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Lethal memory fail: Why drivers see, and then forget motorcyclists

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Re: Lethal memory fail: Why drivers see, and then forget motorcyclists

#111

Post by sharadov »

taneq wrote: post #18

As a motorcyclist and defensive driver I find these kind of articles worrying, because they imply that riders are rolling around trusting other people not to hit them. The first rule of motorcycling, that you accept when you swing your leg over a bike, is that no matter whose fault any collision might be, it is your responsibility and yours alone to anticipate and avoid all such incidents. "But he pulled out in front…

When I started riding a wise old motorcyclist told me "Ride like you are invisible".

Re: Lethal memory fail: Why drivers see, and then forget motorcyclists

#112

Post by cgiles »

falcolas wrote: post #80
lkbm wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a cyclist, I believe that the driver should be held to the higher standard, but also that I can never trust them to live up to their responsibility, so I gotta be ready to stop and/or dodge any reckless maneuver they make. We tend to conflate the moral judgement of responsibility/fault with the actual reality of responsibility. If you're driving a deadly vehicle, the moral burden is on you not to kill me, but I st…

> held to the higher standard This I disagree with. For better or worse, we are typically the ones who are riding on roads designed and built for them. We need to be held to the same standards, if not higher standards as motorcyclists and bicyclists, as we're intentionally playing in their turf, without their safety equipment. If a bicyclist is careless, they are both stupid and negligent. If a car driver is careless…

I am not saying this applies to you and GP, but there are those of us who absolutely hate cyclists on the road at all (bike lanes are fine) because many of them have an entitled mentality and indeed, don't seem to care about their own safety, let alone the rules of the road.

Just this morning I had two cyclists cut horizontally across at 40 MPH street in front of me and other drivers. Many of them weave between cars or treat traffic signals as suggestions. Basically they want to be treated like normal traffic when it suits them and ignore laws when they want to. The ones who signal, wear helmets and reflectors and bright clothing, and drive on the road correctly are merely annoying because they hold up traffic and disrupt speeds, which is dangerous in itself because it causes a lot of lane swapping, but I can tolerate them.

I guess what I am trying to say is, thank you and GP for not being among those cyclists who are stupid, reckless, and entitled. I just know that someday I am going to be cleaning what passes for the brains of some idiot cyclist off of my windshield and am not looking forward to it.

I have however driven a motorcycle and while it is very dangerous, it is less so than a bicycle because you have the acceleration and maneuverability to get out of many situations. And motorcycles can drive the same speeds as the rest of traffic. People underestimate how many collisions are caused by traffic disruptions and abrupt changes of speed.

Re: Lethal memory fail: Why drivers see, and then forget motorcyclists

#113

Post by dsfyu404ed »

lkbm wrote: post #68
falcolas wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s interesting to me: As a fellow motorcyclist, I agree with your philosophy wholeheartedly. But most bicyclists (who are arguably at more risk from a car/truck than a motorcyclist) disagree with this just as wholeheartedly. I seriously wonder why this dichotomy exists, especially as bicycles are gaining electric motors capable of propelling them at higher and higher speeds.

As a cyclist, I believe that the driver should be held to the higher standard, but also that I can never trust them to live up to their responsibility, so I gotta be ready to stop and/or dodge any reckless maneuver they make. We tend to conflate the moral judgement of responsibility/fault with the actual reality of responsibility. If you're driving a deadly vehicle, the moral burden is on you not to kill me, but I st…

FWIW everywhere other than public roads the smallest traffic is held to the highest standard (i.e is expected to look out for and plan around other traffic). The rules are basically only go where you're allowed to go (don't walk on railroad tracks and don't be the wise ass who drives the mini-fork lift into the office to deliver the mail) and when you encounter a different type of traffic yield to everything bigger than you. For example: If you are on foot and get hit by a fork lift it's on you. If your forklift gets hit by a truck it's on you. If your truck gets hit by a mining dump truck it's on you. If your mining dump truck gets hit by a train then it's on you. (Obviously these examples don't hold in exceptional circumstances.)

