07-19-2006, 11:45 AM
.paul Wrote:OR if you late brake them, or pass them, a lot of times they get fixated or forget to brake because they are like oh shit someone just passed me, and then while you are braking for the turn they just hit you.
I guess that is what happened to gula
My actually getting rear-ended was on the street, in a parking lot. I was stopped to turn, some squid wasn't paying a lick of attention and I just heard my friend yell "STEVE!". Then the noise of plastic on plastic as a guy ran up the left side of my bike, finally stopped when his front wheel was up by my knee. Highlight was his girlfriend came flying by me on the *right* side. Her boyfriend was caring enough to have her in shorts and flipflops. Luckily she never hit the ground, she just did this awesome running/hopping thing for 10 feet.
At VIR North, I passed two people on the right coming out of the esses then moved over to the left side of the track, passed another and waited for my brake marker. I had already spotted what biker I would tuck in behind going up into 7 and since she was further to the inside of the track I had room to brake. Then she decided "actually, I want to be over.... *here*". Well now she's directly in front of me, I was already running kind of hot but had to release the brakes, scoot over to the edge of the track, and then get hard on the brakes while running down the painted stripe. I ran right up next to her, close enough that I could have kicked her. The only reason I made the turn was because she turned in ridiculously early and free'd up some of the turn for me to burn off more speed. That was in the Sport Enthusiast/Intermediate group.
The rearending I saw was at a race at Summit, guy knew he could deep brake and the guy behind him was determined to not let him get away. They made contact.
People make mistakes, sometimes you can work around them, sometimes you can't. You're not in a car so when you can't you will probably get hurt.