Is Mise, it was always stupid.

They chose to do something in which a successful outcome was entirely based on luck, where the consequences were essentially unsurvivable and that they had no way of knowing what the odds were before they started.

I ride motorcyles and have done so for most of my life. I like to ride them fast and I used to like to ride them faster. I've had some very close calls while doing so, but I've never had a serious accident while riding fast, because I assess the risks and manage them. I won't go into the details, I'm sure you can work that out.

However, I have had one very serious accident when I was riding slow. I chose to overtake a car which was indicating a right turn and it turned left instead, hitting my leg and foot and knocking me into a power pole at about 60 or so km per hour. As it happened, I realised I'd been an idiot and hadn't properly assessed the situation: the driveway the car was indicating for was blocked with a row of besser blocks and the driver had veered back into my lane without looking.

I still consider that accident my own stupid fault.

Beg to differ, Craig, the expected outcome was based on planning and it was only by chance that they were caught.

Your experience with the car driver indicating one thing and doing another is a daily experience around Glen Innes, just to the north of Lang St there is a Shell service station (actually it's on the corner) and motorists approaching Lang St from the south often indicate for a left turn but pass Lang St and turn into the service station.

I know one lady who was almost hit because she assumed, as one would, that a car was going to turn into Lang St, so she stepped off the footpath and the car continued across the intersection and she was almost run down, to add insult to injury the front seat passenger abused her.

When lighted turn indicators first became common my father said to me
and I remember his words very well,
"Son, the only sure thing that a turn indicator tells you is that there is electricity passing through a globe."

His advice has saved me a few times and the only time that I ignored it my car was almost hit by a school bus that had a faulty indicator switch.
A small voice beside me said "What did you say that grandfather told you?"

Craig Minns, I am not stupid enough to ride motorbikes fast on the public road, or even drive cars.

However I did like driving cars very fast in my younger days. Unlike you I did it appropriately, on the race track. I set a Bathurst lap record in 1967 in my Brabham F2 which was never beaten.

So sorry old boy, I have not had a boring life, I have simply behaved appropriately, & mostly legally.

About the only thing boring is that I have never even touched, let alone used a drug. I have found enough adrenalin pumping activities in life, to never need the synthetic variety.

I actually did a couple of dozen laps laps of Lakeside in a Formula Ford in February. At 75 I am getting a bit past my best, but was pleasantly surprised to get to within 5 seconds of my times there in 1968 in the Formula 1 Brabham Repco, in that years Gold Star Australian Formula 1 championship. These modern tyres must be pretty good.

That told me I have no desire to really push the envelop these days. If I do it again, it will be in my TR8, or my Honda S2000, something a little more comfortable, & suited to my maturity.

Is Mise, you're most welcome to differ, it would be a terribly dull discussion if we were all in furious agreement. However, I'll tell you why I think you're wrong to do so in this case.

The Bali 9, by all accounts, did as I did when I had the serious accident I described, which is they trusted in everything they had planned going as they hoped it would, when there were very influential factors out of their control and about which they hadn't properly informed themselves.

Just like me, they were stupid. Just like me, they suffered the consequence of that stupidity. Unlike me, they didn't have the luck to survive.

Hasbeen, in his rush to get to the wrong conclusion as quickly as possible, gives us another example of how to make bad judgements with inadequate information. The worst indignity I have ever suffered while riding a motorcycle fast was at the change of direction entering the busstop at Lakeside, flicking off over the highside after a very brief and surprising tankslapper caused by a few drops of oil I'd picked up about 50 meters earlier as I went around another bike out of the Karussel and ran wide onto the grass, where a car had dropped its guts and the kitty litter hadn't been applied. It wasn't until I dropped it over to the right that the oil touched the track, front and back almost at the same time.

The busstop isn't there any more, as far as I know, which is a shame. Getting it right through the karussel and up over the hill through the busstop before blasting down to the loop was one of the great challenges and a huge buzz. If you got it right you could easily pick up a second or more on a RZ 250 compared to a more conservative approach.

My little GPz 500 is currently off the road, sadly, while I spruce her up. She's not as fast as my two-strokers were, but fast enough.

Craig Minns, you call me hysterical and content free well what is this; "There will be considerable public anger from both the left and the right, the former driven by concern for human rights and natural justice, the latter by racism, jingoism and twisted nationalism".

Sorry I reacted to Lefty baiting but if anything was demonising and hateful bile the above statement is. I am in total opposition to execution, the main reason being to protect real people from Lefty justified killing, they get the taste for blood and start to binge. CCCP executed 20 +million, The Middle Kingdom 70+, the Lefty darling of Pol Pot only a few (but he tried harder), Kim's Kingdom and how many disappearances are there in Venezuela?

Lefty opposition is not against State Murder but opposition to the type they like.

Hasbeen,

Totally off topic, but you mentioned the Repco Brabham, did you know the late Phil Irving ("Slide Rule")?
I had the pleasure of travelling back from England with him in around 1961 on the SS "Orion", and proofread the manuscript of one of his books for him.
I last met up with him at Oran Park in 1975 when I was racing my Alvis 12/50.