09 ninja 250r? highway?

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• April 29, 2009 at 7:41 am #18105
  megaspaz

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  In your situation it all depends on how your passing and at what rate you’re passing mr. truck. Assuming you’re passing on the left, are you passing in a way that you just stay on the right part of the lane or are you passing in a way that immediately puts you to the left of the lane. That extra space between you and the offending vehicle gives you the extra time to increase your options… brake, accellerate more, keep your delta, honk, flip off driver, etc… Is your delta just barely passing? ie. vehicle going 60mph, you passing at 65mph… then you’re passing wrong. In your situation if you’re just about done passing offending vehicle, why would there be a danger of him drifting or mergine into your lane? You should already be at a delta to be safely pass the vehicle and out of the vehicle’s blind spot, ie. there’s no way the driver shouldn’t see you. I’ve personally, never had that happen to me. I’ve had vehicles merge/drift into my lane when i was directly adjecent to the vehicle, but never when the nose of my bike was just slightly passed their vehicle. If the drifting starts when youre adjacent or in the vehicle’s blind spot, i’d say it’s a personal choice on whether to brake or accellerate (i’d highly suggest always using the horn though). But by saying you’re just about done passing means you’re basically passed the vehicle at a faster delta rate already. Not saying your situation couldn’t happen, it just seems unlikely… the driver would have to be completely stupider than the average driver (possible), the driver would have to be having a really bad day and just itching to run you over (slightly possible), or the DMV is giving licenses to legally blind folk (unlikely). Either way, I would contend that any time accelerating is your only option just means you’ve done a lot of stuff wrong beforehand already regarding S.E.E…

  May 12, 2009 at 6:52 am #18363
  MadCow

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  In case it helps, I’ll throw my two cents in.

  I’m a Ninja 250 rider in Los Angeles where typical freeways speeds (when it’s not rush hour) are in the 65-80 range. I’ve gotten up to about 95 on my bike (only to keep up with particularly fast moving traffic one day), and it was ok, but not the best situation to be in. The bike’s stability is fine at 65-75 but gets shakey above that. Also, once you hit about 75, you can really tell that you’re running out of juice. I would much rather have a little more power at my disposal if needed. Without getting into the whole accelerate vs. brake debate, there are some situations where I would rather accelerate into an open lane rather than brake and potentially get rear ended.

  As for the wind thing, it never really bothered me. Granted, I’m not a big guy with a lot of surface area to catch wind, but I will typically only encounter two or three pockets of strong wind in the course of an hour’s ride. In those cases. I’ll just crouch down near the tank. Honestly sports bikes (even the 250) are designed to be ridden in at least somewhat of a crouch. So when people complain about the windscreen blowing wind into their chests, it’s probably because they’re going fast enough (80 mph) that they should be crouching a bit more. If you want to ride upright at higher speeds, then you may want to get a bike that’s designed for it like a cruiser.

  So in short, I think that a 250 is perfectly fine for highway riding anywhere that doesn’t require you to go much above 70-ish on a regular basis. But for places like LA, I’d probably go for something a little bigger. I love my 250 and I’ve been riding it on and off the highway for the past year. But, I’m probably going to look into getting a bigger bike.

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