So, I've managed to crash a few times in my seven-year riding career. I've also been pretty diligent about analyzing the crashes and posting reports to Usenet and other places. Figured it might be useful to dig up some of these old missives and post them here... The following crash happened at Buttonwillow Raceway Park on August 4, 2001. I was attending, I believe, a Lance Keigwin day and riding my trusty Honda CBR600F4. I've edited out some of the superfluous details from the original post, but it's still pretty lengthy.
The Crash
So, after over a year of accident-free riding on road and track, I finally had another little "mishap" at Buttonwillow Raceway Park this weekend. I'm a big believer in documenting stuff like this in the hopes that someone, hopefully me, will learn something from it. So, here's the story...
The weekend got off to a bad start on Friday. The GF and I were pretty late getting out of town, got delayed at dinner, and didn't make it to Lost Hills until about 1am or so. Got to bed around 1:30am and had a 6:30am wake-up call, so we were a bit short on sleep. Woke up to find that one of my contacts was torn and I didn't have a spare. Grrrrrr! GF wanted to get to the track early, so she could see about helping out (in exchange for some free track time), so we abandoned plans to eat at my normal breakfast stop (Denny's) in favor of fast food. I try not to be supersitious, but I remember thinking "Damn, I've been using the same routine for the last 20-30 track days and I haven't crashed. I hope these changes don't screw things up!"
Got to the track and things seemed to be going well. Got the pit setup in short order, helped out with tech inspection and lead some sighting laps. Once we returned to the hot pit, GaryJ wisely reminded us that the sighting laps probably hadn't done much to scrub in our tires. Since I was riding on a set of brand-new Dunlop D208GPs, I went out and did a couple of moderate paced laps to scrub them in. The bike felt like it was moving around quite a bit, so I came back to the pit and dialed in a bit more compression damping. After that, the bike seemed to work much better.
Aside from having to pick up a few crashes in the Mazda turn, the day was going pretty well. The one concern I had about my own riding was that I seemed to be carrying quite a bit of lean angle around the track. I was getting my knee down in places where I don't normally get it down, yet I didn't really feel like I was going any faster than I had during my previous visits to the track. Mentioned this fact to GaryJ at lunch and he suggested that maybe I just needed to concentrate on getting off the bike a bit more and promised to work with me later in the afternoon. Went out on the track after lunch determined to: hang off the bike a bit more, concentrate on counter-steering the bike into the turn rather than being lazy about turn-in.
While I was working with on this, I also noticed another problem with my riding: I was very late getting on the throttle in Turn 2, which was causing me to really lose the drive on the exit; I was WFO on the throttle and still having to wait a long time for the engine to spin up and get the bike moving. On previous visits to Buttonwillow, I'd been good about cracking the throttle early and getting a great drive out of T2, which allowed me to pass quite a few people on the way to T3. Basically, I'd be on the gas just enough to keep the engine spinning in the powerband and not be scrubbing off speed. Once I saw the "exit" of the turn and had the bike a bit more upright, I'd really nail the throttle and rocket toward Turn 3.
On the lap where I crashed, I came into Turn 2 at a good clip, put my knee on the deck... and remembered that I needed to open the throttle to get a good drive. I gave it a nice ham-fisted whack and prepared to rocket toward T3 at warp speed!
Needless to say, the results were catastrophic: the rear-end slid and I thought I was going to low-side, coupled with that stomach-wrenching feeling you get when you know that your bike it out of control and bad shit is about to happen... The next thing I know, the rear hooked up and the bike popped up back to near vertical. I can distinctly recall having my arms on the bars, but my butt in the air, looking down at the left side of bike and thinking "Shit! I'm high-siding!" Luckily, I caught a monumental break at this point: the bike jinked to the left just as I was coming down and I ended up back in the saddle!
The bike was twitching like a bucking bronco as we left the pavement and I remember thinking that it probably wasn't going to remain upright for long. Surprisingly, it calmed down quickly (Thank You, Scott's Performance) and was only moderately out of control. I remember thinking that I should stay loose, get on the back brake, and coast to a stop. I remember that my left boot wasn't on the peg and I'd guess that my right probably wasn't either. Just as I was thinking about the back brake, I remember looking up and noticing that I was headed for a chain link fence at a rather high rate of speed...
