saftybelts and motorcylcles?

[del]

what the hell, seems we can not have any danger. now what do we do for excitement?

del

[halfdome, Danny]

Looks like a fun ride to me It's almost a tiny car. Danny

[angib]

The C1 was (not is) a brave try by BMW to build a much safer two-wheeler - it's particularly brave as it demonstrates that they know that all the other bikes they make are unreasonably dangerous - other manufacturers can just claim that they're too stupid to know any better!

However it didn't sell well enough to justify BMW continuing to produce it and it stopped production a couple of years ago. It wasn't without its problems - that roll cage over the rider's head made it very top-heavy and even experienced journalists dropped it when test riding it.

If you want to see how safe a motorcycle can be, here are:

- a BMW technical paper showing how safe the C1 is, including a few real-world accidents; and

- a page of BMW crash test videos.

Andrew
(who owned the 70s bike that may have given BMW the idea:

[mikeschn]

Andrew,

Isn't this bike a dream of yours?



Mike...

P.S. It's gotta be safer than a Yamaha V-Max!

[Podunkfla]

Yep Andrew... It does look top heavy... and the wheels are too small.
I think something similar could be engineered that would work though.

[Elumia]

It looks like a honda scooter with a BMW emblem to me. how can you have a BMW without a toaster tank?

Mark

[sledge]

might be rough in a wreck, the seatbelt would hold you in it .....and on your side and sliding down the highway........... sure sounds bad.

[Podunkfla]

might be rough in a wreck, the seatbelt would hold you in it .....and on your side and sliding down the highway........... sure sounds bad.

Yep... Been there and done that! Years ago, just out of the USAF, I had a job working for a bank. Part of my job was to make deliveries to other branches on a Cushman 3 wheeled scooter. Sure enough, a lady pulled out in front of me and I dumped it and slid along, strapped in feeling the skin erode away... Not much fun. Those little scooters were dangerous bigtime and eventually pulled from the market mostly because of the hazards.

[sledge]

yep, the Old Scooters would put you in the hospital FAST....... I think Cushman's was a lot better design than the old Vespa's was...... the Vespa would cut under on you, and drive your head in the ground like a NAIL ! I knew a man who bought a Vespa for his Son, in about maybe a year, it put the Son, the Daughter , the Wife , and everyone who just dropped by in the Hospital.........

[Podunkfla]

yep, the Old Scooters would put you in the hospital FAST....... I think Cushman's was a lot better design than the old Vespa's was...... the Vespa would cut under on you, and drive your head in the ground like a NAIL ! I knew a man who bought a Vespa for his Son, in about maybe a year, it put the Son, the Daughter , the Wife , and everyone who just dropped by in the Hospital.........

I never had a problem with my 2 wheeled Cushman Eagle... The only thing it needed was better brakes, because when I got through working on it the darn thing would do better than 70 mph.

Those 3 wheeled Cushman Trucksters were nasty though, mostly the ones with the fiberglass cab were topheavy and unsafe.

[kajamelu4]

I saw several covered bikes like that in Germany last week. I can't provide any details since I don't pay any attention to things like that. I saw about 5 of them in Berlin, and maybe 5 more in Heidelburg.

Karol

[angib]

Ain't coincidence a wonderful thing? The C1 gets talked about here and then is raised on a list for Feet Forwards motorcycles (like the green Quasar or orange Genesis above). I thought this intelligent comment was worth repeating in full. You need to recognise that all Volvos count as large cars in Yurp.

We fairly regularly discuss 'risk homeostasis' or 'risk compensation' which has shown that if you give someone a safer vehicle, they will simply drive more carelessly so that their overall risk remains the same. You may believe that you are the exception to this rule.... but you ain't!

Safety. The law of unintended consequences (or the law of Sod) applies here. If you sell a vehicle as safer than the standard offering, you act as a magnet for crap drivers. Volvo make good (heavy, over-engineered) cars, but are saddled with the 'Volvo driver' myth for a good reason, they sell on safety so the half-blind and half-witted choose their cars.

I probably said before that I used to park near a City BMW dealer, and I was interested to see how their back yard was piling up with heaps of wrecked C1s. I am convinced that one factor in them dropping the C1 was the fear that one day, someone would get some stats (possibly from an insurance company) and run a shock horror story that you are 25% (or whatever) more likely to crash on a C1 than any other scooter. This would then lead to a witch hunt looking for faults in the design.

The truth in fact would be that the C1 is chosen by the worst riders, but of course BMW aren't going to say that. So if anyone was fool enough to market an FF design on safety grounds, then sod's law is you would get a flock of dickheads trying to ride them, the crash rate would actually go up, and it would be billed as the manufacturer's fault.

Andrew