Motorcycle Demos 25th Sept

[lee123easy]

how the hell are you going to see a dayglo jacket if the bike has a fairing or crouched riding position , headlight on all the time is far more effective:cool:

[shanes teeth]

how the hell are you going to see a dayglo jacket if the bike has a fairing or crouched riding position , headlight on all the time is far more effective:cool:

 

What about from the side or behind?

[Murphy Jnr]

But you surely can't deny that bikers can be more easily seen when wearing high viz,and a higher percentage would be avoidable.

 

I don't deny that, even wear one myself occasionally

[shanes teeth]

I don't deny that, even wear one myself occasionally

 

And so do I!Mostly on motorways-I don't know why.Maybe we need a law to save us from ourselves! I'm old enough to remember resistance to the introduction of the helmet laws.I don't know many bikers now who would choose not to wear a helmet.

[lee123easy]

top and bottom this is all about freedom of the working classes , it will hit us ALL

[hugh jarse]

the problem is our police...the French will just ignore it completely, the Germans will not accept others telling them what to do and spend years debating yes or no but our police will collect penalties from day one. Our government will run to the letter of the law.

 

This is how daft our government are the emergency brake swerve test is to be done at 50kph and this equates to us as 31mph...any person with an active brain that's more capable than a plant would test at 30mph and forget the 1mph...not us.... and because we cannot do the brake swerve test on the road in a 30mph street so they build special test centres costing £millions and now they are going to dump the brake swerve test because it was a stupid test causing crashes and not recommended ever to do after test

but Euro said jump so we did

[alchresearch]

SORRY FOR THE LONG POST BUT YOU ASKED

 

At the head of the list is the European 3rd Licence Directive, which will introduce an intermediate A2 tier of licence between the current 33hp ‘restricted’ category which can be gained by passing a test at age 17, and ‘direct access’ to full power bikes. Direct Access to full power bikes will be put back to 24 from the current 21.

 

New rules on braking systems on all new bikes, which will be imposed shortly. All new machines will have to have either linked brakes or ABS fitted as standard.

 

New laws will also allow for ‘anti-tampering’ measures to prevent and/or make it illegal to improve performance. This seems to cover parts like alternative sprockets and aftermarket exhausts.

 

Type approval is being extended to cover some replacement parts, specifically mirrors, brake pads and brake shoes and tyres. This would make it illegal to replace any of these parts with a non-approved part and goes far beyond the ‘e-mark’ legislation currently in place.

 

Compulsory protective clothing in Belgium. Belgium imposed new rules on 1 January 2011 which required all riders and passengers on two wheelers to wear long sleeves, trousers, gloves and boots that cover the ankle (plus the obligatory helmet, of course!). There’s no requirement for this to be ‘protective clothing’ as far as I can see, so it would appear to be a very minimum standard. But it’s still compulsory

 

Compulsory protective clothing in the UK whilst taking your bike test. In a very similar measure, the DSA recently announced that candidates turning up for their bike test in ‘inappropriate’ clothing could be turned away untested. Whilst the ‘appropriate clothing’ is no more than as recommended on CBT (ie, helmet, stout jacket and trousers, gloves and ankle-protecting footwear), it’s been rushed through with no apparent consultation with the motorcycle industry.

 

Compulsory hi-vis clothing in France for motorcyclists from 1 September 2011. This one’s kicked up a terrific stink in France with riders, with an estimated 100,000 turning out in demos on Sunday 18 June, in numbers which paralysed cities and towns up and down the country. According to reports, more than 15,000 bikers clogged up the heart of the capital blocking the Periphique, Lyon (France’s second largest city) saw more than 10,000 bikers, 7,000 demonstrated in Lille, and Toulouse was totally blocked by 8,000 bikers. Smaller demonstrations took place in dozens of other cities.

 

France to ban bikes over seven years old from cities centres. This was announced just before the hi-vis demo, so almost certainly added to the turn-out.

