Had a close one !!

It’s amazing how ones emergency stop proceedure goes out of the window when you are bricking yourself.

I nearly got wiped out this morning by Mr. Parcelforce. I was following his lovely red van for quite a while until he signalled left, pulled in and bumped up the pavement to park. Believeing he had parked up (as he was on the pavement & still signalling left) as I drew along side to pass him he immediately swung right to park in a better spot on the other side of the road. Right in front of me !! I went in to emergency stop mode, i.e. grabbed a handfull of front brake, lost the front end, paniced, put both feet down, swerved and skidded around a bit, stayed upright -phew, stalled the bike, re-started the bike, wrong gear, stalled the bike etc etc…

After getting going again I slowed past Dk-brain to ‘wave’ and tell him the error of his ways. All he did was shrug his shoulders and laugh at me !!! What a dk. Just beacuse we wear crash helmets we are not really all extras from ‘Clone Wars’. Some of us have families which might not find it FUNNY if we are hurt.

Anyway, I’m sure we’ve all been there. We live n’ learn !!! Still a bit shakey tho.

Any Em-stop that doesnt send you sideways down the road is good one mate, glad to see you got by - by the skin of your teeth it seems :slight_smile:

Good heads up tho - time for me to find a late night car park and sqeeze that break lever alot methinks. :stuck_out_tongue:

E-stops on a bike are just more difficult than in a car as the bike goes from a balanced state to pretty much a dead stop in a very short space of time. It just isn’t as stable as a car. At least a car doesn’t fall over when you hit the anchors. With everything else going on in ‘that split second’ it is difficult to make the e-stop perfect. Anyway as you said Red, at least I stopped !! Yeah, maybe some practice in an empy carpark is not such a daft idea.

Its definately a good idea, you must know your bikes limits under breaking at various speeds, slowly work up to actually locking the front wheel and teach yourself to regain traction.

Ive just got a new bike and although I did this with my old bike have not got round to it on this one yet.

But as you say more often than not it all goes to sh1t when that eejot cager gets your adrenal gland pumping!

Which is why I choose ABS for my bikes. :smiley: See left.

hmm well first thing I would have done was snapped up a photo of the Van and the Bloke and inform him that his employer will be hearing from my lawyer… see his smile turn upside down… I would have also made sure to get any witnesses details, I assume someone was present and saw it happen. I would also go to my GP and say I feel really scared and I am no longer confident to ride my bike etc etc…

We were talking about milking it… this is one situation I say it is OK to do it. Losing his job and having his company fork out for him… I say that would be just.

You stayed upright mate - so you can’t have completely cocked it up - I’ve been down the road once after an emerency stop.

Always be careful of people who drive for a living - vans, black cabs, minicabs etc - as they tend to be even more unpredictable than your average cage - e.g. sudden stops, u-turns etc.

Next time take a picture of him and report him to the police for careless driving!