern” vest I’m also wearing too doesn’t work at all – the retro-reflective material at shoulder height is far too high for the dip beam from the chase bike to land on.

Instructor buddy Malc has retro reflective stickers on the panniers, which again are low down enough to be in the dip beam.

Unfortunately, retro reflective riding kit is almost totally useless in the situation where most riders come to grief.

Most accidents happen at urban junctions where the car emerges across the bike’s path. The car’s lights are now pointing at right angles to the bike.

There’s no light shining on the retro-reflective at all. It’s useless, wherever it is, high up, low down, on the bike, on the rider.

In my opinion, about the only time retroreflective is really useful is on slow bikes with poor lights on fast roads, in full dark conditions where drivers are on main beam much of the time, or in conditions like rain, spray or fog when drivers might be on main beam trying to see where they are going, and you need any help you can get to be seen in the murk – and that last one is about the only time I tend to wear a high vis jacket as well as the ‘Stich.

If it looks stupid, it probably is!

Some time ago, Malc mentioned some A4 ‘graffiti’ on the office wall:

“Remember the ‘Farmer Brown’ test - ‘if it looks stupid, it probably is’ - so don’t do it!”

It’s something we could usefully remember as riders, particularly when taking advanced training. Just because someone or some organisation tells you it’s ‘advanced’, it doesn’t mean you HAVE to do it.

Another useful tip I picked up from my old MSF instructor buddy Don Kime. He said:

“Skills should be like money… spend some by all means, but put some in the bank… that way we avoid running up an overdraft we can’t pay back.”

Unfortunately a lot of our advanced training (and thus perception of what is ’skilled’ riding actually is) is about shaving off our margins for error in the misguided belief that as we’re ’skilled’ we don’t need so much margin for error in the first place! Same problem with the people who think they can ride faster because they have better brakes/tyres/ABS/CBS and the latest must-have gadget, traction control.

Just learning skills or relying on aids won’t make you a better rider automatically. ‘Skills’ and mechanical aids don’t absorb impact.

Nor does lots of riding. Another from Malc:

“Contrary to popular belief, practice does not make perfect. Practice makes permanent.”

So what you need to ensure you do is practice the perfect!

One of my own:

“So long as you aren’t a mobile roadblock yourself, a bit of overcaution won’t kill you. “

Out there is the real world, and if you want to ride with a little less risk by riding a little slower than the road could allow, what’s so wrong with a bit of a bigger margin for error and a slightly later arrival time? It’s usually a lot more relaxed too.

Some asked a question of me, once:

“What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?”

And my answer was:

“Listen carefully to all advice – then make your own decisions.”

Don’t be a clone rider. Make your own choices about how you incorporate skills and advice.

‘Saveable’ Accidents – why riders don’t save them!

Most bike accidents are avoidable – official

Accident investigators around the world find the same thing when they look at bike accidents. In the vast majority of cases, the bike wasn’t at its limits, and if the rider had only put the correct inputs into the machine, they’d have got out of trouble.

So the next big question is if the machine inputs necessary are only an extension of what we do all the time, and if the errors are recoverable, why do riders who make the “saveable” errors fail to get out of trouble?

There are two key points:

• the rider is usually taken by surprise
• the margins between being in control and being out of control are much narrower than most people realise

Let’s quickly look at the second point first. It’s illustrative to watch any of those TV shows or DVDs that feature rally crashes. There’s the driver, in perfect harmony with the road thanks to the pace notes… and then the car goes a bit wide… and suddenly it’s upside down with the windows caved in. Watch again and see just how quickly the plot gets away from the driver.

It’s no different on a bike if we’re pushing on a bit. We’re encouraged by advanced training to take up positions just centimetres from the edge of the road or the other lane, to use speed and lean angle in corners, to feed the power on harder mid-turn as we pick the bike up.

A moment’s thought should tell you that if any of those go just slightly wrong, there’s an accident waiting to happen. That’s what I mean by narrow margins.

