Iowa 1st MC Fatality for 2015

[R J]

11:00 PM Saturday evening a motorcycle lost control, hit a cable barrier, and the 2 riders were both killed.

No names or details as of yet due to notifying relatives.
 

[old2soon]

Prayers up for the family of the two folks that have passed.  When I saw them installing those cables on I-44 here in the Sho Me I was questioning the ancestry of the highway engineers!  And even after they were installed I STILL question the ancestry of the highway engineers.  Back in the 60s when I had my stock car-dirt roundy round-the booger bars had to be capped. Look at the ends of the verticals that hold up the cable and tell me if you wanna go sideways into or upside down or slide into them from a M/C? RIDE SAFE.

[FryeVRCCDS0067]

Prayers sent for the riders families. I hate even looking at those roadside cables. Might as well ride into a giant veg-O-matic I imagine.

[..]

Those bloody cheese grater cable barriers might cost less and protect those in large vehicles but for the rest of us??????????

I hope those that determined the installation get warts on their genitals.

[MP]

I think the cable barriers are installed by engineers who, since they cannot outlaw motorcycles, figure they can kill off all the MC riders.

They should have the people who OK their use, come out and use a shovel and tweezers to pick up the pieces of MC riders who get cut into pieces on them.

IMHO

MP

[old2soon]

I think the cable barriers are installed by engineers who, since they cannot outlaw motorcycles, figure they can kill off all the MC riders.

They should have the people who OK their use, come out and use a shovel and tweezers to pick up the pieces of MC riders who get cut into pieces on them.

IMHO

MP

         Mel my friend-THIS sounds to me anywho-like a cursed good idea. BUT you and me and everyone else here KNOWS it ain't gonna happen!  How DARE us question the edumacated wisdom these folks bring to the table. My question is-HOW MANY have too die as a result of these cable barriers BEFORE someone fess's up and sez-we had intercourse with the canine? I try hard to NOT use highways that have these killer cables BUT that are gittin harder to do! RIDE SAFE.

[Reb]

I think the cable barriers are installed by CIVIL engineers who, since they cannot outlaw motorcycles, figure they can kill off all the MC riders.

They should have the people who OK their use, come out and use a shovel and tweezers to pick up the pieces of MC riders who get cut into pieces on them.

IMHO

MP

Let's not get to bashing engineers without the right context  

[Hooter]

Those bloody cheese grater cable barriers might cost less and protect those in large vehicles but for the rest of us??????????

I hope those that determined the installation get warts on their genitals.

  Those are the most rediculous "supposed" safety barriers I've ever seen! Scooters don't stand a chance.  They are nothing but plain dangerous!

[old2soon]

I think the cable barriers are installed by CIVIL engineers who, since they cannot outlaw motorcycles, figure they can kill off all the MC riders.

They should have the people who OK their use, come out and use a shovel and tweezers to pick up the pieces of MC riders who get cut into pieces on them.

IMHO

MP

Let's not get to bashing engineers without the right context  

          Preston my friend-we KNOW-you are paid by a LARGE Corporation where as a Civil Engineer is paid by taxpayers AND Large Corporations to use Their kaka!  RIDE SAFE.

[pago cruiser]

Glad this topic came up; so sorry about the reason...   This will get a lot worse.

I ride often from Tucson to Big Spring TX, a bit east of Midland/Odessa.  On my last trip (Dec), they were installing these death barriers on I20 around Midland.  In a lot of areas, they have over 100 feet of grassy area between the opposing lanes; but these f'ing barrier were in some cases right at the edge of the shoulder.  So now, when some texting fish taco barges into your lane, you got nowhere to go.  If you don't have the time or reflexes to speedup or brake immediately, your only option is to swerve and die.  And I would bet my paycheck the f'cker who killed you will see the carnage in his mirror and just keep on going.  At 80 mph it would prolly happen so fast the GoPro on my helmet would not even catch the license plate...

I would also bet my paycheck that an engineer did not make the decision to install these things.  Most engineers (myself included... ) generally think of the ramifications of their actions - that's their training.  Bean counters rule the world now days.  In my job, quality and ease of use and long term value are often overridden by accountants.  While you can run a business by only looking at the bottom line, it is poor practice to run a country's infrastructure with that same mindset.  And that, my friends, is the bean counters modus operandi. 

