Why do people do this?

[SquireSCA]

Was riding to my girlfriends house tonight an pulled up alongside a guy on a Telephonica gixxer. Nice guy, but as he rode off, I could hear and see his chain skipping on the rear sprocket, that had the teeth all worn down to little nubs.

WTF?

How do you let a sprocket get that bad?

[secondgen7]

What? You actually need to check stuff like that?

You'd think that riders would be at least a little more apt to check these things but a lot of (most?) people just don't pay attention to anything remotely "mechanical" ... the level of neglect towards motor vehicles of all kinds is staggering.

[NiceGuysFinishLast]

I second what secondgen said. It's scary to think that there are probably the same percentage of people on motorcycles who are clueless about maintenance and all things mechanical as there are driving cars; If not more, due to the younger, hotheaded demographic that motorcycles can attract. The things I see on a daily basis baffle and often anger me.

[SpeedGeek]

Agreed... Most people WOEFULLY neglect their motor vehicles... they just expect them to always work and then are flaberghasted when they don't and the repair bills are in the thousands of dollars...

A little simple maintenance, or at least checking things once in a while and replacing worn parts goes a LONG way... I've met so many people (mostly women) who feel that 3000/5000 (depending on the car) oil changes are a farce, and who think that the 15K/30K mile servicings are a waste of money... but those servicings are there to help spot wear and tear and replace items that tend to wear out before they're completely shot. People just don't get that.

ANYONE can check oil, or brake pads, or any of a number of other things if they're just shown how to do it once. Most don't know though, so they don't even bother to check.