We can broaden those margins quite dramatically by small changes to what we do: by not riding quite so close to the edge of the road, by dropping the speed and lean angle slightly mid-turn, by getting on the gas a little later when the bike is upright!

All of which incidentally frees up mental processing power to assess the road ahead better – you’re less likely to make a mistake on the NEXT bend if you’re not concentrating QUITE so hard on getting round THIS one!

Back to the first point – surprises. When things go wrong, it happens very suddenly, and few riders go into a bend or any other hazard thinking “what might go wrong”. Again, the thrust of advanced training in this country is nearly always “how can I do it better?” Where ‘better’ equals faster / smoother / more accurate – whatever the buzz word is for that particular flavour of riding instruction.

If we’re concentrating on ‘better’, we’re unlikely to be thinking defensively. Defensive riding is all about planning for what goes wrong. Don’t go into a bend thinking “how fast can I go through” or even “how smooth can I make my line through here”, think:

“what’s the worst that can happen
- and can I deal with it?”

If we’re looking for things that can go wrong, we’ll react quickly when they do. But if we think it’s all under control, then the sudden awareness of the potential for personal harm catches us cold and derails our rational thought processes; the rider freezes up, is unable to react in a normal manner and at the same time suffers target fixation where they are unable to look away from the threat.

Recognise those symptoms?

If you’ve read Keith Code, you’re see they are what he calls ‘Survival Reactions’!

This is the origin of the common advice to “look where you want to go”, the idea being that if we can crack the target fixation issue, we can break out of the ‘frozen reaction loop’ too and thus steer our way out of trouble.

The problem is of course that this all takes time.

1. Time to recognise the problem: “we’re too fast into this bend…”
2. Time to recognize the consequences: “we’re going to hurt ourselves if we run wide just there…”
3. Time to recognise the problem; “if we’re looking there, we’re target fixated…”
4. Time to remember the solution; “we need to look where we want to go…”
5. Then time to actually drag our eyes away to our way out of trouble…
6. And then time to ‘un-freeze’…

Meanwhile, we are deeper into the bend and we STILL haven’t actually actually done anything yet, so we haven’t removed the threat and the original reason for freezing up and target fixating – in fact if anything it’s getting worse!

Suddenly that simple “look where you want to go” advice doesn’t look quite so simple to apply, does it?

So how do we make time to save the “saveable” accident?

Two ways is the answer…

• mindset – so we are not surprised
• slow down – so we remove the fear of harm

Why is mindset such a key point?

Simple. Like Voltaire’s ‘Candide’ riders simply don’t expect things to go wrong. We’re encouraged to believe that if we do all the right things, then nothing will go wrong. Unfortunately real life experience suggests anything but. Just when we think nothing can go wrong, that’s when it will.

So what should we prepare for?

We need to prepare for things to go wrong by asking ourselves “what’s the worst thing that can happen around the bend?”

The two worst case scenarios I can think of are meeting a car on the wrong side of the road coming towards us or the road completely blocked just out of sight.

Unduly pessimistic? Guess what – I was in the car just a few weeks ago, went round a bend and was confronted by an oncoming car directly in front of me overtaking a tractor on the wrong side of the solid line. I hit the brakes and did a near full emergency stop. Cue lots of squawks from the passengers, but we stopped with several metres to spare.

So how can we work on this “worst case scenario” mindset?

Well, we can avoid two crucial misconceptions:

• a desire to avoid touching the brakes for whatever reason (sometimes an outdated “good riders never have to use the brakes” mindset)
• a fear of using the front brake into a turn because riders have been told it’s “wrong and dangerous”

In my opinion and experience, these are both very wrong mindsets to get into. Good riders can and DO use the brakes – both of them!

Back to that emergency stop in the car I mentioned just above.

At the time it seemed to me my reactions were a bit slow, but when I passed the place on the bike a few days later, I did a bit of measuring from the point where I could see the tractor to the ABS marks that were still visible where I stopped. I must have reacted almost instantly – from 60mph, I stopped in around 60m!

