A reminder video to secure your loads

Obo

Obo

Joined
Oct 22, 2019
Messages
4,030
Location
East Coast Canada
Bike
24 GL1800 Tour DCT A
For any of you who've watched Moto Giant's videos, you'll be aware of his recent accident, injuries and amputations,

For those of you who haven't seen his videos, he's recently posted one showing the cause of his accident.

His luggage became loose and his sleeping bag locked up the rear wheel.

The video was captured by his on bike front & rear camera system.

While not fun to watch, hopefully his experience can be a lesson to us all that when you've got your bike loaded, ensure that load is secure.

If it's not, it's easy to see how quickly bad things can happen!

Be aware, ride safe, have fun!

 
Yes, Don lived close to me for several years, and I have ridden with him many times. I first found out about this tragedy on ADVrider several weeks ago, shortly after it happened.

I knew he had converted a bus and was traveling unencumbered, but I lost track of him and wasn't aware of his YouTube channel. You'll have to admit, he has a unique attitude about the aftermath.

It is tragic nonetheless.

Bringing it back to the ST community, it clearly illustrates what can happen when your rear wheel locks up, no matter whether from a loose luggage strap, or in our case a malfunctioning SMC, as Larry is quick to remind us.

Don't take things for granted, and wear appropriate clothes.
 
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I didn't watch the video, and after reading the replies here about his injuries I'm not going to.

I had a similar thing happen years ago on a local freeway while commuting home from my job. When the rear wheel locked up and the tach dropped to zero, my first instinct was to pull in the clutch because I figured somehow the engine had seized. When that didn't help, I stopped thinking and just made sure I kept the bike tracking in a straight line. I was traveling at about 75mph when it locked up, I put a black streak on the freeway for probably about 100 yards before the bike finally stopped. I saw it the next day on my ride home and I was absolutely shocked at how long it was. Fortunately the event played out over enough time that the traffic in adjacent lanes could see what was happening, and they slowed down with me until I stopped. I was then able to see my tail bag (this was on an FZR1000, not my ST) wedged between the rear wheel and fender. I rolled the bike backwards to clear the jam, rolled the bike over two lanes onto the shoulder to get it out of traffic and regain my composure, and eventually restarted the engine and continued home. Fortunately it was a relatively new rear tire so it survived the trauma, and at speeds under about 20-25mph it rolled with a thunk-thunk-thunk from the flat spot that was created.

So this kind of thing can be done without crashing, but its obviously preferable to not allow your cargo to do this in the first place. I've never used a tail bag since that incident. However, given the saddlebag arrangement on the ST1100, I'm not sure anything could get into the rear wheel/fender area to cause a lockup on that particular bike.
 
Did I understand him correctly? He was using nylon straps to secure his gear and they were tensioned by some small bungee cords? He was not using a ROK strap type that keeps tension on the gear?

He was very lucky not to have gone in the direction of that car carrier when the bike went down.
 
dwalby said:
So this kind of thing can be done without crashing,
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Of course it can, but there are so many variables to incidents like this that we really cannot compare them. Aside from age, and riding ability differences, there is the behavior of one bike compared to another in these circumstances. He said he had a tank slapper, which if I am not mistaken is an uncontrolled, violent oscillation of the front wheel/handlebars. This does not diminish your skill in bringing your bike to an upright halt, nor does it speak ill of his inability to do the same.
 
I hate bungee cords... not just because they are unreliable but they can take out an eye pretty quickly... rok straps are the way to go or even regular straps that don't have any tension are fine. It's really more about strapping stuff down using common sense... especially if your bike has a chain..
 
SMSW said:
Of course it can, but there are so many variables to incidents like this that we really cannot compare them. Aside from age, and riding ability differences, there is the behavior of one bike compared to another in these circumstances. He said he had a tank slapper, which if I am not mistaken is an uncontrolled, violent oscillation of the front wheel/handlebars. This does not diminish your skill in bringing your bike to an upright halt, nor does it speak ill of his inability to do the same.
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My intention wasn't to compare riding skills, and I had no idea of the mechanics of his get-off since I didn't watch the video. A tank slapper is initiated by the front and rear wheels getting out of alignment. If you can react quickly enough once the rear starts to get out of alignment after it locks, and steer into the slide to counter the initial yawing, then its controllable. That was the message I was trying to convey in my post, if you can react quickly when your rear wheel locks up unexpectedly, you can get out of it without crashing. If I had to speculate further, I'd probably claim that being on a sportbike with great handling characteristics helped substantially, compared to being on something with lesser handling. Since I didn't watch the video I don't know what he was riding.
 
Many years ago the brother of a mechanic friend bought a Harley chopper. It had a very small peanut tank on it and he used to carry a small 1 gallon metal gas can bungee corded to the sissy bar. One day he and his girlfriend were going down the freeway and the gas can came loose and was sucked under the rear fender and tire. It was like a gasoline explosion with fuel going all over him and his girlfriend and the tire locked up solid. He was very lucky the gas did not ignite and being that the chopper was so long it stayed steady even with the rear wheel locked so he did not fall. I shudder to think about what it would have been like had the fuel ignited.
 
dwalby said:
My intention wasn't to compare riding skills, and I had no idea of the mechanics of his get-off since I didn't watch the video. A tank slapper is initiated by the front and rear wheels getting out of alignment. If you can react quickly enough once the rear starts to get out of alignment after it locks, and steer into the slide to counter the initial yawing, then its controllable. That was the message I was trying to convey in my post, if you can react quickly when your rear wheel locks up unexpectedly, you can get out of it without crashing. If I had to speculate further, I'd probably claim that being on a sportbike with great handling characteristics helped substantially, compared to being on something with lesser handling. Since I didn't watch the video I don't know what he was riding.
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The sleeping bag sucked into the tire, locked it up, the bike's rear started to slide out, then caught and he high sided. They think his foot may have got caught under the bike during the slide.

Bike is a chain driven adventure style.
 
St-Gerard said:
I also wonder if he used the front brake?
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I can't say, but Don is a very experienced rider, both on and off road.

If the back tire locked up, I would "think" (not knowing, I wasn't there) that he would not have used the front while he was already sliding.

He does talk about the crash in his videos from the hospital bed.
 
Regardless of the how, the cause was a load that came loose, and the results were scary to watch.

I'd never really thought about having a rear lock like that and that one couldn't just ride it out. I've always more worried about locking the front wheel while riding.

It'll make me more cautious. Will it prevent something else from possible happening, nope, but I'll take whatever bits of help I can.

A lost load could have serious consequences to you (like in this instance), another rider behind you, or another vehicle & its passengers.
 
I can't forget the ride I took years ago - it was with Don and the BamaRides group, In fact - when I hastily tied a very nice Bogen tripod onto the back of my bike as we left his house.

An hour or so later, we stopped for whatever and I noticed the ties were still attached.

But the tripod was not.

It was a big loss, but it wasn't a crash.
 
Obo said:
The sleeping bag sucked into the tire, locked it up, the bike's rear started to slide out, then caught and he high sided. They think his foot may have got caught under the bike during the slide.

Bike is a chain driven adventure style.
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To clarify, I did know that the tire locked up from the sleeping bag getting caught in the rear wheel, but I didn't watch the video to see exactly what happened after it locked up and how he ultimately crashed.

And, since braking has been discussed in later posts, I'll add that in my case I did not use any front brake at all, I just rode it out until the bike stopped on its own.
 
Learned long ago the importance of doule checking and making damn sure your load is not going any where. And yes I'm at that point in life when a reminder is a good thing.
 
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