Posts tagged bike
Bikesure FC
Sep 5th
And you thought we just sit on our backsides all day……..and you would be right but hang on….
After narrowly missing out on the signature of Robinho it was business as usual for Bikesure FC!
Bikesure F.C was formed last year due to the fact there was nothing else to do on a Thursday evening but drink ( which isnt a bad thing ). We meet every Thusday evening at the local astro turf and attempt to pass ourselves off as footballers for an hour.
So if theres anyone out there who wants to take on the might and power of Bikesure FC, kindly bugger off because were rubbish!!!
Meet the team
Kyle “Minty” Benefer – like Hayley’s comet, can be seen passing once every 75 years
Dean “Egg” Twiddy – passing to him is like kicking it against a brick wall, could go anywhere
John “Turbo” Mellish – Faster then Usain Bolt over 100 metres – fact!
Pete “Zilla” Sanctuary – one of those annoying blokes who is good at everything!
Matthew “soppy b***ocks” Sopp – can often be seen shouting the odd swear word at his team, apparently for encouragement!
Phil “philski” Owen – more tricks up his sleeve then Paul Daniels – that’s magic!
Grant “welsh wizard” Varnham – lob me a ball from 70 yards and i’ll slot it home, pass it to me in front of an open goal and over the bar it goes!
Richard “the horn” Rowsell – started off looking like Mr Tickle, now more like Mr tackle ( granted that does sound a bit odd )
Jason ” the fridge ” Masters – big bloke, rubbish centre of gravity….goes down more than……..um………..um…………..Reading.
Tom ” Cassius ” Clay – that one player in your team that thinks he has the tricks then always falls on his arse – to the great pleasure of the rest of the team!
Adam ” Holbinho ” Hollinger – seems to be absolutely fascinated by his feet, always starring at them, even when he passes
Harry ” Sports Bra ” O’Donnell – imagine watching a Linford Christie’s lunch box running the 100 metres, now imagine him with man boobs…….Harry!
Rob ” Chopper ” Balls – hell of a right foot ping on him, unfortunately hell of a nack of tackling……even without the ball being anywhere near him….amazing!
Duncan ” Liability ” Garrick – often gets voted the man of the match…….for the opposing team!
Kevin “big man ” Lee – frustrated striker, the bloke is 7 foot tall but has a head like a 50p – when he pulls back for a strike, the force can be felt as far as Luton.
Motorbike goes to Church.
Aug 29th
Most churches don’t have any problem with bikers, even big hairy ones can find a welcome in many congregations, as Bikers for Jesus will tell you, if you can persuade them to stop sharing the gospel for a second.
Having said that, it might be a good idea to leave your bike in the car park…
http://embed.break.com/NTQ2MjQ1
‘Tax Dodge’ bikers vindicated – so where are the apologies?
Feb 14th
The all new 2007 figures from the Department for Transport for Vehicle Excise Duty (aka Road Tax) evasion have just been released.
You can tell something is going to be different, when you see statements like this:
Substantial improvements in the way that the roadside survey data are collected mean that evasion estimates for 2007 are not directly comparable with those from previous years.
Analyses of this year’s survey data also suggest that misread registration marks do not have a neutral effect on estimates as previously thought and, instead, tend to inflate estimates of evasion.
This all sums up to a breathtaking conclusion – the evasion estimates reported last year for motorcycle were probably overestimated by staggering 300% (or thereabouts – effectively the stats were done in such a different way that it is impossible to do a direct comparison. Note also that the figures for cars were also overestimated by a similar percentage – but with less dramatic effect or tabloid outrage.)
Put another way, the headline 38% evasion figure reported last year, and repeated last month with some anti-biker vitriol by MP Edward Leigh, were roughly 4 times higher than they should have been.
At least.
In fact there are still some problems with the reported figure of 9.8% evasion for bikers.
First the sample size is still very small – that makes the error margin over 50%, so (even taking nothing else into account) the figures for bikers could be as low as 4.7%.
Second, the change to the survey methodology that had the biggest impact was the switch to using Automatic NumberPlate Recognition (ANPR) cameras. Using these they were able to check misread plates for the first time, and found they were incorrectly matching to vehicles removed from the roads much more often than they had expected.
