Talk:Suicide shifter
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What is up with this article? It makes the suicide shift sound like it is an obsucure piece of hardware when a great deal of pan-heads came as suicide shifts. I mean I love that someone had a knowledge of them and decided to put some of it here, but this article sounds more like a safety DON'T than an explanation of the device or the people who love it.
- Then feel free to give it a going-over :) --Hooperbloob 15:34, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
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- Not to mention that a suicide shifter is traditionally not a hand shifter. A hand shifter is traditionally known as a jockey, tank, or police shifter depending on where it is mounted. "Suicide shifter" is a term that evolved out of the "suicide clutch." A suicide clutch is just a foot operated clutch that was popular during the days when bikes only had one foot-operated, rear brake. Supposedly stopping such a bike on an incline was suicidal due to the need to shift into neutral, support the bike with one foot, and eventually shift into first gear while quickly shifting foot support or balancing on two wheels at a standstill.
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- I'm assuming that as motorcycle speeds increased through the decades (and foot clutches became obscure), so did the danger of not keeping both hands on the handle bar. Therefore many people today associate the jockey shift with suicide shifting, which is the bastard child of the suicide clutch and regarded by many in the motorcycle industry as not truly existing (i.e. there is no such thing as a suicide shifter). LostCause 16:24, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
