I bought a motorcycle to ride, not to fall

This article is not quite in the Habr format, but, observing how fast the number of two-wheeled vehicles on the streets of the capital, including among IT-workers, is growing, I still risk it - maybe it will save several lives, which is not so bad.



When 10 years ago I bought my first motorcycle, any meeting of two-wheeled vehicles on the road was a whole event. Over the past few years, the situation has changed dramatically - traffic jams from motorcycles to row-spacings are already everyday routine. I won’t think about why this is happening, but I’ll just try to share the experience of “survival in the big city” with those who just bought or are just thinking. It is possible that some things will be useful to fans of electric vehicles.

Choosing a motorcycle school

It would seem, what does the school have to do with it? In fact, very much so. To obtain category A rights in Russia, you just need to pass the SDA theory and roll back the site. Everything is clear with the theory, but the practice, in the overwhelming majority of motorcycle schools, consists solely in dragging on the passage of the site, and in the most effective way. Everything would be fine, but the trouble is that the maneuvering and landing skills most suitable for passing it are not only useless in the city - they are harmful. All this leads to the fact that freshmen who have just acquired the rights are retrained on their own, according to the “Brazilian system”, it is good if without loss in health.



So for those who have not yet chosen a school, I strongly recommend that you pay priority attention not to the cost and promises of "passing the first time", but to the availability of a driving training program in the city and to reviews in thematic public / forums.

How not to get into an accident

No way.



I do not have a single motorcyclist who has skated at least 3-4 seasons, who has never been in an accident at least once. No, maybe there are such people, but I don’t know them. So the phrase from the headline, which once became a local meme, has little in common with reality. Just when you sit on a motorcycle, keep in mind that you may well not get there.

How to reduce the likelihood of an accident

This topic cannot be put into one article in any way - whole books are devoted to it. I will limit myself to a few tips on the most common mistakes of the first season. Not standard “do not exceed speed”, “do not drink while driving”, etc., but, let's say, unwritten rules.

1. Train emergency braking. That's right in the evening on an empty platform and acceleration-deceleration-acceleration-deceleration-acceleration- ... You must ass (this is not a figure of speech) to feel the moment of rear wheel failure. The right hand and the right foot should independently be able to effectively slow down, at the level of reflexes. You have not yet realized the tragedy of the situation, and the rear is already pressed, and through the instant the front has gone.
   
   
   
   Lyrical digression: “To avoid a collision, I put the motorcycle” - remember this phrase and never use it in a conversation with understanding people. In a conversation with the girls, okay - the sin of heroic noodles is not to hang. In the most efficient and manageable (!) Way, the motorcycle brakes with wheels. A motorcycle that has fallen on its side is a bullet with a displaced center of gravity, which is almost not affected by friction. Those. flies far, fast and along an unpredictable trajectory, often intersecting with a pilot flying along the same trajectory. And in it, plus or minus two hundred kilos for a minute.
2. Do not drive to the right. There you will find open car doors, turns into the courtyard and "oh, they called me and I decided to park!" The right side of the right lane is the last place where a motorist expects to meet someone. And the dead zone there is quite large.
   
   
   
   
   A little tin (hereinafter from personal volunteer experience)

   KAMAZ passenger opened the door in a standing traffic jam. A motorcyclist minus three fingers.
   
   
3. Do not drive to the left of the left. There you are left turning and turning around. Not infrequently through a double continuous and faster. After all, “And who will overtake me in the opposite direction (left side of the left lane !?”). Turning a car to the left / turning is one of the most frequent and bloodiest options for road accidents with motor vehicles. By the way, the photo above is last Friday, when a patrol car turning to the left did not notice me.
   
   
   
   
   A little tin

   At random, he opened five of the project “Remember” - this is a project that is about those who have left the country for the eternal season. Three out of five.
   
   
   
   

   1. The motorcycle was moving to the left of the general stream, the Volkswagen car moving in the same direction began to turn in violation of the requirements of the road sign, allowing only traffic directly or to the right.
   2. The driver of the Mazda 3 when turning left did not miss the motorcycle. The driver and passenger of the motorcycle died at the scene of an accident.
   3. The driver of the VAZ-2109 car did not give way to a motorcycle when turning. The motorcyclist, when braking, capsized the motorcycle and, in a collision, was between the car and the motorcycle.

   
   
   
4. The water is slippery. The foliage is very slippery. Scattered gravel - kapets. Rubber gasket on tram tracks - generally beyond good and evil. The motorcycle drifts very well, especially when cornering. In short, the review of the road is limited - consider that Annushka with a can of oil has already passed there.
   
   
   
   
   A little tough tin

   The lower half of the body on the first chipper. Upper - on the second. Between them tripe. The guy slipped in a turn between Ryazanka and Volgogradka. Very not appetizing sight.
   
   
5. The only place where motorcyclists are more or less expected is the left aisle. Those. the right side of the left lane plus the left part of the second left lane. In fact, this can be considered unwritten law. Hence one more not very obvious rule of survival - do not go into a different row spacing from the left without good reason. The explanation is very simple: what does the driver do when a motorcycle sweeps 15 centimeters to his left? And what immediately after this happens with the motorcycle to the right of the car?
   
   
   
   
   A little tin

   The left leg is crushed into dust in a jeep, the right hand on a gazelle.
   
   
6. An obvious but constantly forgotten rule by beginners. Dashingly reconstructing through two rows, remember that you are not the only one on the road, sharp as diarrhea. With high probability your motor-brother can already go there. And much faster than you. It is very unpleasant to receive a newsletter with the tag "mot / mot", but recently it happens more often.
   