BUT, for collecting the data on motorcycles they did not use ANPR, but instead relied on contractors stood by the side of the road with a clipboard. It seems inevitable that a guy with a clipboard by a motorway trying to jot the number of a moving bike travelling at 70mph (let’s assume bikers don’t ever break the speed limit) is going to write down the wrong number more often than an ANPR computer which takes a still photo of the same vehicle and then uses Optical Character Recognition software to match up the letters, for the simple reason that, the computer doesn’t have to deal with the effects of a high speed movement.
Someone might have picked up on this, had the DfT not glibly stated in the previous years report, that they had computed the effect as a ‘slight upward bias.’ The admission that they got this so badly wrong will be little comfor
The DfT also notes they made a number of other changes to the statistical methodology, in line with the Southampton university report into their previous methods and assumptions.
It is therefore my opinion that the figures for tax evasion by motorcyclists, although markedly reduced and only a quarter of what was previously being claimed, is still a considerable overestimate.
If next year they manage to use ANPR to record motorcycles as well as cars, and also collect some hard data about relative mileages traveled by taxed vs untaxed motorcycles (which currently they only have for trucks), my bet is that the numbers will dramatically fall again.
But in light of this publication, where are the apologies.
Miscalculations of this magnitude represent some serious bungling by the ‘top statisticians’ we pay our taxes to employ. I think, at the very least, bikers are owed some major apologies from Edward Leigh, the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, the Department for Transport and National Statistics. The DVLA probably deserve an apology too – they were castigated for their poor performance in managing tax evasion, even though their own figures suggested they were collecting more tax than ever.
See also MCN’s story.
Goverment Wrongly brands bikers as tax cheats.
Jan 28th
This is a summary of my more detailed post on Friday, outlining the key points.
- The DfT surveyed traffic in June and July.
- They waited until September to ensure no late corrections to the data.
- By this time many of the bikers surveyed had taken their bikes off the road for the winter.
- At this point the DfT checked the figures against the DVLA’s VED database.
- The bikes which had been removed from the road were mistakenly assumed to be evading tax.
- The error was then amplified by a “corrective” assumption that tax dodgers would use their bikes less and get missed by the survey, the number of evaders would be underestimated. This one step doubled the number of bikers assumed to be riding without tax and it did this because it assumed bike mileage figures would match evasion figures in the same way as they do for trucks (The only category of vehicle they have stats for). This doesn’t take account of the important fact that the average motorcycle covers many, many fewer miles than the average trucks. That means that the people you see most often are not necessarily people traveling furthest as they would be for trucks, but are much more likely to be people who just live nearby to a survey site. This means that the assumption that you will see lower than actual levels of evasion (because tax dodgers travel less far) is undermined, as only a very few of the people on bikes are travelling large distances.
- Because of the small number of motorcyclists surveyed, the DfT’s own figures show that the margin for error would be at least 20% either way even if the incorrect assumptions were to have been true.
What does this mean?
These are quite major flaws in the methodology of the survey and (I think) blow apart the reported figures. The headline figure was extrapolated from an “observed” figure of only 16% on the basis more tax evading motorcyclists would have been missed, as they don’t travel as far, which I’ve shown above is almost certainly a flawed assumption. If only around 10% of the riders had SORNed their bike at the end of August or during early September, the vast majority of the “untaxed” bikers would disappear from the stats. Add to that a 20% margin of error, because of the small survey size and the figures may well be comparable with the rates for cars. A precise figure is going to be very difficult to arrive at, as no-one currently has the relevant data that could quantify the errors more precisely.
Whose fault is it?
The mathematics used in the statistical modelling was all applied correctly. The errors arose because of mistaken assumptions about how motorbikes are used and would probably have been spotted if a single representative of the motorcycling community had been consulted at the design stage of the survey. What probably should have been spotted is the ridiculously high figure of 38% evasion, which should, I believe, have raised alarm bells. I suspect that this is why Southampton University were asked to double check the result, but they only checked the statistical techniques used, and did not carry out an assessment of way the VED data had been obtained nor of the validity of the underlying assumptions.
So the blame for all of this lies with whoever designed the survey and data processing methodology, and not with anyone who actually carried it out.
I think at the very least all bikers are owed an apology from Edward Leigh MP, of the Public accounts committee for his intemperate remarks. And another apology is due, I feel, from the DfT, for managing to balls up the figures in quite such a spectacular fashion.
