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Snowdens Secret posted:Counterpoint, you could probably get from one side of your country to the other, maybe more than once, in a day's ride on a rental 125. I'd have a hard time riding one safely to work. I could probably do quite a few cross-countries on that 125, considering that at the thin point we have something like 90km across. Laughing aside, from the shop where I service the bike to work is under 5 miles, so the 125 does a great job. If i had to take the 125 35 miles from home to work, it would be quite a different story.
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Jul 22, 2014 09:52
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| # ? May 11, 2024 15:52 |
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgJnx-KpdJQ Bay area drivers. 
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Jul 22, 2014 19:56
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Haha jesus christ.
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Jul 22, 2014 20:02
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Z3n posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgJnx-KpdJQ  You should have caught up to him in a wheelie.
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Jul 22, 2014 20:24
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Maybe he really, REALLY, have to pee.
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Jul 22, 2014 20:33
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The Royal Nonesuch posted:
Best to just disengage and let him go - at the end of the day, I'm still a bike and he's still a car so he's always gonna win. Just enjoy sharing the slices of life.
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Jul 22, 2014 21:04
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Z3n posted:Best to just disengage and let him go - at the end of the day, I'm still a bike and he's still a car so he's always gonna win. Just enjoy sharing the slices of life. Is that a Duke you're on?
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Jul 22, 2014 21:28
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Coredump posted:Is that a Duke you're on? Yeah I bought a 1290.
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Jul 22, 2014 21:43
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Z3n posted:Best to just disengage and let him go - at the end of the day, I'm still a bike and he's still a car so he's always gonna win. Just enjoy sharing the slices of life. Plus the bike can't wheelie
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Jul 22, 2014 22:27
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Spiffness posted:Plus the bike can't wheelie It just does really short wheelies. You can clutch up a perfect 1 foot wheelie every time at any RPM or speed! Also if you want it to wheelie just launch it off a crest of some sort, it'll do a BIG wheelie there, ask me how I found out. Apparently the TC handles normal wheelies really well, but when you wheelie and then the back end goes down a slope, it figures you have free rein to go as big as you want. That was a bit of a surprise.
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Jul 22, 2014 22:49
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Z3n posted:It just does really short wheelies. You can clutch up a perfect 1 foot wheelie every time at any RPM or speed! Does the TC just cut throttle at 12"/xx°/etc and drop you back down, or does it make tiny adjustments & keep you in a rolling 12" wheelie as long as you're on the throttle? The Royal Nonesuch fucked around with this message at 23:20 on Jul 22, 2014 |
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Jul 22, 2014 23:18
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The Royal Nonesuch posted:Does the TC just cut throttle at 12"/xx°/etc and drop you back down, or does it make tiny adjustments & keep you in a rolling 12" wheelie as long as you're on the throttle? Usually it'll just back off the throttle so it sets down and then once it's down, it just pins it again, which can make for some fun situations where you say, do a small wheelie across an intersection, hit the hill on the otherside, and accidentally rip a wheelie up the hill as the front unloads and the bike gives you 95 foot pounds of torque to the rear wheel. The one thing that's not perfect about the bike is definitely the wheelie control. It would be nice if you could dial it back a little, or if you had a "Yes, KTM, I'm a big boy and can handle my own wheelies" mode. I'm still working up to seeing if it'll just loop out if you rev it to 7k and just drop the clutch. It's definitely faster to modulate the launch on your own though, if you engage the traction control, it takes a fraction longer to give you power back then if you modulate it yourself.
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Jul 22, 2014 23:27
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Shoulda got an (APRC-equipped) Aprilia. Just tell it how high you want the wheelie and it'll keep it there, and even let you down gently (as long as you don't touch the brakes) when you're done. Interesting about the crests though, I wonder if that's a mistake (it just kicks in at one particular angle and is just completely ignorant of all other situations) or a deliberate thing ("I didn't get him into this position so something's probably not right, I'll just stay out of it" sort of thing). Not sure how APRC handles that but I do know there's a particular feature where if it detects freefall it just ignores everything until both wheels are on the ground again because the last thing you want if you're coming over, say, the mountain at Cadwell is the traction control and wheelie control arguing over what speed the back wheel should be doing.
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Jul 23, 2014 00:07
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Z3n posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgJnx-KpdJQ Why are you screwing off doing 60 in the far left? Traffic almost all the way to the right is pacing you and there is a poo poo ton of room to move over.
