At the risk of a “Bah, Humbug” or two, the blog’s had a seasonal makeover. Snow’s apparently not very likely for the south of England so if you were hoping for a White Christmas, perhaps you’d better make the most of what’s falling onscreen!

When heated riding kit gets mentioned, many people head for the expensive gear sold by bike shops. In my experience, some of it is very good quality, and some rather less so. A few years back I’d have recommended the US-manufactured Gerbing or Widder kit but Gerbing seems to have had some quality control problems, and Widder seem to have closed down.

In any case, it’s expensive for a piece of kit you may not wear all that often. So there are budget powered waistcoats for as little as £20 which run off standard AA rechargables.

Whilst I was rather sceptical about how good such a budget waistcoat would be, I bought one from Maplin when the temps plummeted to near freezing back in November last year and I felt my Exo2 kidney belt wasn’t quite offering enough heat for 3 or 4 hour sessions on the bike.

As it happens, the temperatures got colder still and as I had a batch of last minute training courses in Oxford, I ended up wearing it quite a lot over the course of one of the coldest winters the south east has seen in the last 15 years or so.

The first thing to mention is battery life. It’s not nearly as bad as the Maplin website suggests. I was able to run it for about 2 1/2 to 3 hours continuously on a set of 6 (2×3) 2700mAh NiMH rechargables, not the 40 minutes suggested on Maplin’s own website; it was still going after a 2 hour ride from Maidstone to Oxford, and was just fizzling out after 3 hours on the road when out training. A spare set of similar capacity rechargable batteries would give you upwards of 5 hours continuous heat, which isn’t bad! At the moment, the batteries are half price in Maplin, too, so 8 AAs would set you back a tenner (and of course you can use them for other jobs at other times!).

I didn’t expect it to get very hot but in fact the heating element puts out enough heat to feel as pleasantly warm through a tee shirt. That’s surprisingly effective if you have insulation over the top. I’ve been wearing mine over a thin, sleeved tee shirt, with a microfleece over the heated bodywarmer, an EDZ pertex microshell thingie over that, my ‘Stich riding suit and an unlined nylon jacket as a wind stopper on top of that and that enabled me to deal with hours out in temperatures around freezing.

Together with my Exo2 heated kidney belt running off the bike’s mains, I’ve have been warm enough on several courses on days when the temps haven’t got above zero.

Downsides:

1) The heating element isn’t very big – they cover an area about the size of the palm of your hand on each side of the front of the chest with another around the back of the neck.

2) The waistcoat is a bit small in terms of sizing, but they’re not really intended to be worn as a top layer over several shirts and fleeces, but over something like a teeshirt.

Realistically, they’re not nearly as good as expensive heated kit but at £20 in the Maplin sale they are a steal if all you want is something to add a bit of warmth on a short to medium commute and you can remember to recharge the batteries! And there are no wires to forget to unplug either!

(This article is a re-write of a post that appeared last year!)

It’s a bit difficult presenting bike accidents with a new spin. Impossible perhaps. Particularly when nothing much changes in the world of falling riders.

So it’s no big surprise that the study published by the Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM) to coincide with the NEC Bike Show doesn’t really throw any fresh light on the problem.

Neil Greig, Director of Policy and Research, said:

“The fact that most crashes happen in good conditions may come as a surprise, but is due to the fact that many riders simply avoid riding in bad weather or in the dark. The message is clear – even if the conditions seem good for riding, accidents can still happen.

“Sundays are the most dangerous day of the week, with 20% more accidents happening than on any other day of the week. Sundays have mostly leisure riders on the roads, who travel much longer distances than the average weekday rider.”

I’m not really sure who that would be news to. Ten years ago, I wrote this on my www.survivalskills.co.uk website after seeing the 1998 DETR report:

“The average daily casualty count was higher during the week than at the weekend, with Fridays having the most casualties in 1998. However, the proportion of casualties killed or seriously injured was higher at the weekend, at 32% compared with 24% during the week.

There is a marked difference between the proportion of motorcyclist casualties injured during summer and winter, whilst there is much less seasonal variation in all road user casualties. The highest percentage of casualties occurred in August for motorcyclists and in November for all road users.”

SO nothing much has changed there then.

The press release is all a bit vague. Whilst claiming older riders are safer, the statement doesn’t actually produce any evidence that post-test training cuts accidents, even though the conclusion drawn by Mr Greig is:

“Safe riders are made, not born. Courses such as those led by the IAM expose them to experienced riders who can show them where the risks lie.”

It’s quite possible that the older riders simply got safer by falling off and surviving when they were younger! That’s the way I learned.