The car concerned has an advertised best stopping distance of around 40m from 60mph, so allowing a bit of leeway for the less than optimal surface that partially triggered the ABS, my reaction time must have been around half a second from the moment I saw the car to the moment I hit the brakes.

That’s about as fast as you can physically manage. Crash investigators commonly find a delay of 1.5 to 2 seconds before the driver brakes in an emergency, simply because it takes drivers that long to actually detect the emergency in the first place.

So how did I react so fast? It’s not luck. It’s that mindset thing. Over the years I’ve come to expect a problem round the corner, so when I spotted it, my identification of the problem was almost immediate, and so were my reactions. If they hadn’t been that quick, we would have collided; it was that close.

You might argue it’s easier to do an emergency stop in a car with four wheels than on a bike with two, and you’d be right. But you’d also flag up the reason why it’s so important to prepare both the mindset and the techniques for stopping a bike mid-turn; you DON’T have four wheels!

Problems apexing right handers too early

From the Doctor’s Surgery Archives:

Q I am finding myself more and more apexing right handers. Must be the racer in me!

How can I avoid this ? Any pointers welcome as I have had a few near misses.

A The reason most riders turn too early is because they are trying to ride too fast into the bend in the first place, so turn to what feels like safety. The danger is you’ll run off the road in the second half of the bend (if you don’t hit something midturn!)

To fix the problem, try this… you’ll need to slow right down – and I MEAN right down, knock 20mph plus off your normal speed to give you the time, space and by far the most important, the spare attention to do it… because initially it feels as if you are going to run off the road.

First check you can actually steer a smooth line round the bend; without being rude, not all riders can! Start by riding parallel with the kerb, in the middle of your lane.

If you can do that accurately, then just shift the line sideways half a meter at a time until you are going into bend on a wide line but DON’T cut across to the inside of the corner. Simply follow the radius of the bend and stay there for as long as it takes for the view to open up and reveal the next straight (or the next bend!). That’ll get you round the bend.

Now, if you want to try cutting across the lane, the bit of the corner you need to know about (because it controls where you cut across the lane) is the exit. The exit is where the bike is UPRIGHT on the way out of the turn – defined by Keith Code as the bit of the bend where you can do whatever you want with the throttle.

So when you can see the exit from mid-turn, THEN and ONLY then, turn tighter using a bit of extra countersteering effort to aim for the exit. This is Code’s Quick Steering (which is not in the least jerky or sudden).

The result is that your apex is way round the turn. You avoid cutting across to the inside of the corner before you can see where the road goes and you stay well away from oncoming traffic.

Because you turn later, you can go deeper into the corner upright. Because you go into the corner deeper you hold your speed longer on the straight and be later on the brakes (or you can brake where you normally do but more gentle on the brakes).

Lower mid corner speed means the bike changes direction more easily and puts less stress on the tyres mid turn where you need grip. Because you use a quick steer and the bike is going slower you change direction faster.

Because you change direction faster you get the bike upright sooner. Because you get the bike upright sooner, you can get on the power earlier (or more gently).

Once you have this off confidently, you can pick you speed up a bit again.

As I’ve said before, the default “follow the kerb line” will always get the rider round a bend if he’s gone in at sensible speed. It’s the moment we start using fancy terms like apex that the trouble arises. Worrying about finding apexes just isn’t relevant on the road.

How not to plan an overtake

I came across this one in the archives the other day. Although it’s now a seven year old story, it’s worth repeating, as it’s a mistake that’s repeated over and over.

I was trundling along in my white van when a couple of bikes pulled out in front of me from the side of the road, and took up what looked suspiciously like the observer / observee positions. Ahead was a white Luton “Buy Direct” van.

The lead bike (looked like a VFR) closed right up on the back of it to around 2-3m behind it and started looking round it for an overtake… which would have been fine had a) the speed limit not been 30 and b) the road not been bending left at the time.

From my position futher behind I could see clearly round the inside of the van that the road ahead straightened up and went through a national limit sign.

On we go and the van barely accelerates past 35.