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Jul 23, 2014 03:44
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He's on the Bay Bridge, which has a speed limit of 50mph across its entire length. Also, there's no "fast lane" or "passing lane" in this case -- you aren't supposed to be overtaking and changing lanes while you're on the bridge at all. The intent is that everyone drives 50 miles an hour across the bridge, maintaining their position relative to one another, and then speeds up and goes back to passing once the bridge ends. Obviously people don't actually drive that way but z3n was doing the correct thing. For what it's worth I try to always stay in the leftmost lane when I'm on the highway, even though I only go about the speed of traffic or slightly higher, because I like knowing that no one is going to merge into me from the left side*. Every other lane you have to worry about the left and the right, so it's one less danger. Yeah, some people coming up behind me doing 30 over the limit get pissed and pass me on the right. Their choice. *until something happens like in z3n's video Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 03:57 on Jul 23, 2014 |
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Jul 23, 2014 03:55
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Snowdens Secret posted:Why are you screwing off doing 60 in the far left? Traffic almost all the way to the right is pacing you and there is a poo poo ton of room to move over. The car also had more than enough space to pass him on the right side and the bridge has a 50 mph speed limit, so technically ZthreeN was in his rights to be in the fast lane but people loooove doing 70-80 MPH in that bridge. Also I have seen so many motorcycles lane splitting on light traffic at 80+ MPH at that bridge. 
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Jul 23, 2014 03:56
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Sagebrush posted:Also, there's no "fast lane" or "passing lane" in this case -- you aren't supposed to be overtaking and changing lanes while you're on the bridge at all. The intent is that everyone drives 50 miles an hour across the bridge, maintaining their position relative to one another, and then speeds up and goes back to passing once the bridge ends. Isn't that literally every road that exists? You're not supposed to be going over the limit, why are you passing people? Speed kills!!@ e: or is the bridge just an extra special no-speeding zone where you're supposed to not-speed even harder than you usually don't speed?
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Jul 23, 2014 03:57
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Nah, it's different on a bridge -- they want as little speed differential as possible, to avoid merges and braking shockwaves and other stuff that causes collisions and might shut the bridge down. The limit is lower than on the open highway not because of any specific thing to do with bridge construction -- it's five lanes each way ffs, they could easily mark it 75 -- but so that slower vehicles can meet it and proceed along in the pack. Everyone is supposed to be going that same speed. I don't remember if the Bay bridge has the signs, but the Golden Gate certainly also has signs everywhere saying STAY IN LANE and NO PASSING. Once you get on the open road, the trucks keep on going 50 or 55 and the other cars can speed up to the limit of 65 and pass like normal.
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Jul 23, 2014 04:01
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Sagebrush posted:He's on the Bay Bridge, which has a speed limit of 50mph across its entire length. This sounds retarded and unsafe. quote:For what it's worth I try to always stay in the leftmost lane when I'm on the highway, even though I only go about the speed of traffic or slightly higher, because I like knowing that no one is going to merge into me from the left side*. Every other lane you have to worry about the left and the right, so it's one less danger. Yeah, some people coming up behind me doing 30 over the limit get pissed and pass me on the right. Their choice. That sounds like a dick move. If people are passing you on the right with any regularity, you need to get over, for your own safety and the others on the road. I personally don't hang out in the far left anyway because it seems cops are more likely to pull people in that lane over.
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Jul 23, 2014 04:05
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Sagebrush posted:it's five lanes each way ffs, they could easily mark it 75 Snowdens Secret posted:This sounds retarded and unsafe. This. That or this particular bridge is extremely poorly built. That's not a thing here, and we have shitloads of bridges.
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Jul 23, 2014 04:16
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The Auckland Harbour Bridge (tm), which is like a tiny stubby imitation of actual bridges in grown-up countries, has a similar setup. The lanes are all painted dashed lines instead of cat's eyes (which are the norm for the motorway here), the speed limit is 80 instead of 100 and changing lanes/passing is frowned upon but not technically illegal. Also the two center lanes can move around throughout the day depending on which direction the traffic is flowing, which is pretty cool. But the machine is operated by halfwits who don't put the barriers in exactly the same place every day so sometimes you end up with an extremely narrow lane in the middle. This means people driving anything bigger than a corolla end up riding with one side of their car intruding on the next lane over, leading to all kinds of hosed up scenarios.
