Motorcycle racing dangers

[Gangsta SV]

Reading this warning has kinda made me wiffy about getting into motorcycle racing
" Racing motorcycles is one of the most dangerous sports known to man. If you participate in this sport you will most certainly suffer some sort of injury (perhaps serious/fatal).

Before you attempt any form of motorcycle racing we strongly recommend you take lessons from a qualified instructors. Read our disclaimer. Its also a good idea to get some life insurance and update your Will.
"

Is motorcycle racing really this dangerous ? Like people dying / getting injured every race ?


P.S Quote is from http://www.doctordanger.com/motorbik...oadstart2.html

[RSVMILLE661]

You should come up to the track and experience it first hand before you let an outside source influence your decision.

Does the ambulance take people to the hospital on race weekends? Absolutely.

Are those same people who get injured at the race track competing shortly there after? 90% of the time yes!

Is racing dangerous? obviously. But there is something to be said about dragging your knee across the pavement at 80mph.

[Degsy]

That guy is an idiot.

You're safer on the track than on the street.

degs

[Gangsta SV]

Hopefully I'll come up to the race track this summer with my dad , he wants to see what I'm getting myself into , lol

[Gangsta SV]

not yet , still looking for a sv tho , or cbr

[Gangsta SV]

I checked cycle trader and didn't come up with anything , where do you look for bikes ?

[ShredHed]

I don't race [yet] but my suggestion is to first find what kind of passion you have for motorcycle racing before you frighten yourself away by reading horror stories. If you do end up racing, it will be that passion and drive that keeps you healthy [for the most part]. If you contaminate your psyche by focusing on the negative aspects, it will definitely affect your safety on the track and will be another hurdle to overcome. Mental hurdles are by far the hardest to correct.

Most stuff you'll read about the dangers of this or that come from folks who know that material is the most popular because the bulk of people[readers] are chicken shit's anyway, so these articles justify thier personalities and they eat 'em up and recite excerps to the "crazy fools". The rest don't pay much attention, for good reason.

Fear will fuck you up every time. If you ask most high velocity/angle athletes what they're thinking about while hanging it all out, it's not "Oh shit, if I try to get through that gap, will I fall and break my leg", it's "How do I find enough traction, power, and time to get through that gap".

Is motorcylce racing dangerous? Of course, so is climbing, skiing, mountain biking, big-wave surfing, skydiving, etc.... but the more you do it the more you know about it the safer it becomes the more you realize how cool it is the more reason to be happy you're lucky to be doing it....

Like I said, I've never raced motorcylces, but I've done a few other dangerous things and that about sums my opinion of the dangers, so I took a stab at how they'd relate to bikes.

It always comes back to why you do it. For your own passion? Or for other less significant things... It's okay to be scared about it and understand the dangers. Quite another to let that control your thoughts.

Jeez, now I sound like I'm preaching. Time to shut up

Anyway, give it a go, see what you think.

[benVFR]

Great post ShredHed...

I like to try and look at it as great riders acting almost robotic. They are thinking about only what they need too, with no emotion entering the equation at all. Valentino Rossi seems to get compared to a robot a lot of the time, and Michael Schumacher seems kind of like that too. When I'm riding well my head is extremely clear and I'm not really thinking about anything other than riding. When I'm in that mode I notice more details about what's going on and it's easier to make adjustments quickly.

Two great things I've heard. 1) Keith Code, something along the lines of "Riders must make decisions and take action. Reacting is not good enough."

And 2) (Unrelated but cool) "Once you're used to a high level of Danger, a hugely ridiculous level of danger doesn't seem much worse." I believe that one is from Bill Anders, one of the Apollo Astronauts. It's either him or Borman or Lovell. (Apollo 8) Those guys dealt with ridiculous levels of danger and just kept going through their checklists like they were baking a cake.

I think Aviation (and probably Naval stuff) has a lot to offer in terms of riding discipline. Everything is a checklist there, you just concentrate on doing your procedures perfectly and you don't have time to think about the danger. MSF seems to pick up on this pretty well.

The XXX Vin Diesel crap is just fluff to scare people who are clueless and make things seem more exciting.

Ben

[Degsy]

Good post Shred, yopu said it all.

derek

[Smoke Eater]

Kato's crash this weekend made me start thinking about track safety. Suzuka is apparently a pretty dangerous track and a lot of the GP riders didn't want to race there. We may never know what caused the crash but there shouldn't have been a wall there. Even gravel or an airfence at that speed would be a hazard but a wall is ridiculous.

That said. There are a lot of riders who won't race at Loudon for the same reasons. There are a lot of places there where you don't want to go down at speed. Track days are a little different because we don't go as fast as we'd like to think were going. I hit 120 on the front stretch once last year.

Motorcycle racing is certainly not the most dangerous profession. There are many, many more hazardous things to do.