Motorcycle for cheap transportation?

[Sclass]

but .. car tires aren't round. how would the bike turn. omg

Hey, I didn’t say I’d do this. Some crazies among the adventure touring set are doing this. Yes it sounds crazy but if you want to be cheap, these guys report getting tens of thousands of miles off a rear tire. I’m not convinced it is dangerous having not tried it personally. They claim the tires can lean and corner which is the first thing they’re asked.

[SavingWithBabies]

That is wild. I was guessing they didn't lean as much but it looks like when you lean, the tire deforms and it works. Looking at videos on youtube like this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ_d5IIdRZI

At MSF, I learned to lean way more but I noticed in riding, that I tended to get a little more conservative in leaning and if you looks at a lot of bikers rear tires, it's clear they aren't leaning as much as they could. What I'm getting at is I'm skeptical that it has the full range of lean of a motorcycle tire but most don't actually need or use that. Just a guess though based on looking at that video.

[Farm_or]

@sclass- similar experience again. Only mine was a Suzuki 80. And the mud hole we played in was a cow pond. It was chest deep in the middle. We took to ramping out into it and that was how I learned to swim. And also learned about leeches. And motorcycle maintenance because the internal combustion engines don't like drowning!

[enigmaT120]

SavingWithBabies wrote: "But I do think motorcycling is safer than bicycle riding (on roads w/ cars)."

Nope. You are several times more likely to die per mile on a motorcycle than on a bicycle, according to some stats I looked up at the DOT a few years ago. I do both.

[SavingWithBabies]

@enigmaT120 Yes however after riding both for long enough, I know which I would prefer to be in. The problem with statistics is that they are generalized. Motorcycling tends to attract a wide variety of people and quite a few are far out on the pier of risk taking and/or young with poor judgement. So while I don't disbelieve the statistics, I don't think they tell the whole story.

[BRUTE]

almost the only way to die on a bicycle is to get hit by a car. that same car hit is as likely to kill a motorcyclist, but motorcycling also offers a wide variety of dying that is not open to bicyclist, due to the increased potential speed.

[SavingWithBabies]

But on a bicycle, you're in a subjective lane that is frequently used by other vehicles and pedestrians. In Chicago, I got doored by people opening their Uber vehicle's door right into the bicycle lane. One moment I was up and slowly coming up to a light, next moment I was on the ground with a wrecked rim and a scraped up knee. A bicyclist on a similar route was killed when a larger semi truck invaded the lane. With a motorcycle, at least your in the regular flow of traffic. You have decent mirrors and can accelerate away from trouble. On a bicycle, not so much.

The statistics don't lie and I'm not trying to say one is safer than the other. I prefer the motorcycle because I have more control. Yes, I can use that control to kill myself with increased speed (yay physics). On a bicycle, I feel much more like a sitting duck.

That was all I was trying to say. I don't want to derail this thread.

[jacob]

A lot of bicycle DOT death stats come from helpless idiots who ride on the wrong side of the street or on the side walk---not knowing what they do. A popular killer is riding down the sidewalk from the wrong direction and getting clobbered on a T because few drivers would expect an idiot on a bike driving across their path a few feet from where they'd naturally stop their car. Ironically, the cyclist is prob. on the sidewalk in the first place because of misconstrued safety concerns.

Hard to describe. Easy to draw.

Basically, we're talking about the "left hook", the "right hook", "t-boning" (cars sometimes don't realize how fast some bikes go), and "dooring". Those are simple to understand, yet some people have the damndest time accepting that this shit sometimes kills. "But but ... the car is not supposed to do that, so I should be safe" Duh! Physics always beats ""supposed to"".

TL;DR - Most bicycle casualties in the US are idiots who learned how to drive a bicycle going up and down the sidewalks of suburbia when they were 10 year olds. If you follow the laws of the road, you're quite safe.

