steveohdrider
Member
For Bikers who haven't experienced much cold weather riding, a motorcycle crash that I recently observed reminded me of lessons in riding or let's say crashing that I've learned over the years.. Tires react much differently in cold/cool weather and the biker that layed down his bike the other night was apparently not aware of this! Cold weather afffects the rubber in tires making the side walls stiffer and the inside rolling surface much warmer and will heat up the surface differently and give more traction. In aggressive cornering like I observed before this unfortunate biker went down the rear end washed out and I'm pretty sure the rider wasn't thinking of his tires and there performance in cold weather. We stopped to offer help and to check out if he was hurt or not and luckily, except some expected scrapes and bruises, fine! The rider mentioned he had torn up this corner plenty of times in the summer at even higher speeds with great success. Cold tires against cold pavement can cause a bike to perform similiar to riding on wet pavement so when riding when its cold outside treat it like its wet weather. I learned this many years ago and had to learn the hard way too! Hope nobody else has to learn the hard way, Road rash hurts!!