BMW R1200R R1150R/T F800 K1200R R1100R/T R1250R RnineT Message Board

Hi all,
I wonder if anyone here has had a similar experience. Last May I had an accident where a driver coming from the opposite direction made a sudden right turn crossing my lane. Afterwards of course the driver said she had not seen me coming. Applying all the brakes available the bike went down quickly, sliding along the tarmac, on its left side, missing the front of the car by a few inches, I on the other hand took a roll over the front of car and ended on the other side of it, after a series of knocks and bumps. I hurt my shoulder but the lesson to be learned here is that the body armour, shoulders, elbows, back, hips and knees, saved me from very serious injuriies indeed. Anyway, the police did not agree with my estimate of the speed I was at the point of breaking, I said 55-60kmh, they worked out that I had been at 77-81kmh, judging from the distance the bike had slided on its side until coming to a full stop som 80 meters away. Investigation of the bike showed that the only points of contact with the tarmac were the cylinder head and the tip of the handguard for the pillion passenger. I have since wondered if there is any data on bikes side sliding, where bikes like ours with the boxermotors are compared to bikes with line motors, i.e. the whole side of the bike makes contact and thereby providing many more points of resistance and hence slidiing a shorter distance at the same initial speed.
Scandic

What you need is a crash expert evaluation. Certainly there is data available for all sort of metal and size sliding over tarmac ... May have an implication on insurance and indemnity you might expect. I suppose the bike is NON-ABS? If yes that would be another lesson learned.

Brgds
Oliver

http://x.vceinc.com/2009/12/speed-calcu ... -accident/

knowing how the original calcuation was done should be the first step.
Got to verify the metrics used and then check if the metrics are valid.

You may need your own expert if it's not financially prohibitive.

Coefficients of friction, temperature, precipitation, velocity, etc, etc. Its curious how the police could pinpoint this within a 4 kph range. You need a good attorney, (maybe not even good) who can plant enough doubt on the police estimate. Shouldn't be too difficult.

Although not on a Beemer a guy in Melbourne on a new (5 day old) MT-01 was to be nailed by the police until
he produced the video of the accident:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nu7jzKsjs7M


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yigkjokAz0s

On board cams are sometime your best friend.

I realise this doesn't help the OP, but it could help someone.

thanks for your replies. The police took nearly 5 months to produce their expert calculations and it turned out to be 11 pages long full of formulas and generalities. They did not adress the point I made from day one that a comparative data on the sliding distances of different types of motorcycles needed to be obtained. My question to you guys was if you know of any such information. I have found on the internet some american based research where the sliding distances of several types of bikes at the same initial speed are measured. The difference is considerable even when the same bike is measured sliding, first on the one side and then on the other. That seems to suggest that points of friction have something to do with the sliding distance. Anyway, the damage to the bike is settled with the insurance company, I just hate to be wrong when I know I am right. Besides I had to pay a fine for speeding!!