[Sclass]

A lot of bicycle DOT death stats come from helpless idiots who ride on the wrong side of the street or on the side walk--

Oh you don’t need to show me this one. I almost killed a guy riding on the sidewalk. Immigrant type traveling against traffic. I pulled out of a driveway to make a right turn into traffic and he “appeared” to my right where I’d least expect him. I’m focusing on cars coming from the left. Worse he was traveling fast weaving between bus kiosks, trash cans and planters so the window of me glancing his way to look for slow moving pedestrians was too short to spot him.

I used to argue about MC vs. bicycle safety in grad school. The collision cross section is larger on the bike due to the relative difference in speed between the cars swirling around it. I forgot most of my particle physics but I recall this increased the chances of interactions. Basically what SavingWithBabies said about flow. When I’d commute on the freeway I would put myself in a good position where it was difficult for cars to hit me. I’m not passing a lot of cars and I’m not letting them pass me, I just sit in a little pocket flying s long at 65 mph.

This is why I like a slightly overpowered bike for street riding. I used to tell my worried SO that the cars have to touch me to hit me and I don’t make that easy. That leaves the proverbial left turn in front of me, the idiot who doesn’t see me stopped at an intersection and runs over me, and the drunk who weaves over the double yellow and takes me out.

[BRUTE]

The statistics don't lie and I'm not trying to say one is safer than the other. I prefer the motorcycle because I have more control. Yes, I can use that control to kill myself with increased speed (yay physics). On a bicycle, I feel much more like a sitting duck.

brute does agree with this. but it's very subjective and optimizes for feeling good, not for staying alive.

[BlueNote]

I take a sort of tactical approach between the sidewalk and the road when biking in Toronto. So far it's worked. On the sidewalk I make sure it's fairly clear of pedestrians and I go fairly slow, I give everyone else the right of way including cars and only take the sidewalk where the roads are way too dangerous (typically Bathurst street, Steeles and parts of Yonge).

My closest call so far has been motorists blowing red lights and stop signs while looking at their phones or otherwise distracted.

Biggest pet peeve is the guy who parks in the bike rack area with his motor cycle, he comes down the ramp into the parking garage and quickly drives through a fire escape area, driving into anyone who dares be in the way and parks it in the fire escape area so he can avoid paying for parking like a bicyclist. Don't do that.

[Jason]

I guess they are similar to pit bulls, guns and polygamy, but I would never get one. I grew up with a dirt bike and I'm surprised I'm alive. I thought of getting one in college but a physical therapist told me how many of her patients were motorcycle accident people and I never thought of it again.

[jacob]

I used to argue about MC vs. bicycle safety in grad school. The collision cross section is larger on the bike due to the relative difference in speed between the cars swirling around it. I forgot most of my particle physics but I recall this increased the chances of interactions.

Yes and no --- not so simple. What we're really interested in is the reaction or collision rate.

In terms of cross section, it doesn't depend on speed in either case. It's approximately the frontal surface area of the pedestrian, cyclist, or motorcyclist as seen from the car. The reason it doesn't depend on speed is that there are no [significant range] forces operating before they touch. Conversely, if you were look at the cross section for whether a spaceship would hit a planet, speed would matter. If delta v was really high, it would fly right by. Compare to a low delta v where gravity would have time to bend the approach trajectory towards the planet (so the gravitational cross section would be larger and larger the slower the spaceship moved.) Similar effects happen between particles at the quantum scale.

However, in terms of reaction rate, relative speed matters. This is where it gets complicated. A high delta v, like a cyclist or a pedestrian, the car would literally have one shot to collide as it zoomed past. Of course as a cyclist, you're experiencing multiple cars zooming past. Your odds of collision depends on the distribution of individual cars over the road. This is why cyclists hate cars who don't pull out when they pass a cyclist. Also why some argue for bicycle lanes which are a great idea insofar they would never ever cross a car lane. Otherwise, I think bicycle lanes make cyclist dumber which is why I'm generally against them as long as they're not everywhere. (This makes it impossible to go from A to B in terms of solutions.)

A motorcycle would only experience 1-2 cars at a time (the one in front then the one behind). But he would have multiple chances of colliding with those two cars. This depends the distribution of distances to those 1-2 cars over time. This is why drivers and motorcyclists hate tailgaters.