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Jul 23, 2014 04:24
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Snowdens Secret posted:This sounds retarded and unsafe. I ride at a speed that puts me faster than about 97% of the other cars on the road (75~ when the speed limit is 65 and most traffic goes 70~73), so if 1 in 30 cars passes me on the right, I don't consider that "being a dick". I'll move over for them if I see them coming up behind me, of course, but sometimes they're just blasting by and they're passing on the right at 95 miles an hour before I see them coming. Like I said, it's their choice. Frankly I believe that it's absolutely safer to be in the far left lane as much as possible, because (1) you can ride in a blocking position (2) there's less speed differential between you and other vehicles (3) you don't have to deal with the people panicking about their exit and swerving across your lane (4) you don't have to continuously slow down for/move over to pass grannies trying to merge onto the highway at 40 (5) no one is going to sneak up on you from the left (z3n's video excluded). If you can give me a convincing argument as to why it's safer to be in the middle or right, I'll change my ways, absolutely. I try to do what is safest for me and everyone else, even if it does make me appear to be a dick to some. Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 04:29 on Jul 23, 2014 |
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Jul 23, 2014 04:27
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Snowdens Secret posted:Why are you screwing off doing 60 in the far left? Traffic almost all the way to the right is pacing you and there is a poo poo ton of room to move over. I'm actually generally moving faster than traffic (note me passing the red car), and that video starts right after I pass someone doing 45 in the lane to the right of me. But honestly, it doesn't loving matter what lane you're in for drivers like that. You can see him cut back over to the right at the very end of the video, and he ends up swerving back and forth across all lanes as we travel down the bridge to try and get wherever he is going slightly faster. I do slow down a bit after he passes while I'm checking for other cars behind me, verifying that my gopro is on, etc. I'm moving ~5mph faster than most of the other traffic, and that lane is the best because it has the highest visibility through the right hand corner that's following, traffic tends to be moving the smoothest in the left lanes, and on and on and on. CA is a split speed limit state which is in general a terrible idea - the bridge thing is because a trucker once flipped off the bridge and fell down and died and everyone lost their loving goddamn minds. When it was a 35 zone in the middle due to the new bridge construction it was an amazing clusterfuck every day.
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Jul 23, 2014 05:18
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Hanging out in the left lane when you aren't passing is great for: Getting tickets. Having a pissed off driver who is going faster than you make an unsafe on the right pass. Having a pissed off driver who is going faster than you when traffic suddenly slows pancake you into the car in front of you.
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Jul 23, 2014 06:16
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n8r posted:Hanging out in the left lane when you aren't passing is great for: On a 3+ lane motorway I've never experienced any of these scenarios, for several reasons, and even the goddamn government recommends avoiding the middle lane on a motorbike. I guess you've got some pretty interesting ideas about blocking positions too.
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Jul 23, 2014 10:25
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Linedance posted:On a 3+ lane motorway I've never experienced any of these scenarios, for several reasons, and even the goddamn government recommends avoiding the middle lane on a motorbike. I guess you've got some pretty interesting ideas about blocking positions too. Well the government avoids being in the middle lane in any form of transport, you're supposed to move to the inside lane as soon as it's clear. Obviously on most motorways that involves hanging around in the middle lane most of the time because the left lane is full of HGVs doing 56 (who the loving gently caress though that was a good idea anyway?). I don't understand why people think being merged into unannounced is such a huge problem in the middle lane, you're supposed to be watching out for these dickheads regardless of what lane you're in.
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Jul 23, 2014 10:29
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Who the hell puts a speed bump at the exit of a roundabout when there's no pedestrian crossing? Traffic engineers 
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Jul 23, 2014 12:29
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goddamnedtwisto posted:Well the government avoids being in the middle lane in any form of transport, you're supposed to move to the inside lane as soon as it's clear. Obviously on most motorways that involves hanging around in the middle lane most of the time because the left lane is full of HGVs doing 56 (who the loving gently caress though that was a good idea anyway?). It's not a big deal, and you do look out for them, it's just increased workload, that's all. Instead of only having to actively check one side of you, you have to check both. M4 J3 and J4 are a couple of examples off the top of my head, where you have traffic merging onto the motorway from the left, and traffic in the right lane looking for their exit (Heathrow spur or M25) on the left. That cross-flow means it's just better to be in the rightmost lane until you're past it, or your exit comes up.
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Jul 23, 2014 14:42
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Sagebrush posted:If you can give me a convincing argument as to why it's safer to be in the middle or right, I'll change my ways, absolutely. I try to do what is safest for me and everyone else, even if it does make me appear to be a dick to some. http://www.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=386680&binId=1.810401&playlistPageNum=1 Here is a write up from a year or so ago: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-drive/culture/commuting/driving-in-the-passing-lane-the-canadian-disease/article10712661/
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Jul 23, 2014 16:41
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Snowdens Secret posted:This sounds retarded and unsafe. I figure I am just about as safe in the right lane if I pay attention at on-ramps. Besides, camping in the left lane is illegal (and highly obnoxious) in Washington, and I am pretty sure in California as well.
