When bikes outride the biker

Emergency workers fight in vain to save the life of a motorcyclist who was involved in a collision with a car on the Rimutaka Hill Rd earlier this year. PHOTO/ANDREW BONALLACK

A weekend with four motorcycle riders killed or severely injured across New Zealand has to be a jolt for the motorcycling fraternity, but it needs to be a hit to the motorist community as well.

I am in complete agreement with motorcyclists that motorists can be "twits", as New Zealand Motorcycle Safety Consultants chief executive Allan Kirk put it in a NZ Herald story at the weekend. He said motorcyclists must always be prepared for the worst to happen - from car drivers doing stupid things.

But he also conceded there were a lot of motorcyclists out there with high performance bikes and lacking experience.

My stepson has had two motorcycle accidents in his life - one his fault, a slide into the barrier on the Rimutaka Hill Rd, and another in Wellington, with a "twit" of a driver backing his car out into a main road and into the path of his bike.

It was one of those fatalistic moments where you can see it happening, you've got no time to manoeuvre, and all you can do is pick the spot where you're going to hit and prepare for the somersault.

I reckon in urban areas, bikers are constantly wary of "twits", and take care as best they can.

But once they're out on the open road, such as the open stretches of Featherston, it's really down to their own skill as to whether they stay on the bike or depart it - and maybe this world - in some drastic fashion.

Kirk says modern bikes are a different breed for "born-again" bikers, getting back into the game. They are much more powerful. He says the bike "can outride the biker".

It's interesting how this parallels the lament of youth behind the wheel of high performance cars, the "rice rockets" as the Americans put it.

Bikes and cars have improved so drastically from the Hillman Avengers and Triumph Bonnevilles of the day that it really takes an expert to properly use them.

We can't expect a 20-year-old to seriously be in control of a Subaru Impreza, anymore than we can expect a 50-year-old in the throes of a mid-life crisis to handle a modern Ducati. Yet that's what's on offer. More power than we could ever, possibly, need. Some might argue all that power is what saves you when you get into a bad situation. But it's the better rider - and motorist - who never gets into a bad situation in the first place.