Evading Road Tax is wrong – but not as wrong as the Government Statistics
Jan 25th
You probably saw on the news the shocking headline that 40% of motorcycle users are riding around on untaxed bikes. The head of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) (download pdf of the PAC’s Vehicle Excise Duty report here), Edward Leigh, went as far as to comment:
Large parts of the biking community are cocking a snook at the law.
Which would be fine if it bore any resemblance to reality. Anyone who is actually a part of the biking community will have probably been scratching their heads trying to work out who these evaders might be, as have our friends at MAG – they say:
Anecdotal visual studies carried out by the group at motorcycle events do not reflect anything remotely like this level of non compliance. (MAG article)
So what’s going on?
Well a press release by the Motor Cycle Industry Association (MCIA) (download it in Word format here)questions some of the methodologies used by the government statisticians. David Taylor, head of the MCIA, says:
We are expected to believe that motorcycle VED evasion rose by 47 per cent from an already highly unlikely figure the previous year. Common sense suggests that the estimate of nearly 40 per cent is wildly inaccurate, or they would surely be very easy to catch.
That seems obvious enough, but what isn’t at all obvious is the methodology and statistics adopted by the Department for Transport (DfT), who commissioned the traffic survey, the private company that carried out the survey, National Statistics who analysed it, DVLA who provided large amounts of data and the Commons PAC (the group of MP’s who have to interpret all this), who caused all the fuss.
Now there’s no requirement to be trained in statistics if you are an MP on the PAC, so despite Mr Leigh’s intemperate outbursts against bikers, we can’t blame him or the rest of the committee for taking the DfT report at face value.
When you take a deeper look at the DfT report and the National Statistics report that underlies it, though, it’s obvious that there are some big assumptions regarding the data and the statistical techniques that have been carried out on it.
This might get quite heavy, but bear with me – there’s not too much maths.
Now I’m assuming that not many people reading this have any kind of statistics qualification, so I’ll try to summarise what I’ve been able to work out without using too much maths. Unfortunately, the relevant bodies above haven’t been that kind, so if anyone is better at this kind of maths than me here are the original documents, feel free to post comments:
- National Statistics VED stats 2006
- National Statistics / DfT report of above VED stats.(pdf)
- Statistical Review of the VED figures by Southampton University
In what follows I’ll refer to these documents by the number I’ve given each one.
Looking at the full published figures, you will find hidden away in an appendix a list of confidence ranges for the final estimate of percentage of vehicles with no VED (road tax). (1 – appendix E7 / Table 18) Confidence range is a statistical term, but it’s not that hard to grasp, using the figure in question as an example. What it means in practice is that although the average evasion recorded is running at 37.8 percent, this is an estimate, but based on the data collected they can say they are 95% confident that assuming all their prior assumptions are true the true figure lies somewhere between 29.9% and 45.7%. This is a truly massive margin for error (for comparison the equivalent 95% confidence figures for cars are 4.0%-4.6%) and shows that even in the best case scenario the margin for error in the bike figures is going to be running at ±20%.
Why is this figure so massive. Well, there are a few reasons, but it mainly comes down to the fact that the number of bikes counted in the survey was much, much smaller than the number of cars. For every bike they counted, they saw 110 cars. (1) Table 10 Whenever you have a small sample, your uncertainty will be larger. Small uncertainties in a sample also tend to balloon when you perform other operations on that sample, as you introduce extra uncertainties which multiply through.
As I mentioned in passing above, all of these error margins are “best case scenarios” and rely very much on the assumptions made by the method used to derive the figures. If there are incorrect estimates made due to these assumptions the final figures will be seriously distorted
For this survey I believe that the assumptions made are in many cases entirely wrong, and I believe this has played a large part in inflating the figures. And although the figures have been independently checked by statisticians those doing the checking have done so on the basis that these assumptions are true (3), as they rightly state at the start of the analysis.
Assumption (b) is a crucial one. In statistical language it is this:
the observed sample of vehicles sighted in the Roadside Traffic Observation Survey is a simple random sample with replacement of the registered vehicles(3)p13
This is not immediately obvious, and uses technical terms, but what it means is this. Every time the person at the side of the road takes a measurement, the chance of seeing a particular vehicle pass by is the same as if he were picking registration numbers at random from a massive lottery machine containing a single ball for each vehicle in Britain. This is justifiable, if you were to be recording the traffic on every road in Britain, but in practise, with only 249 sites, this method has potential to be badly skewed. Anyone who happens to live near one of the sampling sites has a much higher probability of being ‘picked’ (and probably picked multiple times at that) than someone who never passes by.
