back in the day I was a member of a well known notorious m/cycle gang and went on a lot of runs
any biker knows the problems of riding in a large group, not bring able to see the road ahead, trying to keep up in traffic etc, so we used to split into sixes and rotate so the leader would drop to the back for a few miles and then the next leader would drop to the back and so on , this prevented anyone getting left behind if they broke down
one night after a weekend run we were about 10 miles from home home and my bike . a 3 cylinder 750 suddenly played up and was only firing on two cylinders, I was falling further behind when the leader dropped back and I caught him up, we checked the bike over and could find nothing wrong so we set off with him riding behind me in case I conked out and just to make matters worse it started to drizzle
I could see the tail lights ahead of me getting smaller and disapearing and reappearing as they went around the bends, suddenly they were all over the road on a bend and two headlights were mixed up with them
my bike spluttered and banged a bit and then starting firing on three again
when we caught up a few minutes later we found carnage
the road was greasy on the bend and you could see there was diesel/oil all over the bend, it was slippery to walk on and no wonder they had slid out on their bikes, a car coming the otherway had tried to stop but skidded into the bikes, Lost two mates that night and another the next day from his injuries
only one of the four survived
bike was ok after that and never did find what caused it to misfire