When you see my brake lights..........

[BA80]

This is what I'm thinking of..........

Too late is too late. Always be aware and don't trust any cage. I've lost too many friends just like this.

http://youtu.be/xq2xStb0R-c

[IanDMacDonald]

Sad for all involved, but if the biker was doing the speed limit, the accident may have not occured.

[BA80]

Sad for all involved, but if the biker was doing the speed limit, the accident may have not occured.

If he hadn't been riding the accident wouldn't have occurred. You miss the point Ian.

[IanDMacDonald]

If he hadn't been riding the accident wouldn't have occurred. You miss the point Ian.

You miss the point Ian.

No, I understood your point Greg. I just think it's a two-way street of responsibilty. Wreckless riders pay a higher price than those whom ride more responsible. Not saying safe riders don't go down, but I live in a city with a large motorcycle population, I live on a main road where I see mopeds to Goldwings abusing the speed limit everyday. So, I honestly never have much compassion for those whom are the victims of their own circumstances.

[BA80]

I see far more cager's abusing the law than riders, such as the one in the video failing to yield to oncoming traffic. I also don't see a speed limit sign and I can't seem to read the speedometer on the bike so how would one know if he was speeding or not.

At any rate, it has very little to do with the vehicle that fails to yield.

Reread the original post.

[mack]

Good Points

You both make good points. I see it everyday up here as well. Kids riding in shorts and t shirts. Feeling invincible, and rocketing around they they were practising for the "isle of mann".
It's been a bad year for accidents. After we lost Kenny at the rally this year I came home and did up my will and made all the arrangements, you just never know. Every time you get on, you wonder if today is the day a cage is going to kill you. Intersections are kill zones.
On thursady I was riding, a bit over the limit but it was open country with strawberry farms on either side. I had a good field of view. There was a piece of large farm equipment approaching in the other lane and I saw a car coming out from picking berries from the right. I was watching the machine to see if he was turning into the same field and the lady in the car to make sure she looked at me. Her eyes remainded on the machinery. When I was nearing the point of no return and she hadn't looked at me, I manned the brakes, not hard but dropping speed just in case.
Sure enough, she wanted to get a head the machinery so when she knew he wasn't turning she gunned it and cut right across in front of me. Never once did she look in my direction until she was well out, then she see's me and slams on the brakes completely blocking my lane of travel.
By then I was already hard on both fronts and backs and skidded to a full stop in time. She gave me the dirtiest looked and took off. The guy driving the machinery gave me a thumbs up and pointed at the car and shook his head.
The point is, you have to be alert all the time and drive a mile ahead of your front tire. Cages don't care and kids aren't invincible. It can and will happen, if you let your guard down.

[jetmechmarty]

I couple of weeks ago I was riding a fast road near my home. Most stuff around here is slow and tight, but this road is all fast sweepers. That morning, I just wasn't feeling it. I didn't feel well, didn't get enough coffee, or whatever. I believe I may have been traveling at below the posted speed limit. Anyway, I went around a blind right turn and there they were. COWS! I remember seven of them, standing in the road. It was a chore just working through them at a snail's pace.

A mile up the road I met motorcycles coming fast in the opposite direction. They're waving and I'm exaggerating the slow down gesture. I hope they got a better look from their direction.

Those cagers aren't much more predictable than a cow or a deer. I know the cow will pretty much just stand there. The deer will jump this way and that. A person driving a car might do anything. Like Greg, I tend to believe they're going to turn left in front of me.

If you haven't seen it, look up SMIDSY on Youtube.

[mfarrington]

OK, I'll jump in. It has been my observation that every accident type is a result of a bad decision-making process, combined with location. Most people who have been in an accident can identify the crucial point where they made a bad choice, and if they'd chosen differently, the accident would have been avoided. Most people who have avoided an accident can also identify the point where they made a safe decision resulting in accident avoidance.

My kids have been riding with me since they were 3 years old. I always remind them that a bike is a machine of death, and will kill them if they do stupid things and don't focus on safety first.

To me, riding motorcycles is a stark and constant reminder that I am truly the only one responsible for myself and my actions. Unfortunately, that is a concept sometimes lost in today's society.

[BA80]

Too late is too late. Always be aware and don't trust any cage.

Like I said.......

[TopCatGr58]

Well, I would agree with you Mike for accidents that WERE caused by the biker. But I have also experienced this exact same type of "accident" where there was NO bad decision on my part, I was not speeding, had my headlight on, following the rules of the road, and the IDIOT cager just didn't see me and turned right in front of me...no turn signal to let me be alert of possible intentions, I was not hidden behind another vehicle that I could have been following too closely behind, was just a matter of THEIR poor perception and decision.

It was a simple 2 lane road with an uncontrolled cross street intersection, traffic going in both directions with vehicles waiting on the cross street. I did SEE the vehicle seem to be slowing down and so I Covered the brakes, but there was NO hard shoulder, crowned road with pea gravel on the edges/portions where the cross street intersected, so there was NO room to attempt a swerve. I slammed on the brakes, was slowing down and thought I would clear her, but then my rear tire got light and CHIRPED, and that scared/startled her and she slammed on her brakes instead of continuing on her turn, so I had no where to go but directly into her right front bumper! I released/releaxed at the last minute and flew across my handlebars, rotating, landing across her windshield shattering and crushing it...but not going THRU it...thankfully or I would have crushed her infant she had in the FRONT SEAT, and then inertia continued to rotate me/my legs around the windshield and off of the car onto the ground beside it. I stood up and brushed the glass off of my legs/jacket!

