To: taxed2death
"physics comes into play here... the faster a bike goes, the more gradual an arc the rider will make even under extreme cornering...this has to do with the huge gyroscopic effects that he must fight against in order to steer / turn at high speeds. The front wheel does NOT want to turn." Two wheeled vehicles are sterred by counter steering. When the rider wants to steer right, they turn the handlebars to the left. Just turning the handlebars to the left causes the bike to go into a right lean and steer right. Steering a bike should be done with a snap action, where the bars are moved fast into the position judged for the desired curve. Neither the bike, nor the front wheel offers much resistance to this movement at all. In fact the handling of the bars in hard cornering changes only requires a light touch. The reason is, because when the bars are moved in one direction, a large torque appears on the angular momentum vector forcing the bike to both lean and turn in the opposite direction. The large steering forces come from the rotating front wheel, not the rider. All that's required from the rider to steer is their gentle touch on the bars, and perhaps shifting their own weight to minimize the lean angle. The only riders that have trouble steering and note large resisting forces are those that try to steer, instead of counter steer. That's, because they are trying to move the bike in the opposite direction of where they told the machine to go. That is very hard to do.
To: spunkets
I am well aware of counter steering as I've explained it in previous posts here on this thread.
My point was to explain to a car driver what a motorcyclist has to do / what he is likely capable of doing at 150+ mph.
If you have any high speed riding experience you'll agree that if you're doing 160 miles an hour and coming up on traffic doing 55 and you attempt to pass them on the right, you'll initiate the turn well in advance. Then if the driver of the auto tries to "help" you and put the turn signal on and quickly move over to the right lane, you'll have already traveled an additional 200 or so feet closer to him. You're already well into an arc headed right, now he's dead nuts ahead of you and your closing in at over 100 miles an hour difference. To quickly change directions AGAIN and pass him on the left will be extremely difficult and could quite possibly end in a rear end collision. While not impossible to do if I were in the riders situation I would much prefer the auto driver stay in his lane and let me do what I have to do to pass him before he changes the rules of the game. Try it sometime.
Get back to me.
:)
209 posted on
11/30/2006 2:15:07 PM PST by
taxed2death
(A few billion here, a few trillion there...we're all friends right?)
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