What this means is that the selection of sample sites is going to have a large bearing on what is recorded. The sample sites chosen represent 1 of each kind of road (as defined by the DfT) per police force area (49 of those) with London getting an extra 3 of each. Motorways are sampled by local government region, and fewer of those are picked.
How have they selected which roads to measure? Well they left that “to the discretion of contractors” who had to reach a set minimum number of vehicle sightings at each location. We can guess they probably chose fairly busy examples of each type of road. It seems likely that the type of person who is going to dodge road tax is more likely to be of a lower social class than average, and live in a scummier area, probably closer than average to a busy road. This is supposition, but it is reasonable, and there is nothing in the results the DfT have presented to suggest that this kind of sampling bias has been effectively eliminated.
Another assumption taken by the survey is that stated quite clearly in (3)
One of the most important assumptions in the model is that the average number of sightings of a given ve
hicle is proportional to its mileage. This hypothesis is not testable from the survey data itself because the mileage of individual vehicles is not directly observed through the survey process. However, the first time that this working assumption was adopted – see §4 in Appendix C of (Department of Transport, 1984) – a postal survey of the keepers of heavy goods vehicles was used to test the adequacy of this hypothesis. Given that this research was carried out some time ago and for a limited sample of vehicles in a single tax class, the Department for Transport should investigate whether alternative data sources exist, or could be obtained, which could be used to re-examine the validity of this crucial assumption.
Or, put differently. it seems unlikely that motorcycles on the road today are being used in the same way as trucks were used in 1984! Estimated mileages for bikes are therefore likely to be way out of kilter with actual figures.
All of these assumptions seem likely to overestimate the proportion of bikes appearing to evade road tax, but there is potentially a far bigger problem, which is not even mentioned in any of the DfT documentation – bikes are much more likely than the average vehicle to be taken off the road.
Many bikers, as we all know (but perhaps the DfT doesn’t) are fairweather bikers. Many more people own a bike but might, like my Dad, keep it locked in a garage for years at a time. Many of these people will have notified the DVLA that the bike is stored off-road via a SORN form, but I would guess that a lot of people don’t. We probably all know someone with a bike in their garage that they probably didn’t use at all last year.
Notice there are two different figures for motorbikes without VED. The figures are 16% of motorbikes in traffic, and 37.8% of vehicle stock (i.e. all bikes with a reg number). Why is the second figure more than double. The logic runs like this. The vehicles they spot on the road tend to be those that travel more miles, so they will have not counted lots of vehicles that have a fairly low mileage. Because they also know that untaxed vehicles have lower average mileages, they apply a corrective figure.
What they don’t seem to have taken account of, though, is that at any given time, a very large number of motorcycles are sat in a garage not being used for months at a time, hence, for those bikes with a mileage of 0, they may be estimating high levels of tax avoidance!
If the assumptions about motorbike usage are corrected, we might find that this doubling effect will vanish.
But there is one last doubt I have about these figures, that might potentially show massive levels of VED avoidance where very little exists.
It’s to do with the way the survey has been carried out and the figures derived.
All of the survey data was carried out in June and July of 2006, a time of the year when a lot of bikes are on the road. At some point the registration numbers queried were tested against the DLVA’s VED database. The survey results were first published on January 25th 2007. Following that a review was carried out on the figures, and the PAC finally got round to studying them just a few days ago.
The crucial question is this – when were the data compared against the DVLA database, and what figures did they use?
The survey contractors almost certainly didn’t have the means to check the DVLA database in real time, and probably didn’t have access to the data, anyway. It seems likely that they would have returned all the data at once, at the conclusion of the survey period. But they probably carried out their own checks on the data before they did. So it seems likely that some time between July 06 and January 07 they checked against DVLA records. It then takes the DfT and National Statistics a further six months to process the data – they probably have a lot of validation and checking work to do, but exactly what and in what order we do not know.
So consider the following scenario. I get my bike out of storage on March 1st and tax it for six months. During June I ride by one of the government surveys and am counted as “on the road” and “in traffic”. Come August 1st the bike is back in the garage and SORNed for the winter. If the DfT didn’t get round to checking the VED database until September I’ll probably be recorded as not being taxed.
