What did you do on or to your CB 1100 today

[Gone in 60]

Thanks for keeping riders and drivers safe in Wisconsin, Magna! My experience with post-crash cleanup was in drag racing. When a race car crashes there's debris, but when a production car crashes, the amount of glass, fluids, shattered plastic, etc makes for quite a lengthy cleanup. I imagine the difference is that on a drag strip, the crews work as fast as they can, but the track surface has to be surgically clean when they're done. The crowd can wait a while. On a roadway, if you're blocking lanes to clear wreckage, you're causing a traffic jam. Good enough, I imagine, has to be the best solution to get traffic flowing again.

Here on the Southern California freeways, the shoulders are strewn with debris that the tow truck drivers either don't want to take, or don't have the ability to take. Mostly bumper covers, with license plates still attached. To Nacho's point, we have armadas of landscapers, contractors and other workers on the highways with all sorts of things hanging off of their trucks. Trimmers, tools, ladders... oh my gosh so many ladders... all over the shoulders.

Interestingly, other debris you'll see can be set by the calendar. At the end of the month, lots of people move as their apartment leases are up. You'll see mattresses, smashed furniture and other household items that fell off of poorly packed trucks, or off the roofs of cars - I often muse that the average person has no idea how the aerodynamics of a mattress on the roof of a car works. Beginning of summer? Start counting folding chairs and barbecues that have come loose from pickup trucks heading to the beach.

Also, and this is most concering to motorcyclists, is blown tires. As we get into summer and the roads heat up, truck tires explode, neglected, seldom-used trailer tires on boats and RVs explode, leaving "road alligators" all over the highways.

Our routing app for medical deliveries kicks over to Waze for navigation, and streams my live position to both our dispatcher and the recipient for the delivery, and the directions are streamed to my helmet. Recently I've gone into Waze settings and have muted the "hazard ahead" and "object on road ahead" alerts, because they were so constant that they were just annoying rather than helpful.

So how does all of this roadside junk get cleaned up? Not sure about other areas, but we have periodic "Sweeper trains", that are rolling blockages of the right or left lanes of freeway traffic and shoulders. Led and followed by CHP cars, with dump trucks, pickup crews and a street sweeper truck, picking up the debris and leaving fairly clean shoulders.

On the one hand, it's a slight bother to come up on a traffic jam caused by a Sweeper Train, but I can slide through fairly easily. On the other hand, as a rider, I appreciate it. If I'm in the left lane at highway speed, it's common for the car in front to drift to the left thinking he's "helping" the rider in case he wants to lane split. These helpers usually run their left tires over the line on the shoulder, and when there's debris, it's kicking up at the rider. Good intentions, but more of a hazard than a help...