Oh dear, a rural left hand bend crash at 27mph!
Sergeant Breeze has not asked quite the right question. Rather than asking how you correctly assess corner entry speed, I would ask why this poor chap chose this particular corner at which to crash?
You could safely assume that this was not the first corner he encountered, so what was different about this corner compared to all the ones he had successfully negotiated before? Just looking at the picture of the aftermath we can see that there are chevrons in both directions and from the point where the photographer was standing, we can see that this corner was quite long. Sadly the photograph does not tell us if there were any more chevrons before or after the ones we can actually see, so we do not know the full extent of the corner or the road leading up to it.
Looking at where the car stopped, I would say that whatever went wrong, our rider got a spot of target fixation on the telegraph pole and sailed towards it and would have probably hit it, had the car not got in the way first!
So then, a classic rural left hand bend accident, made even more poignant by the fact that it happened at a stupidly low speed. Makes mincemeat of the idea that you slow down and enter the bend at a speed you’re happy with as you probably couldn't go much slower than 27mph if you tried.
One day, the Police will investigate accidents properly and perhaps will let us know just exactly what is going wrong in rural bends, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
Posted: 31/08/2010 at 18:36
