100mph-0 rear-wheel lock-up on an Autoroute
Anyone who's familiar with motorcycles will know what a tailpack is. For those not so au fait, it's a large bag which straps onto the passenger seat of a bike to carry luggage. A nifty little solution.

Less so when one of the critical, load-bearing bungees snaps and, unbeknown to the rider, the 5kg bag rocks off the other side, falling onto the top of the wheel where it's kicked into the gap between rear suspension unit and the tyre. The irresistible force of the wheel pulls it further in until it's locked solid

Of course, the first you'll know about this is the rear wheel locking solid and your world filling with white-hot panic, the banshee death-wail of screeching, tortured rubber and acrid, cloying white smoke. The bike will buck and kick, the rear end will hop and tear and shred apart in seconds.

Normally, the rear will bite - hard - and the back end will entirely lose traction and knife around like a truck. The bike will ungracefully kiss the tarmac in a shower of sparks, the plastic and metal shredding like tissue as the road puts it through a hundred-mile-per-hour meat grinders. It'll disintegrate the solid steel frame and engine casings in a matter of seconds. At close to 100mph this will hurt. A lot.

If you go into the ARMCO barrier or a car coming up behind hits you, that's it, game over, do not pass go, do not insert coin for extra life.

If you're really, really, really lucky, you'll keep the back vaguely behind the front, forcing the bike to go with nothing but brute force and desperation until you scrub enough speed off to gather (what remains) of your your wits about you and gradually increase the pressure on the front brake, bit by agonising bit, until you're braking hard enough to life the back tyre and come to a controlled (ish) stop, on one wheel, trailed by a quarter mile tail of thick smoke, the stench of violently shredded rubber and a need for fresh underpants.

Unfortunately, they were in the tailpack and, thus, now somewhere on the N4...
(Miraclefish How appropriate, you fight like a cow, Thu 19 Aug 2010, 16:35, 13 replies)

Fuck. Me.
The thought of this is enough to pucker my ring.

*click*
( Agnostic Antichrist Baltimora, Thu 19 Aug 2010, 17:10, closed)

Agreed.
I've had some shunts and near misses in cars, but the thought of any kind of 'excitement' of a similar ilk on a bike simply petrifies me.
( The Pollitt chooses to listen to Enya on, Thu 19 Aug 2010, 17:17, closed)

Well held sir.
Cargo net from there in I guess?
( Blind Meach Cautiously optimistic, Thu 19 Aug 2010, 17:36, closed)

Nah, but I now use the Velcro 'emergency' belt which you put under the saddle to, it turns out, stop just such an occurrence
Still, it was a bit of a ring-clincher...
(Miraclefish How appropriate, you fight like a cow, Thu 19 Aug 2010, 17:45, closed)

Crapping Nora
As a fellow biker who is, next month, off to Germany, I salute your narrow escape and thank the gods of two wheels that I have nice proper panniers.
( Olembe Refuses to write in this space, Thu 19 Aug 2010, 18:06, closed)

Agreed about the panniers, me to
Though they don't help much if you ever have a 80mph front wheel blow out :-(
( zulu eh?, Thu 19 Aug 2010, 19:12, closed)

Reading that made me shudder.
It also makes me realise that any thought i ever had to buy a bike should remain just a thought and never a reality. Besides, the wife would kill me and she is nearly as scary!!!
(Beaverman Opulence, I has it., Thu 19 Aug 2010, 21:40, closed)

i ride a bike and can fully imagine how your arse must have been making buttons that day. My mate is off to Germany next month on his bike with some pals but he's bought some fancy frame which attaches to the rear of the bike you then slide your luggage over the top of it. I dont know the luugage company name but i think its quite pricey. I always use a backpack on my bike with all the excess draw strings and straps cut off.
(Cov Boy, Fri 20 Aug 2010, 13:06, closed)

This was just Jesus's way of telling you not to be such a speeding, law breaking cunt

(The Cat Hater punch a cow for the planet, Mon 23 Aug 2010, 9:43, closed)

There ain't no lawbreakin'
Going on when there's no speed limits. I'll hold my hat up to the cuntishness. I like to think it's a key component of my rogueish charm....
(Miraclefish How appropriate, you fight like a cow, Tue 24 Aug 2010, 17:47, closed)

Autoroute
That would make it Germany.
Higher speed limits anyone?
(Le Grenouille, Mon 23 Aug 2010, 20:48, closed)

autoroute
would make it France. they have autobahns in Germany.
(ianisme, Wed 25 Aug 2010, 17:49, closed)

Technically, yep.
But Autoroute is a generally used word for toll/high speed motorways on the Continent.
(Miraclefish How appropriate, you fight like a cow, Thu 26 Aug 2010, 0:59, closed)