If anyone wants to correct my numbers, please jump in...  This is a lot of best guesswork, but a 13' Jersey barrier is about $600 - thank you google.  Strictly based upon how fast these f'ing cheese graters are springing up, I'd guess their cost at maybe 1/3 of that; maybe less?  Roughly 400 Jersey Barriers per mile, call it $240,000/mile for concrete; I'm assuming the formed concrete is prolly near the same price.  This compares to maybe $80,000 per mile (1/3) for the cheese graters.  For a 100 mile section you have a delta of $160,000/mile  x 100 miles = $16,000,000.  Texas is about 600 miles wide....  All the bean counters just got a fat bonus for saving taxpayers about 100 million dollars - on ONE Interstate.  When this is weighed against maybe... 10 successful wrongful death suits at a million each annually... we are inconsequential.  Now multiply that by a couple thousand for all the Interstate miles in the country.  We're doomed.

These are being installed on Interstates, so this has been a federal decision.  It would be ideal is someone like a national organization, maybe the AMA (HELLO???)  would do something useful for ALL riders, and not just fight against roadside noise tests for motorcycles. And yes, I am a member...

Failing that, when somebody like a Congressman's or Senators kid is ripped apart by being driven into one of these by a distracted d!psh!t driver, maybe something positive will happen.  Maybe.

But a lot of bikers will be killed before this travesty is reversed. 

I wonder how Motor Officers feel about these things?  We may not always see eye to eye... (or radar gun to speedometer... ), but they are endangered just as much as every other biker.  Just a matter of time before they will start dying by these things as well.

Dang.  I'm amazed I wrote that much.  But these things suck, and will kill lot of people needlessly.  Maybe even me.  And that would really, really piss me off.
 

[old2soon]

pago cruiser-NEVER met ya but we ARE bros!  I kinda figured it was more in the bean countin department BUT I believe we can agree COMMON SENSE was NOT entered into the equation to use these most likely federally funded state installed and maintained cheese grater death traps.  Sad too say I see more deaths attributed to these C G D Ts than lives saved.  On a similar note I've seen movies of a broken cable whiplashing on the flight deck of an Aircraft Carrier. I KNOW I would NOT want to go into those C G D Ts in a full on N A S C A R ride.  I've unloaded hard a couple of times-on a race track and I wuz lots younger. I'm with you-If I unload near one of these C G D Ts I believe they will fill out the death certificate BECAUSE of the cursed things!  RIDE SAFE.

[pago cruiser]

I'm at work, so my time on non-work stuff is severely limited...
But just found this 120 page 2009 study by the Texas DOT:

http://d2dtl5nnlpfr0r.cloudfront.net/tti.tamu.edu/documents/0-5609-1.pdf

Short and sweet?  Everybody loves em.  Did a quick search, and the word motorcycle is nowhere within this document.

Lots of other good data in here.  One of the conclusions is that in TX, for the study period, the cheese grater saved 18 lives when compared to the previous, non-cheese grater barriers.  I did not see if the comparison was between concrete, or just a 100' wide grassy field.  I also saw ZERO info on biker fatalities.

 :'(

[Valker]

I'm at work, so my time on non-work stuff is severely limited...
But just found this 120 page 2009 study by the Texas DOT:

http://d2dtl5nnlpfr0r.cloudfront.net/tti.tamu.edu/documents/0-5609-1.pdf

Short and sweet?  Everybody loves em.  Did a quick search, and the word motorcycle is nowhere within this document.

Lots of other good data in here.  One of the conclusions is that in TX, for the study period, the cheese grater saved 18 lives when compared to the previous, non-cheese grater barriers.  I did not see if the comparison was between concrete, or just a 100' wide grassy field.  I also saw ZERO info on biker fatalities.

 :'(

I spoke to the guy at TXDOT who is actually in charge of these barriers back in January of this year (2015). At that point he told me there had been zero fatalities on these barriers in Texas concerning motorcyclists.

[fudgie]

I guess if a semi at 70 mph was crossing the median and headed towards me and I had to choose a cheese grater or nothing, Id pick the cables. 