 

New French laws will also ban filtering and force all riders to remain stationary in traffic jams and retro-fit bigger rear numberplates [Rather bizarrely, Belgium has just legalised filtering on 1 January 2011, so long as it's within limits - you can't ride faster than 50Km/h or more than 20Km/h faster than the traffic you're filtering past.]

 

New French laws will give the police power to seize GPS units ‘capable of storing the locations of fixed speed cameras’. In the past, it was illegal to use a GPS to locate speed cameras and your GPS could be confiscated if used in this way, but it’s not clear whether this means any GPS capable of POI alerts contravenes the new regulations even if there are no such POIs in the memory.

 

Compulsory hi-vis in Ireland. The law was introduced a couple of years ago, but after a softly-softly period, it’s apparently been announced that it’s now to be strictly enforced. [EDIT] This appears to apply only to learner riders at the moment but there is a proposal to extend this to qualified riders [/EDIT]

Spain has banned headphones in helmets. It applies to car drivers too, but it means that using bike to bike/passenger intercoms is illegal south of the Pyrenees, as is using an earpiece to listen to GPS directions.

 

You may not be worried by any of this. You may feel it’s an intolerable assault on motorcycling and the ‘lifestyle’ that goes with it. I’m not going to argue for or against either viewpoint, but if nothing else, this list should give you an idea of the potential minefield that travelling in Europe is fast becoming

 

 

THESE RULES IF PASSED WILL BE MADE UNIVERSAL FOR EUROPE

 

Seems reasonable to me (with the exception of the French filtering law - but there's no evidence this would become compulsory across Europe, the demonstrators have just tacked this onto reinforce their argument).

 

On a car forum were recently discussing brakes and tyres and the consensus was why cut corners and skimp on safety. Considering how bikes are far more powerful (and the crashes on The Snake and Cat and Fiddle) I see no issues with having the very best.

[Squiggs]

I ride a motorcyclist and would certainly be in favour of the police stopping bikers and checking if they use the correct parts. It is total rubbish to suggest that bikers have/will have to use only original parts, they simply have to use CE marked parts. A great number opf bikers use illegal plates, exhausts that make their 160mph bike go a tiny bit faster, or even almost black visors. In all cases this is only about vanity.

 

The same applies to wearing reflective jackets. If you such a jacket you are more likely to be seen, and so have a slightly lower chance of being killed. Most people don't wear them because, again, of vanity. The only real objection to such clothing is that it puts the onus on the biker to be seen, whereas really the blame is often, but not always, with the person that hits them.

 

Many of the other recommendations are equally sensible, and some aren't. This is the nature of things, as some changes will be made, but not all of them.

 

Which, to be fair, is a pretty big "only"

[hugh jarse]

In reply to post 38

 

if you go down the road of always following safety first and try to cover all the "what if's" then you get to the stage that bikes are dangerous so ban them. 20 years ago the government did this and in parks and play areas the whole country wide had their swings and slides removed...thank god they now dont view things the same and are putting back play areas for children although someone will get hurt while playing

 

I began riding in 1977 without any HI-VIS gear and I've never had an accident, whats changed that I require it now in 2011? Safer cars and bikes, better lights on both, vastly increased street lighting....the reason cars dont see bikes is that they dont look or more often than not they do look, they do see, and yet then still pull out because its a bike and not a 4O TONNE truck bearing down on them. Hi Vis wont change that

[alchresearch]

I began riding in 1977 without any HI-VIS gear and I've never had an accident, whats changed that I require it now in 2011? Safer cars and bikes, better lights on both, vastly increased street lighting....the reason cars dont see bikes is that they dont look or more often than not they do look, they do see, and yet then still pull out because its a bike and not a 4O TONNE truck bearing down on them. Hi Vis wont change that

 

That's an easy one to answer - drivers think they don't need to follow the rules, and an increase in traffic on the roads.

 

When I first started driving people didn't block box junction or roundabouts, didn't jump red lights and if they made a mistake held up their hand and mouthed the words sorry.

 

Now its a very different story. Just look at the number of moaners on here when it comes to speed cameras or getting a ticket in a retail park.

 

Cars may have got safer but drivers certainly haven't.