marcg
...
Here's my contribution ...
After 20 years and hundreds of thousands of commute, touring and track miles, I had my first crash at Sears in August. On the first lap. On cold tires.
I was riding my GSX-R 750 with new 208 GP-As. The track was cold. It was slightly damp. And there'd been Formula I races the day before, so there may have been loose rubber on the track, or there may have been so much rubber ground into the track that the small surface irregularities that normally increase traction (as the bike's tire deforms to mate with them) were gone.
I knew that I would have poor traction on the early laps and I was consciouly holding back: keeping my speed down and a small lean angle. But as I rounded 3A, the bike just disappeared from underneath me. It was that sudden. No warning, it was just gone and I was sliding to the outside of the track with my bike leading the way.
The following thoughts went through my mind in rapid succession (less than 3 seconds).
- Where's the bike?
- So this is what it's like (crashing).
- Don't tumble, just focus on sliding without rolling (I'd heard many times that the worst injuries happen when you tumble and your limbs flail about)
- Try not to get run over (looking around to see where the traffic was)
- Make sure you've stopped before you try to get up (I'd heard/read that people frequently thought they had stopped when in fact they were still moving).
And that was it. I slid all the way across the track and then stood up. I hadn't completely stopped when I stood up, so I had to take a couple of running steps to keep from falling over.
The safety gear did it's job, and I'm really thankful for that. It protected me and other than scuffs and scratches survived the crash with no damage. I had no injuries other than a sore hand. The only good thing about crashing on a warmup lap is that it was a low speed crash, less than 45 mph.
The bike had lots of cosmetic damage, the right lower fairing, tail section, front cowling and windscreen (stock plastics, sigh) were broken. Mechanically, the right clip-on was broken, right-side peg ground down and the muffler was flattened. The right-side frame slider was ground down by about 1.5". I'm a big believer in frame sliders now. The damage would have been much worse without them.
I was able to replace/repair the mechanical parts for under $250. (One benefit of owning a GSX-R is that they seem to get crashed a lot and there are plenty of parts available from bikes that are being parted out :teeth). Replacement plastics were about $900. I opted to go with replacement stock plastics since they were about the same price as a complete set of painted race plastics and would be better when I went to sell the bike.
I'm also the proud owner of a salvage title, since the insurance company totaled the bike.
I've gone over that crash many times in my head to figure out what went wrong in particular. The general problem was clearly that I was going too fast, with too much lean for the conditions, even though I was conscious of the low traction conditions and trying to adjust for them. Maybe there was some debris in 3A, maybe it was especially slick there, maybe I set my tire on the tiger's teeth which were wet (maybe) and slicker than the rest of the track. I don't know. But I've been extra mellow on all my warm-up laps since then.
Marc
After 20 years and hundreds of thousands of commute, touring and track miles, I had my first crash at Sears in August. On the first lap. On cold tires.
I was riding my GSX-R 750 with new 208 GP-As. The track was cold. It was slightly damp. And there'd been Formula I races the day before, so there may have been loose rubber on the track, or there may have been so much rubber ground into the track that the small surface irregularities that normally increase traction (as the bike's tire deforms to mate with them) were gone.
I knew that I would have poor traction on the early laps and I was consciouly holding back: keeping my speed down and a small lean angle. But as I rounded 3A, the bike just disappeared from underneath me. It was that sudden. No warning, it was just gone and I was sliding to the outside of the track with my bike leading the way.
The following thoughts went through my mind in rapid succession (less than 3 seconds).
- Where's the bike?
- So this is what it's like (crashing).
- Don't tumble, just focus on sliding without rolling (I'd heard many times that the worst injuries happen when you tumble and your limbs flail about)
- Try not to get run over (looking around to see where the traffic was)
- Make sure you've stopped before you try to get up (I'd heard/read that people frequently thought they had stopped when in fact they were still moving).
And that was it. I slid all the way across the track and then stood up. I hadn't completely stopped when I stood up, so I had to take a couple of running steps to keep from falling over.
The safety gear did it's job, and I'm really thankful for that. It protected me and other than scuffs and scratches survived the crash with no damage. I had no injuries other than a sore hand. The only good thing about crashing on a warmup lap is that it was a low speed crash, less than 45 mph.
The bike had lots of cosmetic damage, the right lower fairing, tail section, front cowling and windscreen (stock plastics, sigh) were broken. Mechanically, the right clip-on was broken, right-side peg ground down and the muffler was flattened. The right-side frame slider was ground down by about 1.5". I'm a big believer in frame sliders now. The damage would have been much worse without them.
I was able to replace/repair the mechanical parts for under $250. (One benefit of owning a GSX-R is that they seem to get crashed a lot and there are plenty of parts available from bikes that are being parted out :teeth). Replacement plastics were about $900. I opted to go with replacement stock plastics since they were about the same price as a complete set of painted race plastics and would be better when I went to sell the bike.
I'm also the proud owner of a salvage title, since the insurance company totaled the bike.
I've gone over that crash many times in my head to figure out what went wrong in particular. The general problem was clearly that I was going too fast, with too much lean for the conditions, even though I was conscious of the low traction conditions and trying to adjust for them. Maybe there was some debris in 3A, maybe it was especially slick there, maybe I set my tire on the tiger's teeth which were wet (maybe) and slicker than the rest of the track. I don't know. But I've been extra mellow on all my warm-up laps since then.
Marc