Had a guy 10 yrs ago sidswipe a guard rail on a crotch rocket and he rode along side of it for 50' before being launched into the ditch. I counted 5 posts his leg hit because of the tissue tht was left on the tops. We had to untwist his whole leg 3-4 times to get it to 'normal'.

[..]

I guess if a semi at 70 mph was crossing the median and headed towards me and I had to choose a cheese grater or nothing, Id pick the cables. 

How wide the median?

How quick your respones?

If no cables.

[pago cruiser]

Found some more stuff this evening:

From Virginia Tech, here's a authoritative looking and sounding study:
http://www.mrf.org/pdf/TRB-11-3958-Motorcycle-Barriers.pdf
Lots of data, some that makes little sense: like helmets were almost useless.??

Here's a table from same:


Their conclusion here:
"Analyses of both helmeted and un-helmeted riders showed no statistical difference at the 0.05 level in the odds of severe injury between collisions with a cable barrier and collisions with a w-beam guardrail."

Given their conclusion, and looking at a high tension cable system vs a concrete or W beam rail, I personally think they would have to have a room temp IQ to stand by those assertions.  I.e, which would you rather slide along after a car forces you into it? As an old Prof used to say, it may look right, but it better pass the smell test before you consider it.  It would be ideal to have access to the raw data, and the time to properly sort this out.  Lies, dam lies, and statistics.

Here's the realistic sounding stuff (at least to me) that seems to match what you would envision happening, from a site in Germany:
http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/nrd-01/esv/esv19/05-0095-O.pdf

The computer model:



Notice the guys leg in the middle pic.  That's gonna hurt.  

About that table in the upper right?  See the red numbers?  Those are the result of impacting your head on the ground after the wire catches you and slams you down.  An HIC (Head Impact Criteria) value of 200 is good for a concussion.  700 is max force for an airbag (at which 5% of the population will be moderately injured). At 1000 an average male stands a 50% chance of severe injury or death.  At 2000 you go to the morgue directly; do not pass go, do not collect $200.  So hitting the cable at a 25 degree angle going 80 kph (about 50 mph) results in a HIC of about 4900.  Your are killed 2.5 times.  Going 75?  You're prolly killed 5 times.  That's not even taking into account the very good chance of rapid limb dismemberment...   :'(

A quickie conclusion:



So the US study says we're fine, and the German study says we're f'ckd.  I think the Germans got this one correct.

What we really need is an unbiased study.  Anybody know any of the Mythbusters crew?   Now THAT would be interesting...

Christ, I really wish we could do something about these.  I tried to send an email to the AMA at lunch but got sucked into a meeting. I'm going to Big Spring again in a couple weeks, and thinking about that ride through Midland/Odessa at 75 mph at rush hour (it's a 9 hour trip for me, and I leave at dawn) with cheese graters on each shoulder gives me the willies...

[fudgie]

I guess if a semi at 70 mph was crossing the median and headed towards me and I had to choose a cheese grater or nothing, Id pick the cables. 

How wide the median?

How quick your respones?

If no cables.

25' I believe.
Not quick enough as many vehicles we have had cross into opposite lanes. We only have 1 section of cables in the 30 miles of I/S in my county.

[R J]

I guess if a semi at 70 mph was crossing the median and headed towards me and I had to choose a cheese grater or nothing, Id pick the cables.  

How wide the median?

How quick your respones?

If no cables.

25' I believe.
Not quick enough as many vehicles we have had cross into opposite lanes. We only have 1 section of cables in the 30 miles of I/S in my county.

We have one I/S that goes from MN to MO with the cheese grader.

Not sure how far the East/West one has them up.

Our bypass around Des Moines has about 8 miles of the cheese grader.

Been trying to get a hold of my friendly Mortician who handled the funerals for these 2.      Wanted to ask him how badly they were stripped of hide and or limbs.    My buddy LEO who came by after all the paperwork was over said there was a lot of blood loss at the scene.   He made an assumption that someone may have lost a limb or 2 in the process from the amount of blood at the scene..    He said it looked like they must have died at the scene before a meat wagon could of gotten there or the LifeFlite from one of the Hospitals.

God I'm glad I'm out of that BS now.

