Posts
9080
Joined
8/16/2006
Location
Afton, TN
US
Edited Date/Time
3/19/2015 8:09pm
In every motorsport except ours.
As all motorsports have gotten faster,more powerful they have gotten much safer.
Nascar,headons that would killed now are nothing with safer walls and Hans.
F1 ,tubs take care of the driver.
Nhra, did you see Larry Dixon last week?
Moto,still sticking our heads in a beer cooler with cool colored shells over them as bikes have gotten probably twice as fast since the 80s when you combine the engine with so much better suspension.
I'd pay 2k for a helmet that was twice as good. And ,it seems like it could be done with gel or airbag ,something..
I guess since we dont demand it ,it just never gets done,dunno.
As all motorsports have gotten faster,more powerful they have gotten much safer.
Nascar,headons that would killed now are nothing with safer walls and Hans.
F1 ,tubs take care of the driver.
Nhra, did you see Larry Dixon last week?
Moto,still sticking our heads in a beer cooler with cool colored shells over them as bikes have gotten probably twice as fast since the 80s when you combine the engine with so much better suspension.
I'd pay 2k for a helmet that was twice as good. And ,it seems like it could be done with gel or airbag ,something..
I guess since we dont demand it ,it just never gets done,dunno.
Shane
When you ride a vehicle that has no cage or any other means of protecting the racer, bad stuff can (and does, unfortunately) happen.
The Shop
For MX to get safer, I think the tracks and bikes need to be altered to get the speeds down. Modern MX has a lot of the sketchy aspects of TT/dirt track, but with the added bonus of big jumps thrown in to boot.
This knee-jerk reaction to a disaster/ crash/ major injury/ death needs to be put in check.
Learning from mistakes and improving is part of any sport.
Foregoing all technology to slow things down is ridiculous. Marc Marquez just demolished the Sepang track record during pre-season testing and I highly doubt you'll hear road racing fans say, "Those guys are going too fast."
People who ride and race know the danger. Companies like 6D and now Bell, MIPS (and that's just helmets) are looking to make a dangerous activity a little safer but at the end of the day, it's still dangerous.
Appreciate their talent and please stop complaining or suggesting all pros ride 2 strokes or we should slow things down.
I recall a bunch of people saying our tracks aren't rough enough over here..talk about contradictions.
-END RANT-
Somewhere along the line in the 80s everyone realised 500s were ridiculous indoors and even outdoors...
Fast forward 20 years, the norm, even indoors are bikes have the same or more motor, with much more capable suspension. It's pretty silly.
250fs are pretty even laptime and getting closer HP wise, with 250 two strokes, bikes that RC described as having a need to respect. 450s are a level again.
You may think there's no such thing as "too fast", but the human body does have certain limits. I like to think of motorcycle racing as test of talent/skill more so than a contest at cheating death. JMO.
I have been out of riding for quite a while, but when I see videos of people riding these days, everyone is WFO...even people who are visibly not very skilled riders. Long straights, no tight turns, very few bumps or ruts...it doesn't even really look like motocross compared to how it used to be.
SX tracks are technical but not entirely more dangerous...even though they are inherently dangerous to begin with.
Having racers ride on the ragged edge isn't what I'm suggesting. I'm just saying that when someone gets hurt you start to see this type of knee-jerk reaction to swing the pendulum far in the other direction. Human nature I guess.
Basically, it's really hard to make a dangerous sport safe. It's the nature of the sport. People are going to get hurt and it totally sucks.
You just can't fix stupid. (This referring to those unskilled individuals that get hurt and make life difficult for those that love motorcycles.)
Pit Row
Yes, racing motocross is dangerous and there will inevitably be deaths no matter what but there is a point where it goes from being acceptable to unacceptable and I think the sport is getting to that point at the amateur level. Personally, I think the amateur side of our sport got too caught up in catering to the wannabe/future pros and forgot about the casual weekend warrior. Of course I am generalizing there but I think some people will understand what I'm saying and agree with me.
In autoracing when they find a piece of safety equipment that will save bodies/lives they make it mandatory. Lives are then saved and the sports fatality rates decrease significantly.
With MX, when something is introduced you have the riders, who honestly are about as intelligent as the average 6th grader, telling us they choose not to wear something due to it making them feel restricted.
Many lives are saved from new safety innovations with the auto circuits. Soft walls, runoff areas etc.
in SX we park boats within 10' of the track and put so many obstacles in place that it is a aerial circus instead of a race. We have 12 year olds doing 90' triples for fuck sakes, is it no wonder their are kids dying so often? We let Pros like Villo on the same practice tracks as 10 year old novices. This would be like allowing grandma to cruise the high banks of Daytona with Jeff Gordon.
F1,safer,may not got faster down a straight but braking points are much deeper,corner speed insane.
GT cars,not so long ago guys died all the time,it is far more dangerous than NASCAR or f1 because of the backwoods tracks they sometimes run.
Fia WRC ,shit,you kidding? 2 up and walk away from hellish crashes.
But,all that is not my point.
The point is as our vehicle got better,faster,stronger our equipment (safety gear) is the same,no progression.
A man can survive 100g slams from the neck down but that brain cant. And you can't tell me that helmets could not be made 10 times safer.
The reason they have not is probably several, numbers of participants, what those participants are currently paying versus what a 10 times better would cost, and what you see in these post,the shrugging of shoulders and saying "its just the way it is"
A helmet could be made with sensors and a "absorbing area" that would be controlled be how many Gs the sensor reads and a controlled stop be implemented till area is used up.
The cost would be huge to develop and then pasted on. The HANS device stopped helmet development probably.
Long post but damn,I'd like to see something in that direction before my days are done.
MotoGP has become safer during the years. First, the tracks have a lot more running off area. There are also airbags / cushions around the barriers in case they crash. The suits they are wearing, have an airbag system in them and also the bikes have much more electronics equipped. Therefore the chance of crashing has decreased as well ...
To be honest, reducing CCs wouldn't slow down the riders too much. Just look at the difference with 250 bikes, of course the bikes would be more rideable which is a good thing.
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