Not wanting to turn this thread into a HOT TOPIC type discussion, but it's human nature for us to try to put BLAME onto someone when something bad happens to them. Yes, this biker appeared to be speeding...the fact that he quickly passed the other vehicles in traffic that we can assume were travelling the speed limit. And the new HID style of headlights..although much brighter...are actually a lot smaller a point of light than the old style, and so can still be harder to see especially during daytime, and then add that to the apparent hi speed....and the distance from the turning vehicle he was at when the vehicle started to turn....not expecting the bike to be travelling at such a rate of speed as to have closed the separation distance so quickly. If the biker had been at the speed limit, the crossing vehicle would have probably completed the turn and cleared the intersection before the biker would have gotten there.

I posted an expose`/tech tip in the MISC forum a couple of years ago demonstrating WHY we bikers are so invisible, showing the limitations of human vision...and that "we" assume that people have perfect 20/20 vision, but the law only requires 20/40 for nighttime legal limit, and only 20/70 for daytime legal limit...and that's just in 1 eye for personal vehicles...the other eye can be BLIND/Gone!!

I'm sure if we wanted to, we could blow up a still image of the biker's dash, figure out what brand/style of bike, and just from the position of he needles, be able to ascertain what his general KPH speed was, but I think it's a moot point. IMHO the biker made a poor decision of speeding...or shall we say riding at a speed faster than his reflexes or reaction time or decision making time would allow for him to be able to avoid such a situation that occured.

YES...the cager was in error...but I can see/understand HOW he could have made such an error with the circumstances portrayed in the video. Sad for everyone involved!

T.C.

[jetmechmarty]

Here it is again, The SMIDSY

http://youtu.be/eqQBubilSXU

[IanDMacDonald]

Thanks for that Marty. I installed a brake light modulator a few weeks ago. Had a driver pull-up alongside me and said it really caught his attention. Thinking about some LED's for the front now, maybe something like "TheRev's".

[James England]

Looking at the video and understanding how awful it is for everyone concerned, I do have a few thoughts about it.

It's easy enough to talk about 'cagers'. The fact is most probably that many of us drive cars or trucks or whatever, as well as motorcycles which makes us 'cagers' too. OK, bike-aware cagers one hopes but cagers nevertheless. Car drivers aren't necessarily always driving only cars. So I personally would prefer not to go down the route of berating car drivers in general. If we do this, we may not learn anything from this video...something which David's mother wants.

As we all know, it doesn't take much for riders to be seriously injured or killed and the video makes that clear in dreadful clarity. My sympathy goes to the man's mother and family and I think it was very brave of her indeed to allow this to be shown in the public domain.

But....in order to learn from something as shocking as this, we ought to look at it in an unbiased, objective way rather than instantly blaming the car driver entirely.

The footage shows a bike ridden fast. No, we can't see the speedo but we can see overtaking of cars and it certainly looks fast to me. The poor man's mother acknowledged that her late son loved speed. The car which turned into David's path was quite clearly going, at some point, to turn right (from his perspective.....left from the rider's view); he had gone to the middle of the road with traffic passing on the extreme right (from rider's view).

My own default position in a situation like this is that the car driver has not seen me and is unaware of me. Given what has been said about 'cagers' and their lack of awareness etc, this seems like the best default position to have, surely. At crossroads, junctions etc, even when a rider has the right of way, it is better to assume that it means nothing and that we are at risk from exactly what happened in the video. We all know this, hence the many comments about car drivers. It happens frequently and it's almost impossible to stop it.

In this tragic video, the rider continued at the same speed, even though it's clear that a car has assumed a 'I'm going to turn to your left', in the middle of the road, with traffic passing on the other side of him. Given those traffic conditions, and the regular stories of unaware car drivers, the speed of the bike was unwise, IMO. Even slight braking and reduction of speed, based on the well-known knowledge that car drivers do totally daft things, might have made enough difference to avoid what happened. But there was no braking, no reduction in speed and apparently no default that car drivers can do lethal things. That, and the speed of the bike, contributed to this incident. YES, the car driver was at fault and crossed the path of the rider but I'm personally surprised that an experienced rider with decades of bike riding didn't apparently suspect that something like this might happen and at least try to slow down a bit.

None of the above means I'm unsympathetic, of course. His mother posted this video so people might learn something. Unwise speed in a potentially dangerous traffic situation, assuming one has been seen by a car driver instead of the reverse, are lessons I've learned, or had confirmed, from this awful thing.

[IanDMacDonald]

Well, in the name of safety instigated by this thread, I bought another reflective vest to wear. I used to wear one every ride and stopped. This one has a zipper, which works better than velcro. I wish I could use a headlight modulator with my LED headlight, but it won't work.

[James England]

The SMIDSY video is interesting. The little slalom weave it mentions is a new one for me but makes sense....