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Jul 23, 2014 16:52
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In my experience the most dangerous driver is the fast driving aggressive type. Those guys are generally in the left lane driving fast. They love to come up on you fast and tailgate if you aren't out of the way. I prefer to not be tailgated so when I'm not passing I move over. I also believe that cops nail people in the left lane because that's where the fastest drivers are, and generally if they're hiding in the medians they are the easiest to pop. I don't see how getting undertaken on the right by the most aggressive drivers and opening yourself up to more tickets is preferable to being in the right or middle lane.
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Jul 23, 2014 17:30
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Do cops actually enforce the "left lane is for passing only" thing where you guys are? I have never heard of anyone getting ticketed, pulled over, or even warned for that around here.
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Jul 23, 2014 17:32
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Jim Silly-Balls posted:Do cops actually enforce the "left lane is for passing only" thing where you guys are? I have never heard of anyone getting ticketed, pulled over, or even warned for that around here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZhdvl_P1Zc
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Jul 23, 2014 17:35
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^^^ I was going to post that video just to demonstrate how little they care -- hanging out in the left and going 40 miles an hour doesn't even warrant them getting out of their car. They certainly don't seem to give a poo poo here -- Bay Area traffic is dense enough that all the lanes are full of vehicles most of the time, left included. Passing on the right / staying on the left I think is something that cops mostly care about in Europe (and I guess Washington, since two people from there have commented on it now). I also never heard of anyone getting ticketed for it when I lived in Ontario, Quebec, Rhode Island, Vermont or Arizona. Getting piled into by someone travelling fast behind you when the traffic suddenly slows is a risk in every lane, and the sort of thing you should be looking out for at all times regardless. I feel that getting undertaken by aggressive drivers is preferable to having said aggressive drivers suddenly cutting you off or merging into you when they realize they're about to miss their exit.
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Jul 23, 2014 17:42
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I90 through NY has tons of "keep right except to pass" signs and I have seen people get tickets for being left lane campers. Don't be a left lane camper.
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Jul 23, 2014 17:43
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Once traffic is heavy and all the lanes are 'full' I think being in the left lane makes a lot of sense. I know in CA splitting between the left and 2nd left lane is sort of the accepted spot. I think most everyone is talking about when traffic is relatively light. Getting run into from behind is a risk in every lane, but you have more risk in the left lane where the chances of a large speed differential are greater. I think if you're cruising along in the left lane at 80 passing everyone else that is going 75 at a slow rate it's fine to be in the left lane. I think it's a bad idea to not move over for when the dude comes up behind you going 90. Why not get over for 10 seconds and avoid being tailgated and undertaken? Seems a hell of a lot safer than the alternative.
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Jul 23, 2014 17:54
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n8r posted:Once traffic is heavy and all the lanes are 'full' I think being in the left lane makes a lot of sense. I know in CA splitting between the left and 2nd left lane is sort of the accepted spot. I think most everyone is talking about when traffic is relatively light. Getting run into from behind is a risk in every lane, but you have more risk in the left lane where the chances of a large speed differential are greater. Well that is essentially what I said I was doing, if you read back a few posts. I camp out in the left lane going slightly faster than traffic, slowly passing the majority of the cars, and once in a while someone will come up behind me at 90 and then blow by on the right before I notice them. Everyone has experienced those people. I just said that I don't think that makes me "a dick". If someone's tailgating me and it's safe to move over I'll do so. If the road is mostly empty or doesn't have a lot of onramps and exits, then I have no specific safety reason to be in the left and I go over to the right and ride more slowly.
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Jul 23, 2014 18:00
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No you said if they want to pass you on the right then they can do so. Not a smart move in my experience. Edit: If you're not seeing people coming up behind you, you need to be watching your mirrors more regularly, or just moving over.
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Jul 23, 2014 18:02
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Linedance posted:It's not a big deal, and you do look out for them, it's just increased workload, that's all. Instead of only having to actively check one side of you, you have to check both. M4 J3 and J4 are a couple of examples off the top of my head, where you have traffic merging onto the motorway from the left, and traffic in the right lane looking for their exit (Heathrow spur or M25) on the left. That cross-flow means it's just better to be in the rightmost lane until you're past it, or your exit comes up. The eastbound Manchester ring road is the same. It's a complete cluster gently caress of the M62, M60 and M6 merging. If you just want to stay on the M62 it's a thousand times safer to just sit in the right hand lane and watch the madness unfold.
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Jul 23, 2014 18:10
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I always stick to the left lane for all of the reasons stated. In CA we don't have to worry about getting hit from behind since we can position ourselves to split as we see traffic slowing. Also there really is no lane position here. You might get a crazy person running up on you at 95+ in the left lane but you're just as likely to have it happen in any of the other 2-5 lanes (especially if the lane is ending soon. That's secret code for a quick top speed run and swerve into traffic).
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Jul 23, 2014 18:18
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