Team Wanty-Gobert rider Antoine Demoitié dies after Gent-Wevelgem crash

GerardR wrote:

If the motos are only there to provide better coverage for viewers, then we should be taking the riders' side and saying that we put their safety ahead of our viewing.

They're not.

Of the motos involved in a major race, TV account for no more than five or six - three or four cameras, one host TV channel on-bike commentator, maybe one technical support.

There will be a number of press photographers, maybe a dozen, who leapfrog the convoy to get their passengers to the interesting points of the race and (rotating under supervision, which will be when you see them massed together) to take pictures of riders on the move. They are probably the most "disposable" of the motos although as far as I can recall none of the recent incidents hnve involved them.

The remainder of the motos you see will be carrying out technical roles of one kind or another. Race officials supervising both the riders and the other vehicles in the convoy. Safety marshals to alert riders about danger points, street furniture and other obstacles, police to enforce road closures, neutral service to reduce the need for cars to move up and down the convoy. You could replace some of the mobile marshals by recruiting and paying enough static marshals instead for known danger points, but you'd probably need a few hundred people for that.

In this horrible incident it appears that the bike involved was carrying a commissaire - from the general descriptions, probably one who was there to stop team cars moving up into the back of the field as riders were being dropped. Both rider and pillion were highly experienced, and it appears to have been a real freak accident while the rider was trying to take evasive action after a crash right in front of him with cars coming up behind, no high speed passing or anything like that, just a drop whlie trying to manoeuvre 400 kg of bike and riders at low speed on wet roads. Obviously the incident needs to be investigated (and will be, probably by both French and Belgian authorities as well as the cycling bodies involved) and lerssons learned, but the whole trial-by-internet thing that appears already to be under way is both misdirected and distasteful in the extreme.