ORIGINAL: aszrael1266

i dont see a problem going there with a stock bike and just taking it easy on the roads. i would like to know how many tickets they give to all the harley guys that go to the gap.

ORIGINAL: srobak

You are missing the point - and your justification is a cop-out to be honest. It has less to do with the volume of traffic on the road, and more with the quality of driver, rider, and they TYPE of riding and driving that happens there. Interstate 90 between O'Hare airport and downtown Chicago sees more cars in ONE DAY than The Gap sees in a month - and while there is a daily accident or three there - an extremely limited number of them result in people going for a trip in the red and white box with the blinky lights.

The facts are this - there are way too many people riding that road at too high of a rate of speed who think that they are smarter than the machine they are riding, smarter than the road they are riding on, and smarter than the other people who are also riding or driving on the road. Flying through blind turns which have intersections at their apexes is not the smartest thing in the world to do. Nor is passing another car or bike on the wrong side of the ride, across a double-yellow on an EXTREMELY blind curve to the left. Yet video after video posted on youtube, and accident after accident all have the exact same circumstances...

Someone goes there who thinks they are God's Gift To Riding - and they get their *** handed to them on the 3rd or 4th pass, which they just happened to take a bit hotter than the ones before and therefor didn't have anywhere near enough reaction time when a car pulled out on said blind apex with an intersection, or when they or someone coming towards them is on the wrong side of the road. It is one thing to go and "have fun" and tear it up a little, it is another thing to push too far and be stupid by dramatically slicing your reaction time and distance because you pushed beyond your means, abilities, and what would be reasonable. The difference is that stupid hurts. People seem to get it into their heads that the gap is a closed circuit, and that the only thing they need to worry about is if the bike slides out from underneath them and how to avoid sliding into the trees.

It is dangerous for the people who do go there just to cruise it - because they get traffic stacked up behind them and end up getting passed on both the left AND the right, usually in sections that don't warrant any passing at all... I know that if I were to go there, I would not have to worry about wrecking because I crossed the double yellow, or because I ride beyond my means and abilities... however - everyone else there is the wildcard, and their idiocy puts you far more at risk. I know 3 people around Chicago who just in the last year went there and wrecked.... not including those from this forum. One went down because an on-coming bike went wide trying to pass another bike, crossed the double yellow and clipped her - she ended up with a broken collar bone. Another who was with her went to go get help - and had a car pull out of a grocery store right in front of him - he T-boned her. He is still learning how to walk again. The 3rd went wide around a right-hander and his front tire clipped the left front of the oncoming truck...

If they don't crack down on the type of riding that is happening there, this will continue to happen, and more people will continue to get seriously messed up or killed. There is no reason why it has to go to that extreme... you can still have fun and tear it up without putting yourself and all the other people around you in danger because you are being a dumbass. Slow it down a notch, space it out, don't pass... you can still have a hell of a lot of fun, and you won't come home in a cast or with a new stunt bike.

Fun... not stupid. Stupid hurts.