By this time I’m amusing myself by sitting behind them straddling the white line for a view ahead – I’d have overtaken the Luton myself if the bikes hadn’t been in the way.

Eventually VFR guy twigs that the road has straightened up and pokes a nose round the corner of the van to get some kind of a view…

…unfortunately by this time, the straight road is now heading gently uphill toward a blind crest.

I’m sure you know what’s going to happen next.

VFR guy has been trundling along in a low gear (ready to make progress, clearly ), and of course nails it. No rear observation that I could see, certainly no lifesaver… and just about squeaks in front of the van before cresting the rise.

I’m sitting there chuckling to myself thinking about the b*llocking he’ll get from the observer, when after a moment’s hesitation, the second bike goes for it too!!

I hope that he was just far enough ahead and sitting that bit higher that he could see over the crest that the road ahead was clear… but I’m not convinced – particularly as a moment later I could see ahead myself, and the view revealed a right hand bend not far ahead with an oncoming car rounding it forcing the second bike (an R6 I think) to move fairly sharply back to the left on completion of the overtake!

I passed ‘em both in a bus stop about 5 mins later, and they had just about caught me up as I passed Harley’s Diner at Dorchester, where they turned in.

I nearly stopped too, to give them one of my Survival Skills cards.

“He/she must have seen me” – except they didn’t. Why?

I’ve covered this before, but it’s worth going over again.

Here’s how one rider reported an incident:

“when the police pulled the CCTV footage I had less than the length of a white van to stop. Because I was already covering the brakes I managed to just start braking as I saw her start to accelerate but unfortunately didn’t notice anything to suggest she was about to move off.”

This is fairly typical of the “looked but didn’t see” accidents that involve bikes and other road users at junctions. It can be cars, vans, trucks… even pedestrians.

If the rider was just a tranny van away when she started to move, that wasn’t a misjudgement.

Even though you might think that the driver couldn’t possibly miss you, that’s exactly what’s happened. EXACTLY the time alarm bells are ringing for me.

Experienced drivers, particularly on busy roads, do not look for vehicles that they shouldn’t pull out in front of, they search for gaps that they might be able to get out into.

If this doesn’t sound right, go away and think about it, and examine what you do at junctions yourself – you might surprise yourself!!

Research has also shown the driver might only look for around 1/3 of a second in each direction before pulling out. And they are looking in several directions at the same time. Experienced drivers can do this and make very rapid assessments, but the downside is that occasionally they get it wrong, not least because the motorcycle might easily be concealed at the moment they look in your direction.

Again, if you doubt this, check your own head movements or watch whilst you’re a passenger in a car, and see what happens at a junction.

The third factor is that they look directly to the point on the road they know by experience they need to gap to be – few drivers actually ever learn to scan from directly in front of them to either side!

Once more, assess where your eyes naturally fall when you look for traffic before emerging at a junction? Do you scan from directly in front of you sideways, or do you just glance directly into the distance?

The consequence of all this is that when you are close to a junction the vast majority of drivers will look very quickly in your direction, and if you are on top of the junction, they’ll look BEHIND you. Our eyes eye have a very narrow focussed “foveal” zone where objects can be recognised – outside that, you’re a blur.

Result? Even though from your perspective it appears they can’t miss seeing you as you are in clear view (had lights on, wearing hi-vis clothing), they haven’t spotted you. This explains an awful lot of “they must have seen me” type of accidents where the rider cannot believe the driver hasn’t seen them.

So what can you do? Well, you’ve got a horn, so don’t be afraid to use it the moment you detect that they are about to move away. You can usually spot that by watching things like grip changing on the wheel, a change of posture behind the wheel, a couple of quick looks either way… that’s before the vehicle even moves!

Another strategy is to try to avoid “looming”, a phenomenum where the eye fails to detect an object on a collision course. This happens because it’s movement against the background that draws the eye to LOOK at something. Try looking for a bird sitting still in a tree – then think how quickly you notice it as soon as it moves.

We can do the same on a bike by moving sideways across the lane – the movement helps draw the driver’s eye to us.

Having said all that, there are times none of the techniques for making ourselves visible work.

