Seems we spoke a few days too soon when we said that Laurent Cochet, a.k.a. Lolo, a French journalist with the Moto Journal magazine, made the biggest motorcycle fail of the year when he hit a metal post with his Yamaha FJR 1300 and fell face first into a boat.
We now have a new and much stronger candidate for that award, and he comes to us from Mexico. An unnamed police motorcyclist was travelling in front a presidential motorcade in Mexico City when he overlooked the speed bump on the road. Huge mistake…
The impact was so intense that the presidential guard literally went flying into the air before crashing down and sliding several feet on the road – and it was all captured on film.
The cop was stunned at first but he managed to get up and take off the helmet before his fellow officers came in to help out.
As you can imagine, online viewers of the video are having a blast with the cop's misfortune…
6 Comments:
Harley Davidson's do NOT possess the basic performance competence necessary to be used as emergency vehicles. They are in fact the worst possible choice of all the motorcycles that could be chosen for this type of work. They are far too heavy, they handle like crap, the brakes are insufficient, the suspension travel and ground clearance are a joke.
If motorcycles had to undergo the same stringent standards that departments all over the country adhere to when they choose their four-wheel vehicles, sedans and SUVs, Harley-Davidson would lose every contract they've got.
A far better choice would be adventure style bikes, produced by every other manufacturer in the world, which cost half as much. Such bikes can handle situations like this easily without losing control and causing an accident that led to injury as I'm sure this officer was. With an adventure bike officers could ride over curbs and speed bumps, they could go off road effectively, and they could actually keep up with high-powered sports cars, unlike any current Harley Davidson in use today. Even any competent Japanese made performance bike could have taken that speedbump at speed, they would surely have been destabilized, but it would have been far less likely to lead to a catastrophic event like this one.
Motorcycles are highly effective tools, sadly most police departments in the Western Hemisphere choose HDs for image and appearance sake alone. And this choice has contributed to the deaths of thousands of police officers who must ride that junk.
Just this weekend we lost a state trooper across the river in Illinois, who was riding a Harley in order to get off the night shift. Why Illinois would be forcing its troopers into bike duty in the winter, I don't know.
Major untrained idiot.
It does not matter what type of motorcycle you are riding in... be it a crotch rocket or a dirt bike or Harley. If you are not ready or expecting a bump, you are going for a spill regardless. That being said, who the @#$& puts a speed bump in an Intersection??? I guess Mexicans do!
I've got 20+ years of riding experience under my belt, and I know you're wrong. Motorcycles with enough travel in their suspension can absorb hits like this easily, Harley's And specifically cruiser type motorcycles are not designed for dynamic suspension impacts like this. Sport bikes have much shorter wheelbases, and will just jump over speed bumps like these at speed. There's no way you could take that bump at that speed on a Harley or any other type cruiser cycle and make it, no matter how prepared you are. That's a fact.
Sorry aaronb but you apparently have never been to Mexico. You could be in a dirt bike and never make some of those speed bumps. I left the rear axle of my VW Jetta in a pot hole when I was over there the last time. By the way, I own 4 Harley Davidson motorcyles and have never had a problem riding. I had more wipe outs on my old Honda VFR than my Hogs.
You WILL GO WRONG sometime or the other. You cannot be alert all the time. So if the machine has a good center of gravity.. depending on the frame box or perimeter frame, fork travels, handle bars also decide center of gravity... the machine will go less wrong when you go wrong.
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