I think it's a very good answer. If I had a taken the trouble to have a really hard think about it I would never have gone near the MGP and TT or the Southern 100 and N.W.

But then again I just wanted to race on the roads and nothing else mattered. No one has to race, but we all have to travel to work etc there we have no choice.

We all choose to do what WE want to do for many different reasons.

Yes agree totally Harvey.

At times after such tragedies if i`m totally honest with myself i perhaps found myself saying what people wanted to hear... when at times you just want to shout "why us" "why him" ?

Don`t get me wrong i am still as you know, very much involved in the short circuit race scene and support my kids in their continued involvement of the sport that we love as a family.

I just find the numbers of deaths this year so sad, you cannot just sweep it under the carpet and i truly hope that, with respect to all accidents this year that if lessons can be learned and rules re written then so be it.

Sorry if my opinion seems a bit strong and in no way is it meant to further upset anyone.

Stella

I feel that I have accessed the risks involved and as such have taken precautions to ensure that if I was badly injured or killed my family would at least be reasonably finicially secure.
I think also that one acesses that risk even during a race if I make a mistake of judgemnet I always know I've got a bit of road to play with but others those who are much faster than me must by virtue of being faster leave themselves with less room for errors.

I've seen close up what the concquences of a crash on the TT course can result in and I KNOW what could happen.

I think the point I trying to make is that I refuse to see out my days in a semi drunnken smoke filled haze and die a slow horrible death in some poxy nursing home which seems to be the ambition of tens of thousands of people in this world.

Life is for living and you don't get a second shot at it. Make the most if it.

No Cargo, you haven't assessed the risks.

What you've assessed are the potential consequences, a different matter altogether.

We are all trapped in Human Nature, which leads us to the conviction that accidents always happen to other people.

Be honest, if we ever thought that we were going to fall off, we wouldn't go out onto the grid.

Think about it . . . . . . . . .

This doesn't apply just to racing, but to ALL our lives' activities.

can you imagime the look of sheer delight on the face of an opponent to the tt reading these postings talking up the negative side of our chosen sport. these tragic accidents will always occur. please do not provide any more ammunition to the ban the tt brigade!!( ex tt competitor - financially retired)

As i have never raced but follow the sport closely surely the bikes used in the Classic MGP and other events on the mountain course last week are not the classics of old? i believe the power of these bikes is awsome and i am not anti TT or MGP just concerned about riders safety, is that to much to ask?

As an aside -

What consitutes risk is worth consideration here;

Defining risk is difficult in itself;

The Risk Rating is of any activity is routinely defined as a function of the potential for a given outcome and the severity of that outcome. So something that happens rarely but is severe has the same risk rating as something that happens a lot but is not very severe.

Everytime a rider on his way home from work or riding the TT course turns the throttle he assess the risk and makes a choice.

Motorcycling is inherantly of a greater risk than driving a car. Risk assessed? (ban motorcycles?)

Life can be lived in a more or less risky fashion. Most of those who race (or even go hard on the public roads) find the thrill of the risk part of the attraction. If there was no risk they would probably find it in some other activity.

Some are for and some against the comparison of deaths in Motorcycling with those in other walks of life. Surely it is really a question of your liberty. If you can head off Mountaineering in the Himalayas without anyone objecting at your attitude to the risk - why should you face objection to racing at the IOM?

Why not make these comparisons if all that is being pointed out is the right to pursue your objectives in the way that others do without hinderance in other sports?

Sam

I would like to point out that I don't really consider car crashes to be a credible comparison with racing risk.

Sam

Risk is difficult to define, I agree. But there is also a subjective element to it, which will depend upon the skill and mental attitude of the person in question. To jump on a bicycle and ride for 10 yards in a straight line would hardly be risky for most of us, but watch a child who has just had the stabilisers taken off and after the first attempt and inevitable wobble and crash, they realise that for them, this is risky. But they soon acquire the skill to do it and the risk involved drops dramatically. As their skill develops they are also learning what the inherent risks are - just watch the first corner as the handlebars are yanked round too sharply and off they come. But they refine their movements and acquire the skill to corner and in no time at all riding a bike is, subjectively, not much of a risk and they enjoy doing it because they can do it well - the mental attitude is confident and positive and at a subconscious level they have absorbed the ability to make risk assessments.

That subjective level is regulated with motorbike racing through the licensing system and I think it is a reasonable assumption to say that people who are motivated enough to get themsevles a national racing licence will be people who really enjoy racing. Logically, they will be people who have developed a high level of skill (thus reducing the overall risk invovled) and in doing so will have absorbed a lot of knowledge about those very risks. The child with poor balance and co-ordination is unlikely to find riding (or rather repeatedly falling off) a bicycle much fun and is unlikely to hanker for a motorbike, let alone race one when he is older.

There are also the objective risks which include in large part the external things over which you may not have much control but also includes the fact that people sometimes make a mistake. Would I gallop a horse across a field? Yes. Is that risky? Subjectively, not really because I can ride and from years of doing it I know the inherent risks and can therefore assess them. Would I ride the Grand National? No, because for me there would be too many inherent risks which would be beyond my control and I just don't have any desire to do it and lack the skill anyway. In other words, having never acquired steeplechasing skills and having no desire to do it, it would be very risky for me to jump on a horse and have a crack at it. But it is far less risky for the time-served jump jockey who has built up, (inter alia) the skill and risk knowledge. It would be madness for me to try it but few people would honestly say that he is mad to do it.

So it is with racing motorbikes around here. If you find yourself on the start line at the Grandstand, you must really have wanted to be there and you must really enjoy racing. That is almost certainly because you have a good level of skill (some more than others). From the moment you first fell of you stabiliser free bike as a child you will have been learning about the risks of being on two wheels and will have developed the skills to minimise those risks but you will never forget what they are. The risks of racing here are greater than in many pursuits and just simply different to those in other pursuits. But the person best able to assess the risk and decide whether it is, for them, worth taking, is the person with the skill and motivation to do it. It is likely that those same people are best placed to give their thoughts on how the risks can be minimised and in saying that I am not suggesting that those of us who don't race can have no valid input. It is just that what to me seems horribly risky (and I use my example of the Grand National) will be seen wholly differently through the eyes of a jump jockey.

Just to finish on a lighter note, I wonder how many bits of cine/video footage are lurking out there of those first endeavours on two wheels.