There is a point at which a collision becomes inevitable if both vehicles try to occupy the same bit of tarmac – I call it the “killing zone” (bit dramatic perhaps but it gets the message over).

The trick is to make it as small as possible by either putting yourself as far away from danger as you can or spending less time in the “killing zone”.

Moving to the right away from the junction means the driver has got to emerge further to “get you” so you can get closer before you can’t avoid a collision.

Slowing down/covering the brakes means you can get closer before you have to brake and still stop. You can stop from 30mph in about 5 bike lengths in the dry – that’s not much further back than the far side of the junction on an average width road! If you slow to 25mph, your stopping distance drops to 3 (yes THREE) bike lengths. It’s the square law in action.

Being in a responsive gear and accelerating clear once committed to crossing the “killing zone” means you spend less ‘Time Exposed to Danger’ (TED).

Many riders rely on good braking. But unfortunately it isn’t as simple as just getting your e-stops sorted. There are three factors to an e-stop.

- your actual stopping distance, which is simply down to the physical characteristics of the brakes and the surface, and how rapidly and hard you can apply them etc. If you can loft the rear on the track, you can do it on the road and that’s as hard as you can brake, the limiting factor on the road possibly being relatively poorer levels of adhesion, which means the front might lock first.

- your reaction time, which is the time it takes from the moment you decide something needs to be done to the moment you start doing it – this is the reaction time in the Highway Code, and is usually reckoned at about .7 second.

- the third is recognition time, and this is the one the Highway Code forgets to mention, and also the component of overall stopping distances that most drivers and riders, including the go-faster apologists who point to better brakes and tyres as an excuse for higher speeds are unaware of. It’s the cognitive delay where the unconscious part of the brain actually recognises that something is happening and gives the conscious brain a wake-up nudge.

By which time, it’s often too late.

I was on a site with some handy tips about driving some weeks ago, and there was an argument going on between a driver who was quoting the HC and various magazine test figures, and a police accident investigator who said that in virtually all the accidents he visited, the vehicle took a lot more distance to stop than the “ideal” figures in the HC, let alone what you’d believe from the test track results.

It’s the recognition time that the accident investigator was seeing.

For a driver who isn’t ‘focussed’ (for want of a better word) it can take up to TWO SECONDS to observe, analyse and recognise a situation poses a hazard – and then go for the brakes/steering/whatever.

At a lowly 30mph, that’s 27 metres (or 88 feet if you prefer) that you’ve covered. And you are yet to touch the brakes.

The classic example here is the e-stop in front of the examiner. We train riders to a high pitch to look for and react to a bloke standing at the side of the road in a dayglo vest sticking his left arm in the air. Which works great, until there’s a real emergency and they don’t react appropriately – either in time, or in the right way (either under- or over-braking!). They haven’t learned the right “trigger event” to react to.

So why is that? Mindset plays a huge part here.

If you’re expecting the driver to wait, it’s a shock when they pull out – and there’s the reason for that two second delay whilst your brain analyses the info and comes up with the “oh sh!t” message to send to the muscles, even if you can pull off a stonking e-stop when you finally get to use the brakes.

But if you are expecting the driver to pull out, your reactions are on a hair trigger, and even if your actually braking technique is only average, you’ll still stop quicker.

Many riders get a sense of unease… slow down… and then heave a sigh of relief then the car pulls out and they can stop. Why?

Well for an answer, check out my Spidy Sense articles – they’re 78 and 79 at the bottom of the list. http://www.survivalskills.co.uk/rskills.htm. They explain why you get that feeling that something isn’t quite right, and how to “train” yourself to consciously see what’s causing the unconscious unease.

Recognise the killing zone for what it is and plan to do something about it, rather than drift into it hoping for the best. It all sounds horribly complicated but most riders are already doing something to reduce the risk, it’s just a matter of extending your thinking.

Harley pull the plug on Buell

The news wires were hot yesterday afternoon with the story that Harley-Davidson have shut down their Buell subsidiary and will cease production of Buell motorcycles permanently by Friday 30 October.