Unfortunately, I paniced at this point. I was damn sure that I didn't want to hit that fence at the 35-40mph I felt like I was traveling. I knew I needed to slow down, but I'd completely forgotten the existence of the rear brake. I knew the front brake would probably cause me to go down, but I also knew that I didn't want to hit the fence. I feathered the brake a bit, hoping to slow without washing out the front. It didn't really seem to be doing anything, so I grabbed a bit more, and then a bit more, until eventually I did wash-out the front, slamming the bike onto it's right side and my head into the ground. :cry
The Aftermath
Have to admit that I can't remember much immediately after the accident. I remember going down, but I don't remember getting up. People tell me that I did get up pretty quickly, but I just don't remember doing it. I know that GaryJ was the first guy on the scene, though it took him a while to get there because I was so far off the track... Once I was up, I knew that I'd gone down in Turn 2 and I remember the GF riding by as I was standing on the side of the track. I remember Gary pushing my bike back over toward the track, but I'm not sure if I helped him get it up or not.
The bike was ridable and I didn't feel too bad at that point, so I hopped on the bike and rode back to the pits. Had my left hand up so that people would know that I was going slow (as if the clouds of dirt which were probably billowing off my leathers and bike wouldn't have told them that something was up) and I made it back without a problem. I know the GF questioned the decision to ride back to the pits (Sorry, Gary) but at the time it seemed like the obvious thing to do...
Immediately after returning to the pits, I pulled off my leathers and the adrenaline rush started to wear off. I noticed pain in both the front and back of my head, and the muscles in my neck were also very sore. In fact, the back of my head and neck felt just like they had when my car was rear-ended earlier this year. I was a bit more discombobulated than I had been out on the track. Had to be reminded that I'd crashed in Turn 2, couldn't remember the exact details, etc. Walked over to see the paramedics which, IMHO, was a complete waste of time. They asked me who was vice-president and what day of the week it was, both of which were easy answers. Other than that, they didn't do much.
I had quite the headache, so I just sort of sat around for most of the day doing nothing and feeling a bit nauseous. OK, quite nauseous. As the EMTs were leaving the GF grabbed them and had them come talk to me again. I wasn't feeling too bad at that point, but I was still fairly nauseous. The EMT guy seemed to think that this was a very bad sign and urged me to go to a hospital and get checked out by a physician. I'm assuming he told the GF I was about to drop dead from a brain bleed, because she was pretty insistent that we stop on our way back. The EMT thought there was a hospital in Avenal, on the way back, but we stopped there and the people we asked thought it was closed. Ended up going to the hospital in Coalinga instead.
I'm not a huge fan of hospitals, and I thought I was basically OK, but I remember having aches and pains in my wrist and ribs for literally months after my last crash, so I wasn't entirely opposed to knowing exactly what condition I was in. Unfortunately, the hospital had to page the X-ray tech to come in, so the whole process took quite a bit of time. They took x-rays and gave me a CT scan before deciding that I was fine and the only thing I needed were a few $10 Tylenol pills to fix me up.
Total Damage to Me:
Surprisingly minor! This was my first chance to crash test my Helimot suit. Every part of my body which was covered by a piece of gear purchased at Helimot felt perfect! Too bad Helmut doesn't make helmets... I got a nasty knock on the head when I hit the ground. The day after the crash my neck was still pretty stiff and sore. The day after that, I felt almost back to normal and was questioning my decision not to go up to Thunderhill the following weekend.
Total Damage to the Bike:
Again, surprisingly minor! Tore off the right front turn signal and there's a new break in my track plastics. Tank got another scratch or two and the right side of the bike, particularly the air duct, is also scratched. Haven't cleaned off my Two Brothers pipe enough to know how it did, but at first glance it looks like it's undamaged! Given the knock my helmet took, I figure it's time to retire it even though it just looks a little scratched.
What I Did Wrong
In retrospect, the mistakes are fairly obvious:
The Crash
So, after over a year of accident-free riding on road and track, I finally had another little "mishap" at Buttonwillow Raceway Park this weekend. I'm a big believer in documenting stuff like this in the hopes that someone, hopefully me, will learn something from it. So, here's the story...