And the conclusion that younger riders are most at risk is probably skewed by the unqualified moped and 125 riders who are overrepresented in casualty figures, something that doesn’t get a mention.

Evidence from elsewhere points up that the risk factor isn’t simply age, it’s experience in terms of time riding, and experience on a particular machine – even experienced riders tend to crash bikes new to them.

One thing that is worth flagging up is that 50% of the fatalities occured when the rider left the road and hit a roadside obstacle – so how much real use is body armour?

As I’ve said before, it’s really only designed to cushion the impact of falling from the height of the bike (and a bit for highsides) to ground level, not absorbing the energy generated by the weight of your body stopping suddenly against a tree.

The IAM press release can be found here.

One of the things I discovered years ago was just how good a yellow tint visor is at this time of year. Here’s Alan Dowd’s review for Superbike of such a visor:

“First, it sharpens your vision and improves contrast on horrid, grey winter days. It’s especially useful in the rain.

“Second, it’s got enough tint to cut the worst of sun glare, yet is also clear enough to use at dusk – so you don’t need to carry two-visors on sunny winter days.

“Finally, turning the world outside slightly yellow means your brain is fooled into thinking it’s a nice summer’s day rather than a rancid, sleeting, steel-grey January morning.”

The cons?

Well, first of all they aren’t legal in the UK, ridiculous as that may be. Second, most of the manufacturers don’t make them anyway. It’s only the top end lids like Arai that these are made for. So even if you could get one, you’ll have to buy them over the internet and you’re likely to pay something of a price premium over a standard visor.

However, there’s an economical alternative. Via the Survival Skills online shop I can supply yellow tint sunglasses.

They are anti-scratch and 100% optically correct – they’re actually better than the visor on some cheaper lids! It’s worth noting that the material of the lenses is constructed to the CE_EN166 safety eyewear standard, so they are also much safer than ordinary sunglasses.

The semi-flexible sidearms are comfortable under the helmet and the light weight means little pressure on the bridge of the nose, something I can have trouble with with conventional sunglasses. The wide lenses and lack of a rim means uninterrupted vision too.

As the trainees who’ve done my course will know, I wear them myself much of the year. (They are also excellent on a bicycle!)

There are also smoke and iridium tinted glasses, as well as clear ones available. A soft carrying case will protect them when you’re not wearing them.

Prices are:

£12 per pair of sunglasses
£10 for the soft case

Deals are:

£20 for one pair of sunglasses PLUS a soft case
£22 for TWO pairs of sunglasses

Online payment is available – email me at survivalskills@clara.net for details.

After the much publicised closedown of Buell, and the sell-off of MV Agusta, Harley-Davidson continues to restructure.

An Associated Press report today details the restructuring of the York plant in Pennsylvania.

The plans to restructure the plant will come as some relief to the workers there, as a statement in May stated that it was too inefficient and costly to continue to run. Relocation to Kentucky was favoured.

However, a package of concessions by unions which included wage freezes, increased health insurance contibutions by employees, and reductions in holidays led to workers agreeing to new contract terms yesterday.

The state also offered a $15 million incentive package of capital grants and training funds.

Harley will shut one of its two factories there, and will lay-off nearly half the 1950 workforce. About 120 of the 270 management staff are also set to loose their jobs.

Harley said that the smaller workforce will be more flexible, and lead to a more streamlined operation.

I’ve long said that about the most dangerous manoeuvre we perform on a bike is an overtake. Some people disagree, but if we look at the accident stats and then compare the number of overtakes we do every day with the other common accidents (junction collisions and falling off in bends), we should see that even the fastest riders are exposed to far fewer overtakes than the situations that expose us to either of the other two accidents – junctions (we pass hundreds every ride) and bends (likewise).

The fact that the risk of a fatal accident is still very high should tell us comparatively speaking how often they go wrong.

One of the more difficult (and thus more likely to go wrong) overtakes is one that passes multiple vehicles.

Extra considerations passing a queue

We should be able to see immediately that there are a number of issues above and beyond the simple “is it legal/safe/necessary to overtake” questions that we would always (hopefully!) consider.

The first is speed. It’s easy to think that if we open it up, we’ll be safer because we’ll make the pass quicker. But I’d suggest we shouldn’t be tempted to wind on the speed any more when we pass multiple vehicles than we would a single vehicle, just because the road ahead appears to be clear. We’re already likely to be travelling at a fair lick if we’re overtaking on the open road and that means two things:

- our stopping distance is long (double your speed, quadruple your stopping distance!) and whilst we may not need to stop, we may need to match speed unexpectedly and in a big hurry. Braking isn’t linear and if we need to pull our speed down from 100mph to 50mph, it takes far more than half the total stopping distance from 100mph. This fact of physics catches riders out when they ride faster than usual.