In a statement by Harley-Davidson spokesman Paul James, the shut down “is part of Harley-Davidson’s go-forward business strategy. The new long-term strategy aims to drive company growth through a focus of efforts and resources on the Harley-Davidson brand.”

James said, “The fact is, a dollar invested into Harley-Davidson, there’s more impact than the same dollar invested elsewhere when it comes to reaching new riders and enriching the experience of our core customers.”

At the same time Harley-Davidson is also divesting itself of MV Agusta, a company purchase that it only made last year.

“We’re exiting the sport bike market with those niche brands,” James said.

In the statement, it was explained that MV Agusta can be sold because it was a standalone business unit, but Buell was not considered for separate sale because it is “highly integrated into the entire business and the distribution network of Harley-Davidson”.

In an emotional video on the Buell website, Erik Buell appeared to be close to breaking down as he explained some of the decision making which has led to Buell’s 26-year-old history coming to an abrupt end.

Buell has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Harley Davidson since 1998 after purchasing a 49% minority shareholding in 1993.

So what’s gone wrong?

It’s no surprise they have sold MV. The surprise was that they bought the italian company in the first place – I could never see how the MV sports bikes fitted with the Harley brand.

But the Buell shutdown, I am surprised about, it’s the Harley that many non-Harley riders would consider riding.

Buell itself apparently has been increasing its sales and profitability, but it’s a sideshow compared to the core territory of Harley-branded machines. For the last two years Harley-Davidson have had seriously declining sales, not just a bit of a downturn but a hugely shrinking market, with a reported 84% fall in quarterly profit since the company peaked.

It’s arguable the reason Harleys sell in the States is precisely because they aren’t simply cloning Japanese bikes but are selling “traditional American iron”. But that puts them in at the lifestyle end of the market, and that’s been hard hit by the current recession over there.

Their last quarter figures were something like $20m profit on $1bn sales.

One gets the impression that Erik Buell was never in it for the money. He used to spend a lot of time online on the old Compuserve “Ride” forum of which I was a member more than 15 years ago, and openly talk about why he was building Buells. He was clearly running on a shoestring then.

As the keynote of Buell’s designs was technical innovation, one of the questions he got asked all the time was why he stuck with Harley engines. His argument was because the engine was American and iconic.

So it was with some surprise I read about the Rotax-engined 1125 that was launched last year. Was that a nail in the coffin for Buell as an offshoot of the all-American dream motorcycle builder? Or was it a genuine attempt by Harley-Davidson to break Buell out of a niche market with an affordable sports bike?

I suppose the question we’ll never know the answer to, is what IF Buell had been funded enough to push into new markets; would sales have continued to grow?

One thing that strikes me is that Erik Buell may have known about this for a while – or at least, feared the worst.

You may remember the bizarre “crusher video” announcement made back in July that the Buell Blast was being discontinued at a time when it was the best selling Buell and a bike favoured by a growing new market; women. The bike wasn’t merely discontinued and stocks allowed to run down in the normal way, they were actively destroyed.

What about the subsequent even weirder announcement of the “limited edition 2010 Buell Blast”, which turned out to be a “run” of the crushed machines signed and numbered by Erik himself.

Here in the UK, I’m left wondering how well the Buell supply chain has been functioning to dealers in recent months.

As we actually have a Buell dealer just up the road, I wandered along this morning to see what the situation is, and aside from the fact that the sales staff completely ignored my obvious interest in their corner of the store, basically the floor appears to be nearly cleared of Buells.

They had one brand new 08 Camo Ullyses traillie thing, another Ullyses ex-demo, a 1200S and an 1125R, and that appeared to be it, with the area that used to be dedicated to Buell mostly filled with Harleys with a SOLD sticker on.

It’s unlikely the full story will come out for a while yet. Buell himself is supposed to be “in negotion” to continue as a consultant, but one wonders if he’ll want to work for the firm that killed off 26 years of his work at the sweep of the corporate red pencil.

Buell 1983-2009.