Video: Team Sky's Elia Viviani hit by moto at Paris-Roubaix

Does anybody else see and hear the motorbike rider get up, point a finger at Viviani and say "Hey a$$hole, why did you stand so close?"...effectively blaming Viviani for why he crashed into him?!?!?

Drones are not the answer - the tech is not anywhere near ready yet..

I think the answer is quite simple - cameras on the bikes (such as velon are trying out).

When the road is wide, use the usual motorbike cameras, but when you get to the narrow/dangerous/fast/crosswind sections, you order the motorbikes away from peloton, and use on-board bikes, helicoper plus you should still be able to use motorbikes ahead of the riders with a longer focal length.

With a bit of planning, you could potentially move camera bikes ahead of the peloton, and then provide a stationary shot as the race comes past, and then move onto the next viewpoint. (Not for the whole race, but for dangerous sections)

Leaving the moto crash aside, Docker's crash is absolutely f***ing horrendous - poor fella.

Glad to hear the riders will be mostly OK.

Motos are a necessary evil and I recognise that it's a hell of a difficult job with pressure to get the best shot, but watching on TV and even accounting for the foreshortening of camera lenses I was flinching at how close some of the bikes were getting on some of the sectors everyone must realise that the safety of the riders isn't just the most important thing, it's everything.  A heavy bike going fast on slippery cobbles cannot simply stop, that's just physics, and therefore the driver must hang back.

Let's face it, a moto camera is the only realistic prospect at the moment to be in and around the action, where it's happening, able to stop, go, cut and focus on anything new at the drop of a hat. Try that with a drone or a crane.

Drones are a no simply cos the technology isn 't there yet (battery life, obstacle avoidance, cost, logistics)  and also because you've got probably 4 - 8 helicopters drifting round the place too. I know they're popular and in the right hands and a controlled environment very capable but they're not the answer here.

Fixed cameras/cranes on a point-to-point race? Too expensive to justify for the 30 seconds of coverage they'll get as the race passes underneath.

Quote:

On this race in particular I don't understand why they need such heavy bikes, or why on the cobbled sections they werent using propper dirt bikes that will get more grip especially under braking.

The bikes are heavy beacuse they're carrying 2 people plus a ton of camera equipment! Dirt bikes aren't built for that so you can't use them. 

Quote:

One obvious thing is the pillions...  why have pillions? gimbal mount a camera on the front/back and remote control it or go for a head cam that brings down the weight hugely.

The control isn't there for that. Bear in mind all this footage is LIVE feed here, not something neatly recorded to a GoPro. The camera bikes are mobile transmitter platforms and you need a human on board to run all that.

The Arenberg Trench is high speed, dead straight and pretty much the start of the real racing. Everyone is fighting for position meaning that crashes are pretty much guaranteed. The fact that all riders are trying to get on the front through Arenberg proves this is THE high risk pave section.

The moto drivers have a tough job, crowds each side of a huge bank of riders in front and noise levels so high that they must struggle to hear any radio comms in their ear. So if a crash happens in front of them, by the time they work out what is going on it is likely to be tough to stop.

Drones will not happen, the risk of the thing falling out the sky and causing further issues is too high. The logistics of operators having to keep up with the drone are crazy too.

However, the answer on this section of pave is over head cable camera's. This technology has matured due to being used in F1 and a huge number of field sports and over the last 15 years. It can't be that tough to get a few overhead cable rigs set up on this dead straight sector to cover the action and either divert the moto's or have them drop right back.

I can remember incidents going back years having watched TDF since the 80s, however they were very rare, nearly always low speed in the mountains (often croud induced), and the Moto riders had a very sacrificial point of view, and you would see them crash to avoid riders rather than hit them.

On this race in particular I don't understand why they need such heavy bikes, or why on the cobbled sections they werent using propper dirt bikes that will get more grip especially under braking.

One obvious thing is the pillions...  why have pillions? gimbal mount a camera on the front/back and remote control it or go for a head cam that brings down the weight hugely.

Weight is what's dangerous here... especially now the peleton has disc brakes the bikes can stop much quicker than the motorbikes and cars can react, and a heavy motorbike and 2 riders on a dodgy surface is always going to slide out of control.

Overall the standard of driving around the peleton is shocking. Mechanics getting run over, motorbikes taking out riders, bikes giving riders tows, cars crashing into each other. Someone will be killed soon... oh..

Is this sort of thing happening more frequently, or has it become a "thing" so it's reported more frequently?

There was another incident in the last 5k where a Moto dived on to the pavement to avoid a rider who'd launched off the front of the bunch of 5.

The bigger problem is that crashes in races are accepted without question, and even glorified — slow-motion replays on television, show-us-your-scars features on some sites, countless videos posted online. "Competitor safety must be paramount" is an absolute joke. Riders suffer terrible injuries and they're piled back onto the bike to continue — Chris Horner being allowed to ride during the 2011 Tour with a severe concussion was appalling, to name one example. Riders have been killed, and the race goes on.

In virtually every instance of a motorbike hitting a rider, the story begins with "there was a crash", which didn't involve the motorbike. The motorbikes are a red herring.

One day, some day, professional cycling, bike racing in general, will have its day of reckoning for turning a blind eye to crashing in a similar way that the NFL has for ignoring athlete safety and allowing its own culture of violence to continue.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2306498/NFL-glorifies-violence-deliberately-covers-risk-injuries-blows-head-claims-lawsuit-injured-players.html

How long before we can replace the camera motos with drones?

<p>I ride a motorbike as well as a pedal cycle, in fact my motorbike is a very similar machine to the one in this video. The rider would have had a hell of a job stopping the motorbike on cobbles at that kind of speed, let alone being loaded with camera equipment and a pillion adding to the momentum.&nbsp;</p>

<p>We all accept that competitor saftey must be paramount, but equally we need to remember that to get the tv pictures we watch, we need the moto riders to film and transmit them.&nbsp;</p>

<p>P.s my motorbike and the moto machine are BMW GS variations</p>

What are the requirements/trainings/licences that a moto rider needs?

There's a huge pressure on these riders to keep up with the groups/peloton and the moto riders need to be experienced and skilled. It can get hectic in there and adrenalin takes over.

The rider should be dictating what is or isn't safe and not the photographer (I say photographer as I can't see an official putting riders' safety in jeopardy and it didn't look like a service bike) or whoever the pillion is.