Did this happen? I don’t know. But realistically, the a huge number of bikers are going to put their bikes in storage through the winter and claim a VED refund by way of SORN, so if it did, the effect could be a huge overestimate of the number of bikers dodging tax.
Again I don’t know if this has happened, but I have asked National Statistics for more detail on how the VED status was derived and when (if) they reply, I will post here.
Well, this is a mammoth post already, but we’ve reached the end. There are other areas where an unintended bias may have crept into the sample, but we’ve considered what I suspect are the biggest sources of potential error.
The bottom line is that I think it is extremely unlikely that as many as 40% of bikers are evading VED and what this shows more than anything is the danger of placing total faith in your statistics when the underlying assumptions are not a realistic model of the situation you are trying to assess, as well as the difficulty of designing a survey.
And the motorbike insurance angle, of course, is that all of these people without tax presumably have no insurance. Given the prevalence of Automatic Numberplate vehicles run by the police forces now, you’d think they would have noticed if 40% of the motorbikes going by were uninsured, wouldn’t you?
************************************UPDATE***************************
I’ve received my reply from National Statistics to my query about when the survey data was checked against the DVLA database.
Here is the text of the email:
David,
Thank you for your enquiry.
The data for the VED survey in June 2006 was checked against the DVLA system in September 2006 to allow for late updates to be made.
P*** S****
www.dft.gov.uk/transtat/vehicles
So as I guessed above, anyone who SORNed their taxed bike before or during part of September will have been assumed to be dodging tax. This is going to have had a massive impact on the figures as reported in the press and the true figures for uninsured riding are much smaller than the ones the government has taken at face value.
Grant and Jon at Stinkwheel 2007 Classic Bike Show
Sep 19th
Now the name doesn’t sound too inviting but I assure you its not what it sounds. Held on Sunday 16th September at Beaumanor Hall, Loughborough the Stinkwheel show is a collection of classic and Italian classic bikes.
Me and Jon were chosen as the worthy representatives for Bikesure for this occasion which was also to be sponsored by ourselves. With the “company”, oh yes “company” car stocked up and good to go, we left Kings Lynn for the sunny heights of Loughborough.
We borrowed Suzy Sat Nav from Dean “the egg” Twiddy and programmed in the post code for the show. After a quick stop off at McDonalds, and 2 hours on the road, the Sat Nav uttered the words “100 yards to your destination!” Now at this point I was quite worried, mainly because I hadn’t seen any sign of any type of bike show, or house for that matter.
Turn right and you will reach your destination she said, so we did……..and pulled into a car park of a local cricket match!!! If it wasn’t for the child lock, Mrs Sat Nav would have found her way strewn a mile down the road! After much reprogramming, we eventually found the show and set up.
Back to the hotel for light refreshments and an early night…cough cough!!!! ANYWAY!!!!
Next morning after a few cups of tea and figuring out if we were in the right hotel or not, we brushed ourselves down…not each other!!!! and arrived at the show at 9.30.
There were loads of traders and bikes including BSA, Norton, MV Agusta etc. There was a large showground in the middle for all the bikes to be shown off, as well as a display team.
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We set our our stall and proceeded processing quotes and giving out goody bags and generally chatting to the public and spreading the word of Bikesure.
At one point I was approached by the organiser to enter the ring (Ed: I didn’t think Rob Balls was at this show?) and say a few words over the tannoy!!! SAY A FEW WORDS????? I bloody loved it, snatched the microphone off the announcer and delivered a speech that Winston Churchill himself would be proud off.
All in all the show was a great success, we spoke to owners clubs, the public, everyone really.
Look out for us at up and coming shows as Bikesure will be appearing at as many as possible, so just come and have a chat!!
Grant “cheese on toast” Varnham
Rob’s Guide to Biking – Please don’t feel obliged to read it.
Jun 25th
I was asked/blackmailed/threats made to my family to write a “Guide to Biking” for the esteemed periodical that is the “Adrian Flux Newsletter”. No problem I thought, get on Google and do some serious cutting and pasting. Piece of piss! Hmmm, no such luck. I’ve been trawling the net for something suitable for far too long (makes a nice change from porn though) and drawn a blank, so I am actually going to have to try and come up with something. Damn! Still reading? Hopefully not, then I can get away with putting any old rubbish in here, a few pictures of bikes and Bobs yer uncle, down the pub for me… to sit on my own and cry into a pint of piss-weak beer.