The weekend got off to a bad start on Friday. The GF and I were pretty late getting out of town, got delayed at dinner, and didn't make it to Lost Hills until about 1am or so. Got to bed around 1:30am and had a 6:30am wake-up call, so we were a bit short on sleep. Woke up to find that one of my contacts was torn and I didn't have a spare. Grrrrrr! GF wanted to get to the track early, so she could see about helping out (in exchange for some free track time), so we abandoned plans to eat at my normal breakfast stop (Denny's) in favor of fast food. I try not to be supersitious, but I remember thinking "Damn, I've been using the same routine for the last 20-30 track days and I haven't crashed. I hope these changes don't screw things up!"
Got to the track and things seemed to be going well. Got the pit setup in short order, helped out with tech inspection and lead some sighting laps. Once we returned to the hot pit, GaryJ wisely reminded us that the sighting laps probably hadn't done much to scrub in our tires. Since I was riding on a set of brand-new Dunlop D208GPs, I went out and did a couple of moderate paced laps to scrub them in. The bike felt like it was moving around quite a bit, so I came back to the pit and dialed in a bit more compression damping. After that, the bike seemed to work much better.
Aside from having to pick up a few crashes in the Mazda turn, the day was going pretty well. The one concern I had about my own riding was that I seemed to be carrying quite a bit of lean angle around the track. I was getting my knee down in places where I don't normally get it down, yet I didn't really feel like I was going any faster than I had during my previous visits to the track. Mentioned this fact to GaryJ at lunch and he suggested that maybe I just needed to concentrate on getting off the bike a bit more and promised to work with me later in the afternoon. Went out on the track after lunch determined to: hang off the bike a bit more, concentrate on counter-steering the bike into the turn rather than being lazy about turn-in.
While I was working with on this, I also noticed another problem with my riding: I was very late getting on the throttle in Turn 2, which was causing me to really lose the drive on the exit; I was WFO on the throttle and still having to wait a long time for the engine to spin up and get the bike moving. On previous visits to Buttonwillow, I'd been good about cracking the throttle early and getting a great drive out of T2, which allowed me to pass quite a few people on the way to T3. Basically, I'd be on the gas just enough to keep the engine spinning in the powerband and not be scrubbing off speed. Once I saw the "exit" of the turn and had the bike a bit more upright, I'd really nail the throttle and rocket toward Turn 3.
On the lap where I crashed, I came into Turn 2 at a good clip, put my knee on the deck... and remembered that I needed to open the throttle to get a good drive. I gave it a nice ham-fisted whack and prepared to rocket toward T3 at warp speed!
Needless to say, the results were catastrophic: the rear-end slid and I thought I was going to low-side, coupled with that stomach-wrenching feeling you get when you know that your bike it out of control and bad shit is about to happen... The next thing I know, the rear hooked up and the bike popped up back to near vertical. I can distinctly recall having my arms on the bars, but my butt in the air, looking down at the left side of bike and thinking "Shit! I'm high-siding!" Luckily, I caught a monumental break at this point: the bike jinked to the left just as I was coming down and I ended up back in the saddle!
The bike was twitching like a bucking bronco as we left the pavement and I remember thinking that it probably wasn't going to remain upright for long. Surprisingly, it calmed down quickly (Thank You, Scott's Performance) and was only moderately out of control. I remember thinking that I should stay loose, get on the back brake, and coast to a stop. I remember that my left boot wasn't on the peg and I'd guess that my right probably wasn't either. Just as I was thinking about the back brake, I remember looking up and noticing that I was headed for a chain link fence at a rather high rate of speed...
Unfortunately, I paniced at this point. I was damn sure that I didn't want to hit that fence at the 35-40mph I felt like I was traveling. I knew I needed to slow down, but I'd completely forgotten the existence of the rear brake. I knew the front brake would probably cause me to go down, but I also knew that I didn't want to hit the fence. I feathered the brake a bit, hoping to slow without washing out the front. It didn't really seem to be doing anything, so I grabbed a bit more, and then a bit more, until eventually I did wash-out the front, slamming the bike onto it's right side and my head into the ground. :cry
The Aftermath
Have to admit that I can't remember much immediately after the accident. I remember going down, but I don't remember getting up. People tell me that I did get up pretty quickly, but I just don't remember doing it. I know that GaryJ was the first guy on the scene, though it took him a while to get there because I was so far off the track... Once I was up, I knew that I'd gone down in Turn 2 and I remember the GF riding by as I was standing on the side of the track. I remember Gary pushing my bike back over toward the track, but I'm not sure if I helped him get it up or not.
