A Lesson About Target Fixation
Posted: Fri Jul 17, 2015 11:08 am
Delivery day on my 2014 Forza 300ABS back in September 2013 was a happy day.
I put about 2,000 miles on it between delivery and May 2015.
In May, I started riding with a scooter group in Bellingham, WA. We were on a ride in rural Skagit County, I don't know the name of the road, but it had a lot of twisties. We came into a corner, and to my horror, I saw that the county had freshly graveled the shoulder and had left a mess on the roadway, lots and lots of loose gravel.
Now, all my training and experience (I started riding in the early 1990s) would tell me exactly what I needed to do, which was look and lean the direction I wanted to go so the scoot would go around the corner. Instead, I fixated on the gravel, and you can guess the result. The scoot went where I was looking, which was at the side of the road. I did not get killed but got banged up pretty good. Now in July I am mostly healed. The scoot ended up with bent handlebars, a bent fork and some major gouges in the left faring. All repairable of course. It is in at Brian Billings Race Products right now. I am not anxious to get the bill.
I have moved down to a 2015 PCX150. My wife and I ride a lot of blue roads in Whacom County, and I still ride with the scooter club. The Forza will be for sale when it comes out of the repair shop. I will take a beating financially on it for sure. Going to the PCX150 won't eliminate the possibility of target fixation of course, but together we ride quite a bit slower and tend to pick better roads.
But target fixation is real, and affects pilots, hydroplane drivers, race car drivers and motorcyclists, Here is an excellent article. There are also lots of gruesome YouTubes on target fixation as well. I hope this post will help somebody else avoid the mistake I made.
I put about 2,000 miles on it between delivery and May 2015.
In May, I started riding with a scooter group in Bellingham, WA. We were on a ride in rural Skagit County, I don't know the name of the road, but it had a lot of twisties. We came into a corner, and to my horror, I saw that the county had freshly graveled the shoulder and had left a mess on the roadway, lots and lots of loose gravel.
Now, all my training and experience (I started riding in the early 1990s) would tell me exactly what I needed to do, which was look and lean the direction I wanted to go so the scoot would go around the corner. Instead, I fixated on the gravel, and you can guess the result. The scoot went where I was looking, which was at the side of the road. I did not get killed but got banged up pretty good. Now in July I am mostly healed. The scoot ended up with bent handlebars, a bent fork and some major gouges in the left faring. All repairable of course. It is in at Brian Billings Race Products right now. I am not anxious to get the bill.
I have moved down to a 2015 PCX150. My wife and I ride a lot of blue roads in Whacom County, and I still ride with the scooter club. The Forza will be for sale when it comes out of the repair shop. I will take a beating financially on it for sure. Going to the PCX150 won't eliminate the possibility of target fixation of course, but together we ride quite a bit slower and tend to pick better roads.
But target fixation is real, and affects pilots, hydroplane drivers, race car drivers and motorcyclists, Here is an excellent article. There are also lots of gruesome YouTubes on target fixation as well. I hope this post will help somebody else avoid the mistake I made.