Crash Bars Dangerous?

My experience has been that crash bars aren't dangerous if you remember that you're riding a cruiser. I had MCE's on the C50 and the only thing I scraped was the floorboards and the exhaust. I had the bike lowered and aftermarket exhaust. I am fairly aggressive when riding twisties. When I got the Vulcan 1500 I bought a set of MCE's on e-Bay and they substituted Cobra's. I thought "oh well" crash bars are crash bars. They are not.........I ruined two sets of crash bar chaps by scraping those Cobra bars. I finally replaced them with Baron Bars. The Cobra's stick out and down too far on bottom. You can touch them down before hitting the floorboard scrapers. All it takes is just a little "bump" in a corner when you've got it laid over good and "YES" you will be down and sliding.

Get crash bars..........just not Cobra's. Then try to remember that you're riding a cruiser.

Somewhere on here is a thread about Cobra bars. It would be a worth while search/read.

Dec 2009. I was on a warm winter's ride with my wife. We were entering a favourite S-Bend that we had ridden 1000 times before. On this day, my front tire slid on some gravel and the bike leaned over, forcing the crash bar to make contact with the pavement. The crash-bar then acted as a pivot point and levered the front tire completely off the pavement, rendering any steering input useless. I was NOT riding too fast for the conditions. I was NOT pushing the bike beyond its capacity. Had the crash bar NOT been there, I COULD have recovered and ridden through the turn, shaken, but uninjured. But, because the crash bar levered the front tire from the pavement, I went for a wild ride down a 60 foot embankment before finally being ejected over the handlebars and landing face first on a rock, shattering my face shield.

Any time hard parts touch down, bad things will happen. Some bars (Cobra in particular) will touch LONG BEFORE the floor board makes contact, which will cause serious issues like mine. So, yes. Crash bars CAN cause a crash in the right circumstances, even when the rider is not hot-dogging through the corners.

If you get off the gas, or hit the brake in a corner and compress your forks while in a corner with the wheel turned, a common problem when entering too hot, you can dive the hwy bars lower. But it takes a turned wheel and trying to lose speed rapidly such as getting off the gas to create this situation. If you maintain speed, the floorboards always scrape first. I had cobra's on my C50 and I scraped the boards frequently. The hwy bars got close, but even under severe deceleration they floorboards hit first. Never when I was hot and maintaining speed or accelerating through the twisties. Now if I got scared and got off the gas a little, well that is a different story. I am not saying what happened to others did not happen, **** happens. I am not saying I could recover if my front wheel slid out while hot in the corners, I am just saying if it happened, I'd not blame the Hwy bars and take a hard look at my riding skills. I preferred the Cobra's over the MCI. My choice.