The bike was ridable and I didn't feel too bad at that point, so I hopped on the bike and rode back to the pits. Had my left hand up so that people would know that I was going slow (as if the clouds of dirt which were probably billowing off my leathers and bike wouldn't have told them that something was up) and I made it back without a problem. I know the GF questioned the decision to ride back to the pits (Sorry, Gary) but at the time it seemed like the obvious thing to do...
Immediately after returning to the pits, I pulled off my leathers and the adrenaline rush started to wear off. I noticed pain in both the front and back of my head, and the muscles in my neck were also very sore. In fact, the back of my head and neck felt just like they had when my car was rear-ended earlier this year. I was a bit more discombobulated than I had been out on the track. Had to be reminded that I'd crashed in Turn 2, couldn't remember the exact details, etc. Walked over to see the paramedics which, IMHO, was a complete waste of time. They asked me who was vice-president and what day of the week it was, both of which were easy answers. Other than that, they didn't do much.
I had quite the headache, so I just sort of sat around for most of the day doing nothing and feeling a bit nauseous. OK, quite nauseous. As the EMTs were leaving the GF grabbed them and had them come talk to me again. I wasn't feeling too bad at that point, but I was still fairly nauseous. The EMT guy seemed to think that this was a very bad sign and urged me to go to a hospital and get checked out by a physician. I'm assuming he told the GF I was about to drop dead from a brain bleed, because she was pretty insistent that we stop on our way back. The EMT thought there was a hospital in Avenal, on the way back, but we stopped there and the people we asked thought it was closed. Ended up going to the hospital in Coalinga instead.
I'm not a huge fan of hospitals, and I thought I was basically OK, but I remember having aches and pains in my wrist and ribs for literally months after my last crash, so I wasn't entirely opposed to knowing exactly what condition I was in. Unfortunately, the hospital had to page the X-ray tech to come in, so the whole process took quite a bit of time. They took x-rays and gave me a CT scan before deciding that I was fine and the only thing I needed were a few $10 Tylenol pills to fix me up.
Total Damage to Me:
Surprisingly minor! This was my first chance to crash test my Helimot suit. Every part of my body which was covered by a piece of gear purchased at Helimot felt perfect! Too bad Helmut doesn't make helmets... I got a nasty knock on the head when I hit the ground. The day after the crash my neck was still pretty stiff and sore. The day after that, I felt almost back to normal and was questioning my decision not to go up to Thunderhill the following weekend.
Total Damage to the Bike:
Again, surprisingly minor! Tore off the right front turn signal and there's a new break in my track plastics. Tank got another scratch or two and the right side of the bike, particularly the air duct, is also scratched. Haven't cleaned off my Two Brothers pipe enough to know how it did, but at first glance it looks like it's undamaged! Given the knock my helmet took, I figure it's time to retire it even though it just looks a little scratched.
What I Did Wrong
In retrospect, the mistakes are fairly obvious:
- I spent the better part of the day "practicing" improper throttle control through Turn 2. I recognized that I wasn't doing the right thing, but I didn't get around to correcting it until too late in the day.
- I improperly diagnosed the problem I was having. I thought that my problem was "opening the throttle late", when in fact my problem was "poor throttle control". This may seem like a subtle distinction, but as we can see from the results, it's a big one! Rather than opening the throttle early, and rolling it on gently through the turn, I went WFO with my knee still skimming the pavement. The CBR600F4 is a pretty forgiving bike, but with such a small contact patch even it didn't mind spinning up the rear tire...
- I paniced about crashing into the fence once the bike was off in the dirt. If I'd been a bit more calm, I would have realized that I had plenty of room to slow down and stop, without the need to fall over and bonk my head.
- Once I recognized that I was doing something wrong in Turn 2, I should have taken the time to "fix" it immediately, rather than practicing the "bad" technique for the better part of a day.
- I should have spent more time thinking about exactly what I was doing, what changes I was going to make, and what the likely consequences would be. This was a really stupid crash on my part, especially since I've ridden at Buttonwillow with GaryJ on a number of occasions and he almost always warns people about high-siding in Turn 2 during the Rider's Meeting!
- I shouldn't have used the front brake once I was off in the dirt. I should have gotten on the rear brake or tried to steer the bike away from the fence, rather than going for the certain wash-out associated with the use of the front brake. In reality, I had plenty of time to get the bike slowed down before I'd have been anywhere near that fence.