   
   
   
   A little tin

   It won’t be here. I have never traveled to such - God was merciful. But a couple of times he personally bombarded the road with bricks when another careless rider flew into the aisle, right in front of me.
   
   
7. If you ride in a row, then stay on the edge, and not in the middle. Then the dashing draftsman from the nearest lane will see you, but you will have time to leave the draftsman from the far lane. In a dense stream, you can see the free space between two cars where you can jump, but not a motorcycle in its middle.
   
   
   
   
   A little tin

   The BMW X6 was in a hurry and jumped from strip to strip. Two children did not wait for the folder from work.
   
   
8. If the cars ahead started, for no reason, from scratch, to brake - do not think for a second and also brakes.
   
   
   
   
   A little tin

   The drunk teenager, who was crossing the road, was neatly folded into a black bag, and the motorcyclist was taken to intensive care. If he is very lucky, then after his recovery he will have long judicial trials with an unpredictable result.
   
   

How to increase the likelihood of staying alive after an accident (preferably in one piece)

To paraphrase Ballmer - “Outfit! Equipment! Equipment! Equipment!"



According to the SDA, a motorcyclist must ride in a helmet. Unfortunately, many are limited to this. A maximum buy a cool jacket and fashionable gloves. Ordinary first season: helmet, jacket, gloves ... jeans and sneakers. Heartless bastard statistics tell us that most of all serious injuries are on our feet (according to Motocitizen's rather leaky statistics, about 45%). And all due to the fact that in most cases it is they who take the first blow. Well, landing because there is such a difference in the heights of a motorcycle and a car. After the first blow, often you still have to slip over the rasp called asphalt.



And you have to glide in soft places of the same legs. There is even such a term - asphalt disease, when half of the ass is smeared with a thin layer on the road, and the second contains interspersed molten trousers. And yes, the only thing a Chinese helmet for a thousand rubles can save you from is a fine for its absence.





By the way, your spine will also be very happy if the blow does not fall on him, but on a special protective “back”.



Yes, the equipment is pretty expensive. A complete and good kit can cost half the price of a motorcycle, but it's really worth it.



Important notice - all of the above also applies to your passenger. Even the most beautiful girl becomes a very ugly piece of meat if she goes with you in a miniskirt on her bare head. Believe me, I saw it.

What to do if you got into an accident and survived

The peculiarity of accidents involving a motorcycle is that immediately after the accident and for half an hour after the pilot contains a horse dose of adrenaline. There were times when a person jumped on his broken legs and rushed to lift the motorcycle on one muscle, without a skeleton. And after 10 minutes it turned green and turned off.

1. The first and most important rule is to make sure that you are all right. If there is the slightest suspicion, strange pain, slurred perception of the world - lie in a safe place and wait for an ambulance. There was a case (I was not personally present) - the pilot bruised his stomach, it doesn’t seem to hurt, he refused an ambulance, as they did not beg for him, and in the evening, already from home, left by a sad typewriter. A sad machine she is the same as funny, also with a red stripe, but already without a flasher. Because there is no need to rush anymore.
2. A very common misconception, which is far from unique to first-season ones - “I was traveling in the aisle, so it’s my fault.” No and no again. In 70% of cases of motor / car accidents (statistics from the visits of volunteers), if there is a knowledgeable person with a cold head in place (and not a pilot whose adrenaline rolls off scale), a car is found guilty. Do not immediately take the blame. This will delight the traffic cop, greatly delight the mamzel, who did not look in the mirror during the rebuilding, and greatly upset her insurance, and then, on awareness, herself. Call your friends, or rather, in MotoMoskva / MotoRossiya DTP, for example, and wait for the volunteers who ate the dog in this matter.
3. Do not lift the motorcycle without a very good reason. The traffic police officer will draw up and describe the accident on the facts of what he sees. And exactly those pictures that he will take will go into business. The raised motorcycle is an opportunity for the second participant to distort the facts, and for the investigators, this is generally equivalent to destroying evidence.

Well, a few words about the rules of good form and some misconceptions

1. If you are caught up in the aisle - skip it. If you basically go without noticing anyone, then at best you will be considered an idiot, and at worst, a liter sport that boils after 15 minutes of nausea will begin to overtake you in the adjacent aisle. What this leads to I wrote above.
2. We saw a two-wheeled accident - slow down and ask if help is needed. Remember that he is most likely very shitty now and has little understanding of what is going on.
3. We saw an accident with a two-wheeled vehicle where someone had already stopped and showed you with your hand "go on" - go on. With a high degree of probability, this is a visiting volunteer whom traffic police officers do not drive out until he helps them not to create a crowd of lounging motorcyclists in place.
4. For fans of non-direct exhaust pipes and long-range night xenon, a separate boiler is prepared in hell.
5. In traffic rules there is no such thing as “row spacing” - there is a ride in a row and a lane with the intersection of markings. According to the SDA, two vehicles can be located in parallel in the same row, if a safe lateral interval is observed. The safe lateral interval is not regulated by anything.
6. Well and the most important thing. Remember that nobody owes you anything. Before demanding respect for motorists, first learn how to respect their right not to let you through.

That's all. Do not fly faster than your guardian angel.

useful links

Helmet Testing: Safety Helmet Assessment & Rating Program

Volunteer organization of assistance in road accidents with motor vehicles : MotoMoskva / MotoRossiya accident

Another volunteer organization: Motocitizen

Project “Remember”

Lee Parks "Full Control"

UPD from comments:

Helmets, debriefing

David Hough, Road Strategy