Quote:
Originally Posted by Motofool
I feel sorry for that beautiful Ninja 300 and for your bad experience. 
Which tire yielded?
Were you going too fast?
Other than paying more attention to the surface, what would you do different in similar situations to avoid a low-side fall? |
the rear tire bounced and yielded when it reconnected with the ground.
I was going 35-50mph, I don't know the exact speed but I was in 2nd gear and the bike wasn't leaned very far over so I think it was closer to 35 than 50. The road is a 30mph zone but that corner has a suggested limit sign of 15mph. I don't believe that speed was the problem, just that speed made it worse when I lost the rear. I had just started my throttle roll on. In terms of speed/awareness I was going too fast because I was distracted, though I naturally slowed a bit when I was distracted.
Well, keeping myself from being distracted would help. I ride through a lot of roads with patches of gravel similar to this case and there is usually a line that you can take where you don't run into any problems but because I was distracted I took a standard outside-inside line and crossed right over the gravel patch. Usually when I spot gravel I slow down, look for a safe path and continue slowing down until I find said path. A outside entrance-outside apex-outside exit or A inside entrance/apex/exit line would have been safe in this case.
As I've stated before though, I'm not terribly bummed about it because I consider myself relatively lucky due to my lack of injuries and the relative lack of damage to the bike. It is unfortunate but there are bright sides to it in the long term. Mainly the fact that I get to make my own graffiti paint scheme on the fairing set when I find a replacement fairing on ebay/craigslist.