“Riding a bike is like making love to a beautiful woman”. No, that won’t work as I need to try and draw on my actual experience. Bugger.
Biking is very far from being just a form of transport. It’s about many things, attitude, freedom, style, thrill seeking, therapy, escape, being individual and also being part of something and on top of all that, trying not to fall off whilst doing it. Ouch! It could be one or all of these to or something altogether different. It’s up to you. Before deciding on what bike to get, you need to think about what you want to get out of it. Bikes are very specialised and the many different styles will give you a very, very different experience and will all say something very different about you.
So, are you an adrenalin junkie? Are you a creature of comfort? Do you want to explore on and off road? Do you like to do it on you own or with your chosen partner? Want to get your knee down? Have you just started out and want to dip your toe in the biking water? Do you want to tour in style? Am I talking to myself? Will I, Rob Balls, finally come out of the closet and put an end to years of scurrilous rumours that I might be a bit straight?
Where oh where to start? There is such a huge choice on offer these days, from bikes you can buy on E-bay for a few hundred quid to £50,000 custom cruisers, from 50cc Scooters to an absolutely whopping 2.3 litres engine capacity! That bad boy is called the “Rocket 3” by the way.
That’s brings me on nicely to looking at some of the names of these machines.
Can you imagine Paul Twite getting his kicks riding a “Fat Boy”? – Yes
Can you see Steven Yardley with a “Monster” between his legs? – Maybe
Asking a young lady if: “You want to ride my “Intruder”?”, could land you in hot water, especially if you have failed to gain her written consent first. – Definitely.
They’ve not all got names like that but you can tell that the people who think up some of these names are men with issues in the “trouser” or “science fiction” department. Either that or it’s a woman having the last laugh at us boys expense and our inability to grow up. Hmmm. You cunning ladies!
Having started this I’ve realised that it needs a bleedin’ “Glossary of Terms” so the completely uninitiated don’t get too lost.
Bike – Please visit the service floor.
Helmet – What I’ll need to be wearing at work to avoid serious head injury from the lovely people on the service floor.
Fairing – The fibreglass around sportsbikes to aid aerodynamics, enabling it to slip through time and space and protect the rider from wind buffeting.
Naked Bikes – See service floor Christmas party photos or they could actually be bikes that have no fairing.
Retro – See Elliot Drew’s wardrobe and record collection
Panniers – Luggage space usually on either side and at the back of the bike or is that an Italian sandwich?
I know you’ll be disappointed but I can’t cover the whole range of styles of bike as we’d need a whole newsletter devoted to it, so you’ll get the most popular ones. I’ll not cover scooters because everyone knows what they are and I’ll concentrate on the road bikes forgetting the Trials and Motocross machines. SuperMoto machines can also take a hike for now.
Sportsbikes
These beasties are for the speed merchants and thrill seekers out there. Sometimes known as “rice burners” and often ridden by people with matching one piece leathers (kinky types) and dark visors (Nighthawk Style). These are serious bits of kit and a few grand will get you a nice bike that will out-accelerate most cars on the road that will cost ten times as much. Most of the features on these bikes come directly from race track development. They’re lightweight, incredibly nimble and are not built for comfort; you’ll need to have a stop off to have a stretch after a while. You’ll even see riders stretching their arms and legs as they go along. Huge fun and an absolutely incredible buzz! If that’s your bag it may take some time to remove the grin off your face after a good blast! Holding on to your licence rather than the bike could prove the biggest challenge as you’ll be doing a “ton up” before you know it. That’s a “ton up” not “two’s up” Jason.
Naked Bikes / Muscle Bikes/ Streetfighters
These have grown in popularity in recent times. Many riders of Sportsbikes have started going over to naked bikes. They have a much more aggressive and “retro” look to them and have no fairing. A man’s-man’s bike. They often have just as much performance and agility as Sportsbikes but, without a fairing travelling over 80 mph can be hard work. The force of the wind (parp!) can be immense so you are much more aware of how fast you are travelling and it is hard work to maintain high speeds for long. As a result they force you to cool it a bit and hopefully keep you’ll your licence for a bit longer. Streetfighters are usually sportsbikes that the rider has modified themselves, removing the fairing, changing the lights and bars and giving it a custom paint job to end up with a really individual and “mean” look. Huuurgh! – imagine a “Mr T” voice.
