Dear XJR1300 rider, A21, 30 June

Heading north from Tunbridge Wells, about 5.45pm. I was on my Street
Triple.

You came up behind me on the long Castle Hill descent to the by-pass,
and I didn't gun it then because it's a bit narrow for traffic
splitting and there have been some terrible accidents there, so when
the road opened out into the dual carriageway, I nailed it and so did
you.

Interesting to see just how little difference there is in performance
between the two bikes, even though mine is half the capacity of yours.
Having ridden an XJR, I'd guess the roll-on performance is similar,
too. Anyway, you came past me at about 120mph and did a couple of
overtakes on the inside to get past some dawdlers. I bottled that,
because at those speeds, if they haven't seen you and decide to move
over anyway, you just haven't got the room to react. But you
sportingly slowed down to something over a ton on the long uphill drag
near Sevenoaks.

So we went flying down the descent to the M25, and I managed to record
a new top speed on the Bad Boy's Display on the Triple. And you
carried on towards Dartford while I peeled off for the delicious left-
hander onto the M25 anti-clockwise.

Anyway, thanks for one of the better ten-mile thrashes I've had, and
hope you enjoyed it too.

 

A bit too close to the circumstances around that 170mph guy videoed
going under a camper van. It's not the speed that's the problem it's the
closing speed.

What's there to say except heh !

 

I'm reminded of a chap in the Scottish parachute club who binned his R1
and was sliding along the road towards an oncoming car at a reasonable
closing speed. Said car did a good job of braking and they stopped,
mutually, with him nudged against the wheel under the bodywork. Another
foot and it would have needed 2 body bags. So it isn't always the sudden
stop at the end which kills you.

His Akito leather suit survived remarkably well, for kit that is meant
to be a bit shite.

 

AOL

 

I generally don't do it anymore.

My trip in the back door of a cop shop told me all I needed to know
about how dibbles feel about what they think is undertaking. And I don't
want that view again.

Pretty much the only time I do do it is if the traffic's moving at less
than the speed limit, the car's in lane three, I can pass in lane 1 and
lane 2 is empty.

 

Well, I slid down the road at speed in that Halvarssons jacket the other
week, and while the outer is a bit foxed, it really didn't begin to bite
into the technical armour layer.

 

You were wearing that? shit!! Well GLF can sell you a replacement
outer shell natch. Did the job by the sound of it.

 

It was pissing down with rain, on a concrete road, and I was doing no more
than 70-80 mph tops. I slid a long way, then tried to sit up at about 20-30
and started rag-dolling. The only damage to the inner is a bit of a tear in
the mesh lining of one of the sleeves.

 

Go on admit it, you bashed your head against the concrete a few times
and it didn't make any difference, you're still complete normal ;-)

 

It may be the brandy talking after a week of forced abstinence but you
clearly weren't going fast enough.

What exactly were they hinting at doing you for ?

 

They hinted at nothing. They nicked me on suspicious of dangerous
driving. There's more context to it, but the short version is
undertaking now falls under the bracket of dangerous and I don't want to
go through that again.

 

Well the one to worry about would be causing death
by dangerous driving.

Clunk click - or was that clunk clunk ouch?

Of course 99.9% of the time no one dies, however when
someone does you go to jail.

 

JP can, frankly, assert whatever he likes. I was the one in the
interview room that day.

 

'fraid I side with Ogden on this one. On the two Bikesafe days I've
been on, I asked a roomful of bike coppers on each how they felt about
it. And they were pretty unanimous that you'd get a bollocking. They
said although it wasn't illegal, it was so unusual as far as most
drivers are concerned that you were asking for trouble doing it and
therefore it fell under due care.

And last October I was on the receiving end of the bollocking for
doing just that on the M5.

I still do it mind.

 

That's precisely what happened to AndrewR (on the A69 rather than the
M5), and he got a choice of points or training.

Ditto.

 

I got told I was going to be prosecuted for due care, but I never
heard anything about it. Given it happened in October 07 I don't
think I'm likely to either.

 

Overtaking is not illegal. In certain contexts it can be considered
dangerous. Same applies to undertaking.

It only takes one Brunstrom-a-like in Traffic Plod to issue a guideline to
*interpret* all undertaking as dangerous for the practice to become totally
outlawed. All part of the modern process of policing by numbers rather than
having intelligent officers who assess each case on its merits. JP probably
falls into the latter group, but you are very unlikely to meet one of his
peers as they have either retired, been moved out of Traffic or simply left
the job in disgust.

 

I do it in the car[1], never mind on the bike.

[1] in fact, I undertook maybe 75-100 vehicles on the M25 yesterday
between J23 and J24, with me in lane 1 doing ~60mph, and everyone in
lanes 2 and 3 doing maybe 45-50mph. Followed by a nice blat down an
unusually clear Ridgeway through Botany Bay with a bloke in a FTO
doing his best to keep up, including when I overtook someone on a VFR
riding pitifully slowly (like maybe 40mpg in a NSL zone).

 

The definition of careless or dangerous, as far as driving offences are
concerned, is where the standard of driving falls below (or far below,
respectively) that which would be expected of a competent and careful
driver.

Other drivers are going to be expecting to see people pass on the right.
They aren't going to expect to see people pass on the left. Those other
drivers are the jury at your trial, they think they are the benchmark
competent and careful driver and you're doing something they wouldn't
expect (or do themselves).

I don't mean this to sound patronising - obviously things are open to
bending a bit, those drivers don't expect me to go flying past on the
right with a speed differential of 50mph or more but it doesn't mean I
won't do it, but these days I tend to view blatant undertaking as akin
to having a loud can or a tiny plate - it's just asking for trouble.

The primary legislation may not have changed but the rules of the game
have. Plod are now routinely nicking people for dangerous driving when
they're doing over 130mph (two I know personally in the last few months)
when it used to be considered simple speeding. And you can get banged up
for dangerous.

Quite. I was tugged several years ago after unwittingly being chased at
140mph and got away with a ticking off. A mate did the same recently and
ended up being bundled into a cell for the night after a long chat about
dangerous driving. He's currently on public transport courtesy of the
careless driving conviction that followed. Neither of us did anything
those instances but speed. I was chased through heavy traffic on the
south circular by a cop who IMO recklessly endangered other road users,
just so he could give me a 30 quid non-endorsable ticket for nothing
more serious than filtering down the gutter.

Now don't get me wrong, I quite like riding like a twat. It's fun, and I
won't stop anyone doing it (the odd Ducati or R1 rider I see on my
commute makes me shake my head in disbelief, mind). But, as I said up
there, the rules of the game have changed even if the law hasn't. And it
sucks.

 

Yebbut you were probably going even slower. About 18mpg.