[FryeVRCCDS0067]

Found some more stuff this evening:

Hope you don't mind, I'm going to repost some of this info elsewhere. It makes far more sense than what we've seen elsewhere. Many thanks for finding it.

[pago cruiser]

No problem.  This info needs to get out there, so ...someone... with some common sense and some POWER to exercise it can read, comprehend, and (hopefully) act accordingly.

I'm not generally a conspiracy theory oriented kind of guy.  But the Virginia Tech study alludes to be scientific and complete, yet the result appears contrary to common sense.  If you read the report, there were hundreds of accidents/fatalities EXCLUDED from the report in all three states because of various reasons.  The type of barrier could not be determined, the location could not be determined, cause of death not clear, etc.  If LEO's were... shall we say ...encouraged to downplay the culpability of these cheese graters in fatalities, it would not be hard to skew the data. So "excessive speed" becomes the cause of death, or if the guy had a toxicology test at the morgue, his death becomes a "alcohol related" statistic.     Why would they do this?  To justify that these really efficient "high tension cable restraints" work well, with "minimal" adverse impact.  There is no doubt they work very well on cars, and head-on impacts between cars have been reduced considerably.  Unfortunately, at our (motorcycles) expense. It just seems to being playing out that we are being sacrificed for the "greater good"...

With a little (or at least more...) study, it may be entirely possible to modify these things to come up with a way to minimize the literally shredding of motorcyclist, and at the same time retain the features that stop cars so effectively.  But like a lot of things in life, you have to start by accepting the fact that there is a problem.  We (here in the US) cannot seem to get to that point; while in some places in Europe, these are actually being removed because of the proven increased danger to motorcycles. 

I'll say it again... where the FCK is the AMA on this issue?  They should be on top of this with the  tenacity of the NRA when some politician wants to enact gun licensing...

[Gryphon Rider]

I'm at work, so my time on non-work stuff is severely limited...
But just found this 120 page 2009 study by the Texas DOT:

http://d2dtl5nnlpfr0r.cloudfront.net/tti.tamu.edu/documents/0-5609-1.pdf

Short and sweet?  Everybody loves em.  Did a quick search, and the word motorcycle is nowhere within this document.

Lots of other good data in here.  One of the conclusions is that in TX, for the study period, the cheese grater saved 18 lives when compared to the previous, non-cheese grater barriers.  I did not see if the comparison was between concrete, or just a 100' wide grassy field.  I also saw ZERO info on biker fatalities.

 :'(

I didn't read the document, but I did a search for the words motorcycle, motorcyclist, bike, biker, rider, and pedestrian, and got NO hits for any of them.  It seems Texas DOT doesn't give a $!%# about motorcyclists.

[Gryphon Rider]

Found some more stuff this evening:

From Virginia Tech, here's a authoritative looking and sounding study:
http://www.mrf.org/pdf/TRB-11-3958-Motorcycle-Barriers.pdf
Lots of data, some that makes little sense: like helmets were almost useless.??

Here's a table from same:


Their conclusion here:
"Analyses of both helmeted and un-helmeted riders showed no statistical difference at the 0.05 level in the odds of severe injury between collisions with a cable barrier and collisions with a w-beam guardrail."

Given their conclusion, and looking at a high tension cable system vs a concrete or W beam rail, I personally think they would have to have a room temp IQ to stand by those assertions.  I.e, which would you rather slide along after a car forces you into it? As an old Prof used to say, it may look right, but it better pass the smell test before you consider it.  It would be ideal to have access to the raw data, and the time to properly sort this out.  Lies, dam lies, and statistics.

I wonder if the figures shown differentiate between barriers hit that were parallel to the direction the motorcyclist was travelling, i.e. meant to separate traffic travelling 180° opposite directions, and barriers that are placed to prevent vehicle intrusion into other areas, like to protect roadside equipment or at 90° approaches.

[pago cruiser]

From the intro, pretty sure all these barriers are installed between opposing directions of traffic.  So I think that most of the impacts would be glancing, oblique angle type.

I just saw there is another thread started on this topic; anyway to combine these?  It appeared someone tried to copy some of the data I found into that thread.  No problem, but it would be ideal if we could have one thread/source of info.  This topic has the potential to affect a lot of bikers...none for the good.