- speed causes tunnel vision; the faster we go, the more we pull our viewpoint back towards our immediate ‘future’. We tend to focus only on the task in hand and forget to scan properly further ahead, to the sides and behind. Cue a ‘where did that car come from’ moment.

The second is distance. We’re used to making decisions based on our ‘comfortable speed’ and adding extra speed means we need to look further ahead, yet unless we train ourselves to do just that we still tend to look where we normally look:

- our ‘perception and planning’ distance needs to be even longer if we travelling faster – now factor in the tunnel vision!

- the further back we come from, the less chance drivers ahead (either in the queue or in side roads) have of seeing us, particularly if we are overtaking round a bend (think where mirrors are aimed!!)

What goes wrong on multiple overtakes?

Once again there are several issues.

One is that riders try for the ‘bridge too far’. Rather than be content with the progress we’ve already made, we try to make yet another pass. At this point, we find misjudged their distance to the ‘dead ground’ concealed by a bend or a crest, then find a car heading towards us, or even simply run out of road to slow for that bend – it happens!

Likewise, try to avoid planning to take the last available gap when aiming to tuck back into the queue – we should leave ourselves one more ahead. It might seem we’re wasting an overtake opportunity, but that way, if the gap we’re aiming for disappears we should have one last chance.

Another mistake is to try to take so many vehicles at once that we simply can’t see the side turning in the distance. Now, if we’ve wound the speed on when that car suddenly slows to turn, or one emerges, we find we are struggling to slow down – and if the whole queue is slowing, even if we match speed, we’re going to struggle to merge back into the queue as it concertinas up.

So we’re planning an overtake because of a line of slower vehicles. Two questions to ask. What’s holding the entire queue up? What’s behind us? It should never be a surprise when trying to pass a queue that someone else is thinking the same way!

It may be a car or van (or even a bike we’ve not spotted) in the queue ahead, and if they’ve not seen us when they pull out, we may have to hit the brakes.

Or it may be a vehicle from behind. However fast we THINK we are, there’s always someone faster or prepared to take more risk.

The resulting accidents are often head-ons or the rider clips a car trying to get into a non-existant gap, having been forced back to the left because of an oncoming car. The speed we carry in overtaking ensures the prognosis for the rider isn’t a good one. Overtaking accidents are rarely minor.

Rushing it

If we can’t spare a moment to check our mirrors and at least consider a shoulder check before moving out, then we’re in too much of a rush, and probably too close to the vehicles we’re trying to pass.

We can alway plan ahead to some extent; for example, we could scan the mirrors in the middle of the bend that we’re hoping leads onto a straight but we should always have time to make a final check. If you find that you can’t… then ask yourself are you fully in control of what you’re doing?

Many experts will say a rider who’s check their mirrors regularly won’t need to check the shoulder blind spot. All I’ll say to that is that from experience is that a bike can appear VERY suddenly alongside you. If I haven’t got time for a shoulder check then I’m cutting the overtake very fine, and if I’m unhappy looking over my shoulder, I’m too close to the car ahead.

Is it necessary?

Overtaking is easy to get wrong, which is one reason I learned when I was despatching that the tortoise often does beat the hare!

I did a lot of long distance couriering and always preferred A and B roads to a motorway if I could find a reasonable route, but it did sometimes mean a lot of busy traffic to deal with on single carriageways.

The odd thing was I found that overtaking often didn’t get me much further up the road. I’d pass a car or ease my way past a column of trucks only to find at the next set of red lights at the next town they were right behind me. What had I achieved – 40 or 50m further down the road!

So it makes sense to only take on passes that REALLY make some progress. If we come up behind a very slow vehicle, then it makes sense to pass.

But if the bloke ahead is only fractionally slower, what’s the gain in passing? We might only be a few hundred metres further ahead at the next speed limit, where he’ll catch us right back up!

What about a queue of ten lorries on a busy single carriageway? How much distance are we really making down the road for those ten overtakes before we get stuck behind the next gaggle?

Stress and Tiredness

Looking back to my couriering days, I was often spending 10 or 12 hours in the saddle. I wasn’t just out for a fun ride for a couple of hours, or even a police shift! I found I had to pace myself to get home safely, and that I just couldn’t ride at the pace I could manage for a short ride. I found a relaxed rhythm.

Making stressful manoeuvres should tell us we doing something risky in any case, but it has a knock-on effect. It’s extremely tiring. Fatigue sets in and then the rest of the ride goes down the pan too – we’re now in an extremely vulnerable state.

