sometimes antz goes from mod to member to mod again

& yeah -- do we need to justify -- afaik there hasn't been any huge group rides in the history of xbhp as much as from mumbai & that automatically adds credibility to what's practiced being right & what is wrong

This being a generic discussion should be kept as such only

BUT breaking down into small groups will work if the ride is a small ride and does not involve covering large distances! Since there is plenty of time to cover the short distance!

Some where I believe 60-80kmph is best for a group ride instead of less than 60kmph or greater than 80kmph.

Ride at those speeds owning a big bike may be, something like GT650R or Ninja650 or even a liter class bike, its not practical neither safe. Its also not that you cant ride, but its not advisable, what if a member is not comfortable at those speeds, Yes 60kmph on a SBK will be very difficult, not that they dont wish to but given a choice and in safety yes, they are comfortable doing more than that... So giving the freedom of their own comfortable riding speed is important.

@Satyen - I think you had ridden on those above mentioned speeds on your spark, but I guess you had a Pillion.

Comfort level of every individual is different, depends on every rider.

Edit - Also one should keep in the mind the type of bikes involved in the ride, you cant improvise the 60kmph speed for all bikes.

A recent news item about a road accident involving multiple motorcycles and a car in Florida USA caught my attention as it quite tragically brings out the greatest and probably the least recognized danger of group riding. A speeding car tried to overtake a 15 bike group in one go and hit one of the lead bikes as it was turning left. Remember this is the US where we have traffic going in the opposite sense to our country – so a left turn is across the lanes akin to taking a right turn on our roads. The bike that took a full hit from the car flew up a short distance in the air before landing and exploding into flames. The riders – a middle-aged couple – are both in critical condition. A number of other bikes following also piled up and quite a few riders were injured though none as seriously as the couple riding the bike that was hit. The link to the news is here.

The crux of the incident was that a car tried to overtake a large (read long) group of bikes as they rode along. Within this innocuous little action lies the deadliest of traps for a group on motorcycles and the danger lies not just in mis-judgement on anyone’s part but also their attitude towards bikes, prior experience with other biker groups and state of mind at the time of the encounter. What I am pointing at is the following. A group of say 8 motorcycles, assuming each bike is about 1.5m long and there is a 3 bike-length separation between the bikes while they ride staggered, doing about 70 kph on the road is effectively a 50m long and 2m wide vehicle for any passing automobile if it means to pass without intruding within the group. A car traveling at say 90 kph will need more than 12 seconds to get past this group with that relative speed difference of 20 kph. Remember that the car is actually travelling at 90 kph and the bikes at 70 kph, both speeds fast enough to be lethal, especially for the bikes, if they happen to hit each other during the passing maneuver.

To understand the situation in its entirety, we need to take the car drivers point of view into this too. He, like any of us, does not want to unnecessary slow down, especially when traveling long distance. Imagine the car approaching the said bike group with a truck some half a km ahead (seems pretty far ahead on the road actually) and the driver wants to complete his maneuver before he and the biker group reaches the truck forcing the bikers to change lanes into his and so forcing him to slow down. He wants to get past on the go and in one go. Nothing unusual in that. Let’s explore a little bit of the maths involved here. The 12 sec pass time we calculated above means that the bikes would have covered some 240m during that time while the car will need at least 20% more for sufficient clearance beyond the biking group so as not to squeeze them by getting in just ahead of them. The car driver has about 6 sec in hand once past the bikers’ before he gets alongside the truck at this closure rate. And the bikes are 2 seconds behind him. Now imagine the trucker deciding to either slow down (even if this slowing down means his lifting his foot off the accelerator pedal) or to change lanes into the car’s path. Hard braking by the car driver here just might prevent him from hitting the truck but what of the bikers behind him. An 8-long group with even a fractional delay in braking response will have barely a couple of second to slow down enough to avoid hitting either the car or the truck ahead. Add the ‘rubber-band effect' of a number of vehicles following each other on a common path and you can guess how extremely short these 2 seconds are. The same could have happened even with a group of 4 bikes huh? No. The passing window would have been much shorter in time, the car driver would probably have felt less compelled to build up a large speed difference to get past quickly. And the bike group would typically be about the same length as a bus or a truck, something all drivers are used to judging accurately for overtaking.

Imagine the same group wanting to turn right and the same car driver wanting to get past them before they do so. The Florida fiasco would be ready for the taking then. Suppose the driver is of the ‘I lose at nothin’ type and has already been pissed off by some other biker group on road (even if in the recent past) by not being allowed to pass when he probably had the right to would easily slip into the ‘I’ll show em’ mode and try to throttle past them all at speed.

Even with an 8 long bike group, it becomes very difficult to judge other vehicles behind in your RVM’s when a large part of the reflected image is of your own group’s bikes. Also the middle riders usually tend to follow as a herd, assuming the lead riders know what they are doing and they would have done the rear check et al. The sweep would be able to see best but in the absence of some voice communication between him and the lead would be helpless in warning him.

One simple precaution can make a huge difference to reducing the probability of a mishap in a group ride. Keep the group size small – not more than 4-5 bikes as a cluster and that too with relatively uniform skill levels. A small group has the advantage of being:

• Less of an intrusion on the road for other road users.
• It can also be more flexible to traffic demands and the ‘rubber-band’ effect is less pronounced.
• Each rider also has a fuller view of the situation ahead and would be more mentally committed to the job of riding than he/she would be in a large ‘herd’, insulated from most traffic situations.

Thanks Divya. As for your queries:

Yes, 10+ riders together would face the very dangers elaborated in my above post. I have always advocated small groups. Break down your numbers into smaller sub-groups of 5 or so and put in a gap of half a mile or so between each sub-groups. You can always co-ordinate on phone if not in visual contact.

Newbies are best placed within the group and a couple of them squeezed between the lead and the sweep will give them enough exposure to learn and practice. Typically you tend to have newbies and experienced riders distributed either in equal numbers across a group or majorly the more experienced ones are more in number. There is no hard demarcation dividing the magnitude of experience though but those willing for and initiating a long distance group ride usually have some confidence in their riding ability, which invariably comes from experience and so the majority naturally tends towards being experienced.

I have myself experienced aggressive behavior of motorists on the highway here if they feel encumbered or obstructed by too large a group of bikes, especially if the bikers are hogging the road by spreading out across its width. They tend to squeeze in between the group during an overtaking move. Feeling obstructed is also natural as everyone has an equal right to passage. Of course the behavior dynamics would change when a couple of automobiles face a huge horde of bikers - the sheer numbers would suppress the aggression within the worst of them.