Weekend Ride

[Cormanus]

In response to the thread on who you ride with, I said I mostly ride alone, but I also enjoyed organised rides. I'm not really a joiner of clubs. The Tribe of Judah organised a ride on Saturday and I went along for some of it—I bailed out of the last leg as it was getting late and it was easier for me to head home than to finish the ride.

The [url=https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit?mid=zwzS5Q1Lo7Yk.kbIgd5sOusuM]map shows the ride I did. The organised ride started and finished at Gympie (Point B) and finished back there, but I dropped out at Imbil (Point E). I'd have preferred less overlap on the ride, but I had no idea where it was going till we set off.

Sorry, Ferret, although the one-handed rider was on the CB, there are no photos of movement on the early part of the organised ride as it poured with rain for much of the first and second legs. I'll do that part of the trip for you again another day and take some pics.

This is my home town showing about themost exciting thing to happen on a Saturday morning.


Northbound on Queensland's main highway.






This one's for IndianRider—not a test match, I fear, mate, but the local game.

 

[the Ferret]

Cool....that white bike has quite the rear tire on it. Assuming you guys have a helmet law. Doesn't seem like the kind of group as a whole that would be into wearing helmets of not forced.

 

[CA200_imp]

Looks like some HDs there also , must cost a lot down there?!

 

[redbirds_imp]

Thanks for the pics and ride report. Never let a little rain spoil a good ride.

 

[Cormanus]

Cool....that white bike has quite the rear tire on it. Assuming you guys have a helmet law. Doesn't seem like the kind of group as a whole that would be into wearing helmets of not forced.

It was quite a bike, although not really to my taste.

All States of Australia have uniform helmet laws. Helmets complying with the relevant Australian Standard are mandatory for all riders and passengers.

Looks like some HDs there also , must cost a lot down there?!

Yeah. It always seems to me that people who are club joiners are big HD (I assume you mean Harley Davidson) riders. There's lots of them in Australian and they've always seemed to me to be very expensive. I've never been sure how people afford them. I've never been really interested in owning one, so I haven't done the price comaprison. I had a quick look on a bike sales website and see you can pay a great deal more for a second hand HD than, say, a CB1100. But you pay a great deal more for a second hand Goldwing than a CB1100.

 

[the Ferret]

Relevant Australian Standard..that's a new one for me. Do they have their own sticker or do they accept Dot or Snell?p certifications?

 

[Cormanus]

The requirement for wearing helmets is contained in the Australian uniform road rules. Each State gets to determine the required standard for the helmet. Where I live (Queensland) its AS/NZS1698 or AS1698 or another standard deemed at least equivalent by the head of the transport authority. I don't know whether any other standards have been approved.

They have their own sticker which must remain attached to the helmet. I understand visors also have to comply with a standard and have a sticker attached.

I suspect it's important if you're going to mandate helmets to require they comply with a standard, but there's an ongoing debate about whether Australia really needs to develop and maintain its own set of standards. There's also a tendency amongst courts and regulators to over-rely on them without any critical analysis of the circumstances of their making. Standards Australia is a commercial organisation and could be said to have a vested interest in making them in as many areas as possible, and there is endless industry and regulator involvement in their design and approval as they are essentially a consensus document. They're often complex and may well be carefully designed as much to make life hard for the little guy as they are to make sure things are done sensibly. Governments often requires that things comply with standards without fully understanding what that might mean for businesses and individuals.

My view—which counts for nothing—is that they should be mandated by law only in very special circumstances. Helmets are probably one of the circumstances in which compliance is important. It costs our community a hell of lot of money to look after people with head injuries.

 

[Aussieflyer]

Nice report Cormanus, some lovely pics of a wide cross section of motorcyclist in the 'sunshine state' - that what we call Queensland ... too bad it rained eh!!

An interesting observation ... a quick check on the popular eBay Aus site of 1,917 road bikes for sale today will show more used HDs for sale than Hondas. It's like everyone's got one down under and they want to sell it! eBay bikes for sale 31/1/14:
526 - Harley Davidson
264 - Honda
230 - Kawasaki
227 - Suzuki
220 - Yamaha
119 - Triumph
62 - BMW
60 - Ducati
56 - Hyosung
43 - Aprilia
24 - KTM
10 - MV Augusta
76 - Others

Anyone want a used HD?

 

[Cormanus]

Interesting, Aussieflyer.

On BikeSales it's:

Aprilia (380)
BMW (711)
Ducati (833)
Harley-Davidson (2,090)
Honda (2,154)
Hyosung (321)
Kawasaki (1,635)
KTM (132)
Piaggio (136)
Suzuki (2,029)
Triumph (979)
Yamaha (1,529)

Cheers

(Edited because I read Aussieflyer's post again and realised it was road bikes he was talking about.)