Risk and Economy

Cutting out the marginal overtakes makes our ride MUCH less risky as well as one heck of a lot less stressful and tiring. It’s also easier on tyres and petrol if we’re gliding between gaps, rather than nailing it on the throttle and brakes in turn.

Try to avoid braking into gaps

I’ve been caught out (badly sometimes) on a number of occasions going for the “brake into the gap” approach, and the tighter the gap, the riskier it gets. The ideal is to match speed THEN move into it, and again that’s a lot easier if we’re not tempted to carry too much speed into the overtake.

Even where there is a big gap that is most unlikely to disappear, things can still go wrong if we’re trying to brake into it. Most recently this happened to me on a training course in Wales, where the trainee surprised me by going for the overtake at the end of a long straight, pretty much at the last moment before a bend.

I followed without really planning what I was doing other than thinking that I’d slot in behind the last car in the queue. Needless to say, just as I was braking a car came round the bend ahead. Assuming I was trying to get in front of him, the car driver ‘helped me out’ by hitting the brakes too, leaving me hung out to dry on the outside.

I ended up doing a 50mph rolling stoppie to get back in behind him.

The clue to me that I shouldn’t have gone? I wasn’t planning carefully, but made a snap decision. You have to be absolutely certain of an overtake, not just reasonably sure. The mistake? Even though it was a big gap, I tried to get too close to the car I was going to follow though the bend, the idea being that I’d be in a good position to overtake on the far side.

Don’t Rush!

Unfortunately, many riders are taught that a missed overtake is a missed opportunity. An (ex-police!) instructor said to me a couple of years ago:

“the mark of a skilled rider is the ability to make a snap decision when overtaking.”

I hate to say it but he was 100% wrong. I’d far rather sit there on the bike thinking “I could have gone” rather than lying in an ambulance thinking “I shouldn’t have gone”. Don’t mistake a ‘well judged overtake’ for one with no margin for error!

The mark of a skilled rider is actually to perform ALL the careful evaluation QUICKLY, by knowing exactly:

• WHAT to look for
• WHERE to look for it
• WHEN to look for it
• WHY to look for it
• HOW to look for it

That’s VERY different to making a snap decision or making the overtake itself fast.

Don’t rush overtakes. Take your time to think it through – it WILL pay off in the long run, even if you miss opportunities in the short term.

Overtaking and Post-test Training

Final point. Making your own decisions is particularly important if you are taking advanced training – don’t be persuaded into overtaking where you don’t think it’s safe. YOU are the only one who can make that judgement call. Your instructor can help and advise how to make the assessment more quickly and show you the skills but they can’t make the judgement for you.

As we practice, we get better at the skill of overtaking, our assessment of the hazards will get faster, but alway trust our own judgement at holding back. Remember the adage:

“There are old pilots. There are bold pilots. But there are very few old, bold pilots.”

So what’s the bottom line whether riding for yourself or under instruction?

If you don’t know, don’t go!

I normally keep an eye on the technology news, but with all the excitement about the launch of the new Palm Pre early in the year, the very bit of kit that prompted me at the beginning of November to review my own Palm Centro , I missed the news that the Garnet operating system was to be discontinued, a story that apparently broke months before I wrote about the Centro.

Garnet or Palm OS 5.4 lies at the end of a decade and a half development chain, although arguably there’s been little real improvement to the Palm OS since the OS 5 version appeared in 2002. For some time now, it’s been fairly obvious that the Palm OS occupied something of a time-warp niche.

Never-the-less, it works, and it’s fast and reliable in use.

Although an accusation that’s often thrown at Palm OS is that it can’t multitask, that’s not strictly true. It’ll play music (Pocketunes) as you work, download e-mail in the background, as well as run instant messaging (Mundu) and SMS. There are also various hacks that allow you to update the calendar and address book from inside other applications.

And whilst you might not want to edit War and Peace or create a complex Powerpoint on a 320×320 screen, with ‘Docs-to-Go’ you’ve a powerful application for productivity. And that’s just one of a range of software that ranges from heavyweight to tiny. There’s still a huge range of software for the Palm.

One thing it’s not very good at is accessing the web. It’s a shame the bigger 480×320 screen I had on my Tapwave Zodiac (another much underrated device) never made it to the phones. The Zodiac could display the info, but without a phone built in, it had no way to pull data in. It would have made a decent web browser.

The bigger screen in a smartphone, combined with a slide out keyboard would have made a real difference to the usability.

OK, Garnet’s had a long life and all things move on, and the market for devices like the iPhone prove that – everyone I met in New York last weekend seemed to have one.

