LOWSIDE
Incidence: Common
Injury potential: Medium
A lowside usually occurs when the front tyre loses grip whilst cornering. The rider drops to the track and slides along. As long as the rider doesn't collide with another bike, his own bike or some track "furniture" they don't usually suffer serious injuries. Grand prix riders have suffered low sides at over 170 mph and just got up and walked away!
HIGHSIDE
Incidence: Common
Injury potential: High
A highside occurs when the
rear wheel slides but but subsequently regrips the track.
This flicks the bike upright and may flick the rider off
the bike to quite a height. It is wise to have a high index
of suspicion for serious injury after a rider has highsided
START/FINISH LINE
INCIDENTS
Incidence: Uncommon
Injury potential: High
You must be especially vigilant at the start of each race.
When the flag drops, racers do not wait for the rider in
front to set off, they simply nail the throttle and devil
take the hindmost! Because the riders are so close
together, if one bike loses control it can cause a domino
effect of collisions resulting in high potential for a mass
casualty incident. If a rider stalls his machine at the
race start he runs the risk of being struck from behind by
a machine accelerating hard from further down the grid. As
bikes can do 0-60 in under 3 seconds they may be travelling
extremely fast before they have left the grid. There have
been some fatalities recently from such incidents.
FIRE
Incidence: Extremely
rare
Injury potential: Theoretically
high