So it's similar to nuclear fusion, you need three things(*) to make it happen: time, density, and temperature. Temperature is just another measure for speed distribution and speed distribution times time is just a distance distribution. Thus density + distance distribution.

Personally, I think it's "abuse" to roll the distribution into the cross-section itself, but I see where you're going with this.

(*) The reason that we don't have operational nuclear fusion is that physicist have only figured out how contain two of those three in a controlled fashion at a time.

Thus overall, the distance distributions are very different in kind between cyclists and motorcyclists, while the cross sections are about the same.

[BRUTE]

good analysis by Dear Leader jacob.

the two most common motorcyclist deaths by car are being tailgated, and being t-boned at an intersection by a cager running a red light.

brute has a friend who woke up in the hospital one day. last memory was of standing at a light. nice soccer mom in a truck ran the light. cages turn nice humans into reckless murderers.

[suomalainen]

FWIW, I was on a bicycle when I was hit head-on by a driver who wasn't paying attention (slight left turn at 45mph without a blinker). No idea if she was on a phone or what, but what has kept me off the road ever since is that the incidence of seeing people on their phones while driving has only increased. Wish there were better statistics for that. Anyway, be as careful and vigilant as possible, but all it takes is one idiot who isn't you. I was lucky as fuck - broken neck and everything but here I sit typing away. Wife coulda EREd that day.

Also, I know this is the anecdote vs statistics fallacy (is there a real name for that?), and if I hadn't already been hit, I would go with the statistics. But once you've become a statistic, it becomes too visceral to ignore the personal anecdote.

[Sclass]

Personally, I think it's "abuse" to roll the distribution into the cross-section itself, but I see where you're going with this.

Your right. I’m misusing and confusing the collision cross section. There is another related parameter in those calculations that relates the reaction rate of colliding particles that depends on relative velocity and flux density. I don’t remember the details but I think you’ve explained it. My riding style on the highway uses the motorcycle’s extreme acceleration and deceleration advantage to move with the flow of traffic. In the limiting case I’m moving at the same speed as the cars and they don’t have the opportunity to collide with me (except reckless lane changes) The other limit is placing a bar stool on the lane divider, taking a seat and saying prayers as the cars move around you at 65 mph.

The best example I’ve seen of this riding style is motorcycle patrol cops. You’ll have to do something quite abrupt to strike one. They just don’t leave that door open.

That is close to what bicycles have to deal with. I buzzed a hundred riders today on my way to the beach with my car. They were undoubtedly buzzed by hundreds of cars. If they could move like a 1000cc modern motorcycle I couldn’t get close enough to strike them.

As I said before, this doesn’t save me from all problems. I got hit by a trash can that fell off a truck in front of me one day. Another time a vehicle to my right picked up a truck tire tread and launched it at me. All this at freeway speeds.

[jennypenny]

I love motorcycles, but it seems like when you go that route you give up the safety of a car as well as the benefits of a bike (health, environment, cost). Am I missing the benefit of choosing a motorcycle over the other two?

I'll admit I'm biased though. I'd never want to play chicken on a bike or motorcycle with a bunch of speeding battering rams driven mostly by idiots with one eye on their phone.

[jacob]

There is another related parameter in those calculations that relates the reaction rate of colliding particles that depends on relative velocity and flux density.

That's what the temperature measures.

There are three kinds of particles---bolztman, fermi-dirac, and einstein-boson---describing this at the microphysics level. At the classic-physics road-traffic level there are idiots and defensive drivers vs helpless/experienced rider distributions... not as simple as particles.

An in-shape bike-racer might be ~ a 1k cc motorcyclist when it comes to acceleration and road-wisdom due to the combination of experience and "engine power/weight".

[Sclass]

Uh ok.

Now you’re confusing torque and horsepower.

All that torque ain’t going to get you going at 65 mph on the freeway. 1000cc is about having both power and torque. You trade those off on the 600s depending on the design.

[BRUTE]

Am I missing the benefit of choosing a motorcycle over the other two?

199hp @ 207.7 kg wet weight