Cruisers
These bikes are as far away from sportsbikes as Craig Darwin is away from the bar when it’s his round. These bikes are all about getting from A to B in style and comfort. They literally have a very “laid back” riding style. They’re not even about getting from A
to B; they’re about “just going maaan”. It’s about the open road, taking it all in and, well, “cruising”. You hearin’ me sucker? Ridden by cowboys and people with a fondness for beards (that’s just the women) and leather waistcoats. Cruisers are not about “hi tech” and most owners will customise their bike to make an individual statement. It’s often about the lifestyle with these people. The riders of these bikes are usually a very different breed to the sportsbikes owners. Each group often thinks that the others “just don’t get it”. “Custom Built Cruisers” are not about comfort but about a certain image and style. They’re not practical but look amazing, well if you like that sort of thing.
Tourers
If you want to travel long distances in comfort, then this is the option for you. At the extreme end they can be known as “armchairs on wheels”, with many creature comforts such as heating, a full fairing and a stereo. They often come with panniers for plenty of storage on that long tour. You’ll often see slightly older husband and wife teams on these machines with matching jackets and helmets. How sweet. Superb if you want to go on a trek into Europe and beyond enjoying the sights and the superb roads without feeling like you’ve been given a good going over by a couple of unsavoury types with a taste for torture. Sports Tourers will give you a bike that combines the ability for long distance touring and can still give you that feeling in the pit of your stomach that you only get from some serious hard riding. That’s a good feeling by the way, not like having the shits. If you watched any of Ewan McGregor going round the world on a bike then you’ll also know that you can get Tourers that can also do a good job off road as well as on it.
As well as those mentioned above, you’ve got your bread and butter commuter bikes which is what sensible people will normally start their the riding life on. These bikes do a very good job, offering you a nice introduction to biking but won’t set your pulse racing. As well as Motorbikes we also insure Trikes and Quads in Bikesure which the editor might be able to slip in a couple of nice pictures of to fill the space because I may expire if I do anymore and you probably already have.
If anyone is thinking about getting into it and taking their test then I would say “STOP THINKING AND DO IT!” It really is great fun, a unique experience and opens up a whole new world to you.
That’s it. Can I go to bed now please?
Goodnight.
Rob
Motorcycle Jousting
Apr 11th
Just in case you were wondering, we don’t cover you for this.
Even if it is fun.
Old Bill sees the Light
Apr 5th
Hallelujah, at last someone in our draconian police force has seen the light (forgive the pun). According to a new police agreement you will now not be prosecuted if you are wearing a dark visor. How many times have you or your mates been stopped on a bright summers day because you’ve got a dark visor on your expensive safety equipment (which you have to wear by law); while the boy racers drive by in their hot-hatch cars with exhausts that an illegal immigrant and his family could live in; with windows that are as dark as the inside of a coalminers nether regions, playing their music so loud it could be heard on the next continent.
David Griffin head of Motorcycle Safety for the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) who is also Deputy Chief Constable for Humberside brought together members of the police community from around the country who had similar views have now decided that instead of being prosecuted it is up to the officer to use their common sense, so come on, if you have a dark visor on at night it’s quite right that you get pulled up.
Also illegal number plates will be judged on an individual basis, as long as they can be read from 20.5m you will be OK (so watch what script you choose for your personal plate).
These recommendations only apply in England, for our friends north of the border these do not apply. BUT a spokesperson for the Association of Police Officers in Scotland (APOCS) said “We are allowing our officers to use their own discretion”, so next time you get stopped, be nice and they might just let you off with a cautionary piece of advice,
Thanks to the MCN for bringing this innovative decision to our attention. What will be next, perhaps polite considerate Volvo drivers, Na that we be too much!
Don’t forget that if you get yourself an expensive helmet and leathers you can add full cover for your accessories to your Bikesure policy for only £20. Get a quote online.
That’s all for now stay safe,
1leggedfreak.
Luckiest biker in the world?
Feb 14th
Remember the SMIDSY post we did previously? The guy driving this car also did a SMIDSTRL (Sorry mate I didn’t see the red light).
The guy on the bike might just be the luckiest guy in the world. If you get into a scrape you want to be wearing a high quality helmet and protective clothing.
Of course, the best gear can be expensive, but in the event of an accident you won’t have to worry about replacing all your safety gear, so long as you take out our optional helmet and leathers cover.