Where exactly do the police derive these times from? Do they test a group of average motorists and then take an average reaction time from this? I've just seen on emergency bikers that at a 100mph your thinking time is 130 yards moving at that speed. I for one know that when concentrating on the road as soon as I see a hazard my fingers are on the lever, don't really think its just a reaction/instinct. This works out as roughly 3 seconds thinking time, I'm sorry but how much of a dozy B@stard do you have to be to take 3 whole seconds to react to a situation and get on the brakes!?
i had a speed awareness course last year - dunno why they call it that cos i was well awaare that i was going fast. they should call it a slow awareness course! anyway... the know all lecturer, right boring monotone fker was going on saying how the fastest reaction times are at least half a second... i said (trying not to be negative).... BOLLOX. and produced some time slips that were in my leathers pocket from bulldog last year.... the slowest launch was 300ms. imo that was a fail. i had to point out to them that a biker's reactions will be a hell of a lot keener than your average car driver and would be happy to prove it if he wanted - he changed the subject! then started going on about how all bikers are always speeding. so again BOLLOX. look around the room. there's 31 people here all guilty of speeding. i'm the only biker. so stfu. it is scary when you think though - according to their stats, reaction times vary between 0.5 and 1.5 seconds.... bear in mind that at 60mph you're doing 1 mile a minute = 88 feet per second. so if some geriatric or daydreamer with a 1.5 reaction time is on a collision course with you, they will have gone 132 feet before they brake - then theyve got their braking distance - average 180ft!!! add that together, it gives 320ft / 100m and that's assuming their brakes work and it isnt raining!
The figures quoted are not produced by the Police but by far better qualified people who understand all the science, how the human brain works etc. But, the figures are an average based on the fact that it is the reaction time is the amount of time a driver or rider takes to react from the moment he see the danger to the point where action is taken and the need to brake. So in simple terms, it takes the average rider 0.7 seconds from the moment he sees the danger to the time he actually reacts to that danger. Yes there are some who can react marginally quicker, the majority are up around the 1 second mark and of course the older you get the slower the reaction time. Of course if you are anticipating something happening, then of course reaction times are going to be quicker, but reaction time refers to everyday circumstances where hazards and the scenery is ever changing. But also bear in mind that reaction time is not used in isolation, it is used in conjunction with forward planning and observation, observation links, road positioning and so on. So yes, you may have faster reaction times, but the common denominator is Joe Average who will not have your enhanced riding or driving skills.
I had a moment a few weeks ago and if I had a reaction time of 1-1.5sec that day I wouldnt be here.as said I think its the average over a group..... a group that was probably made up of coffin dodgers. but anyway I never watch that emergency bikers as its not the same without flymo and forrest, plus the narrator has been coming out with some real crap facts about bikes that are false and borderline anti-bike, one so called fact was that bike deaths had risen in 2011 to 28% and the majority was caused by young "mad" bikers losing control at speed.what tripe, when you looked at the facts we made up 20% of all crashes and the death rate had dropped 33% even when the amount of bikes on the road had risen and the amount of crashes due to running off at speed was 11% for 18-35 year olds with collision with another road user being the main cause(55% of them crashes being at junctions). but then you cant make a program that will make bikes look like fun and something to do, just keep banging on the ride a bike and you will die message......sorry to wonder slightly off topic but it really gets on my goat.
I had a moment last month following my mate onto a fast roundabout on which I could see a car, going about his business correctly, but, in my judgement, sufficiently far back enough to not be anywhere near us as we swung through. My mate thought otherwise and braked. Fair enough, he saw it differently to me. Seeing his brake light come on flicked me from 'down a cog, flick left, flick right, flick left, power out' to 'shit! gotta stop'. So my thought processes were jumping tracks already when my mate decided that 'No, that car is too far away to make a difference to us', and released his brake, causing me to switch into 'If I don't go with him, we'll get separated' and buried thoughts of 'will I need the back brake too' below the one that said 'POWER!'. That was when my mate decided discretion was the better part of valour after all and anchored on directly in my newly readjusted trajectory. Crucial memory dump, halt all intended processes, switch immediately to reflexive mode, shudder to a halt, front wheel skipping on the tagnuts of a recent road dressing a couple of feet to one side of him and a wheel width over the white line. Where I had time to feet down, select neutral, flick up my visor and look back over my shoulder at him before the car in question arrived. Thinking time?.......it felt like about seven years at the time. PS: It was entirely my fault. I was deep inside single rider mode rather than adopting group riding mindset, I was obviously riding too close to him and probably had my fangs out too, so Keithy, mate, I'm not having a pop.
thats survival mode, your brain selects what has to be done to get out of the situation. im sure some of you have had the off when you tumble but it feels like slow motion, or as I got and found out it was normal from the doctor, a highside and it was slow motion in the air and B&W.