But if you are happy with the Centro and the Palm software as it stands, if it does everything you need, you could survive on this simple smartphone for years to come. Just make sure you buy anything you need now. Wait too long and it’ll probably vanish and you’ll be stuck with the basic built-in PIM.

I’ve had a couple of reports recently of the page not displaying correctly; it appears that the right hand column is floating over the top of the body text rather than alongside it.

I can’t reproduce this problem myself and I’ve tested it in the common (and some uncommon) browsers, the template for the blog is a standard WordPress one so I’m guessing the problem is one of either rendering via the browser or possibly a plug-in misbehaving, rather than an inherent issue with the CSS.

However, if you can reproduce the problem yourself, fire me off a note of browser and operating system, as well as any plug-ins that might affect layout (ad blockers and the like) and I’ll see if I can see the problem for myself, and then I can try a different template, as well as report the problem to the author of the template.

Not entirely a crashing surprise, but it seems Erik Buell will be back in the business of making and selling of Buell 1125R-based race bikes and supplying competition use parts and servicing for them, all of which will be under license from Harley-Davidson, as well as offering technical support.

“I’m looking forward to helping Buell racers keep their bikes flying,” said Erik Buell. “We’ve got some exciting race development projects in the works and it will mean a lot to me personally to see Buell racers competing for wins and championships in the 2010 season and beyond.”

Buell President and COO Jon Flickinger also commented, “I’m pleased that Harley-Davidson is assisting Erik in establishing this business to continue supporting the racing efforts he has had so much passion for over the years. Harley-Davidson and the Buell Motorcycle Company will always be proud of their affiliation with Erik, and we wish him well in this new endeavor to support Buell racers.”

Erik Buell Racing will be based in East Troy, Wisconsin and will reportedly be staffed by Erik Buell and a veteran team of personnel.

Meanwhile, news also from the States suggests us Europeans will be able to look forward to a new FZ8, replacing the existing FZ6. Given the recent release of the fully faired XJ6 Diversion alongside the half faired and naked versions that appeared at the beginning of 2009, this move would prevent Yamaha having no less that five 600s competing for more or less the same market, as well as being better placed to take on the BMW F800 range, the Aprilia Shiver and the Triumph 675 and Street Triple. Oh, and probably charging more money for it, too.

Whether riders actually need an all-purpose middleweight that’s now bigger than the 750 superbike of yesteryear is another matter altogether. I might have to make a decision on whether to replace the trusty Hornet with an FZ6 sooner rather than later.

I’ve already ‘tweeted’ this but I thought I’d just go over it in a little more detail.

The accident sketch website is something I came across this week, and a site that would have been a deal of help after my partner was witness to an accident and ‘drive off’ involving a parked car.

It’s not that difficult to draw a sketch but the drag and drop format of this tool makes it much easier to accurately position vehicles in a wide variety of situations.

If you’re familiar with any drawing or sketching package, you should have no trouble finding your way around this tool.

Firstly, you just drag onto the central part of the screen the nearest fit to where the accident happened. There are a comprehensive selection of types of road including roundabouts, bends, cross roads, junctions on bends, pedestrian crossings, dual carriageways, slip roads, single track roads and even parking lots. Tip – first maximise your browser to get the best use of the screen.

You can then add your own vehicle (motorcycles are included – a CB500 by the look of it!) and the other party’s. You can change colours of the vehicles and add registration numbers at this stage. The tool is also drag and drop, and once placed, you can move them around and also change the angle of the vehicle with respect to the road.

It’s possible to add other vehicles and pedestrians, as well as a selection of road signs, although it’s worth pointing out that they’re not UK-specific; the one-way street sign is labelled in German. The final tab gives you some simple drawing tools, including skid marks, although for some reason there’s no curved line available, which is slightly odd. Here you could mark up buildings or where someone was headed towards. Anything misplaced can be dragged to the bin or adjusted as necessary.

When you’ve got the sketch laid out to your satisfaction, you can label it, to highlight the various features.

Finally, hitting the print option produces a PDF file, which has the sketch map appended to a page with details of the two vehicles involved, and space for a written description, which can be filled in directly via the keyboard, rather than handwritten. Further options embedded in the PDF allow for printing or emailing.

Elsewhere on the site, you can find downloadable European Accident Statements, which can be printed off in two languages; for instance in English (for us to fill in) and in Polish or Swedish, for the other driver. These would be very useful when planning a trip abroad.

The site is still in beta at the moment with several of the links “under construction”, but hopefully it’ll stay free to use. Even as it stands part finished, it’s still a very useful resource.