The reasoning behind it is that the smaller the traffic the more situational awareness it has (no blind spots on a pedestrian) and the quicker and easier it is for it to adjust what its doing to account for other traffic.

Public roads have a much more complex set of rules and large swaths of them are usually ignored in specific situations and in general there's a lot more ambiguity over who should do what.

Re: Lethal memory fail: Why drivers see, and then forget motorcyclists

#114

Post by porknubbins »

FussyZeus wrote: post #52
gowld wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's wrong to conflate conspicuous consumption with quality. Expensive cars are usually bigger and more dangerous. It's also wrong to conflate cars and driving. Loving cars doesn't make you a safer driver, and may well be the opposite, since it focuses your attention on your vehicle and not the social interaction of driving.

Maybe it's just my experience, but near every time I see someone pull a boneheaded move, it's a Kia, or a Nissan, or a Hyundai. I'm not saying buying an expensive car means you drive better, there's no link there, but what I will say there is drivers of expensive cars are often more aggressive, occasionally to a dangerous degree, but honestly? I'm relatively okay with that, because they'll cut you off in traffic but…

I observed this as a cyclist as well and I don't know why. I'm a fan of Japanese cars, but 90% of the cars that endanger and almost sideswipe you are Japanese or Korean subcompacts. The other dangerous ones are entitled German luxury car drivers or the occasional pickup redneck but those are much rarer.

Re: Lethal memory fail: Why drivers see, and then forget motorcyclists

#115

Post by jacquesm »

asjw wrote: post #103
nguoi wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't drivers? Driving is the biggest killer of young people. Any vehicle you use for commuting is for convenience. Strapping into armour makes it harder so we don't expect it of drivers while we do expect it of extreme sports. Supposedly the health benefits of cycling outweigh the dangers of the road but I've never looked into it.

> Why don't drivers? They do in fact. This is the list of the mandatory safety measures in Europe for motor vehicles, it's 24 pages long https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32... > Driving is the biggest killer of young people It is not driving, it's road traffic injuries, which includes biking. Anyways it's worse in US than Europe and it's much worse for male than for female. One could conclude…

> > Supposedly the health benefits of cycling outweigh the dangers of the road

> They don't.

Single sided bicycle accidents are pretty common.

Re: Lethal memory fail: Why drivers see, and then forget motorcyclists

#116

Post by scarejunba »

scarface74 wrote: post #29
nguoi wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's how people usually react when someone is hit on 2 wheeled vehicle: trying to find a reason the rider deserved it. It's built into the language of articles about crashes too. You'll see 'it is not known if the rider was wearing a helmet'[1] without any similar remarks about the driver of the car. Or the oxymoronic 'police are still investigating the accident '[2]. [1] I wrote this, then searched to find an…

And that's how people usually react when someone is hit on 2 wheeled vehicle: trying to find a reason the rider deserved it. If I’m in a car and disobey the traffic laws and get in an accident with someone who was following the law - by definition, I’m at fault.

No, that's not true. Take the simple case, you're not belted in (therefore disobeying laws, let's choose California, for example) and the light turns green but it turned for both you and the other side because of a malfunction. You would be marked down as no one at fault.

Re: Lethal memory fail: Why drivers see, and then forget motorcyclists

#117

Post by plorkyeran »

jmkd wrote: post #101
taneq wrote: post #18

As a motorcyclist and defensive driver I find these kind of articles worrying, because they imply that riders are rolling around trusting other people not to hit them. The first rule of motorcycling, that you accept when you swing your leg over a bike, is that no matter whose fault any collision might be, it is your responsibility and yours alone to anticipate and avoid all such incidents. "But he pulled out in front…

While I strongly agree with the spirit of this, I feel there are enough exceptions to this principle for it to be more pragmatically put. For example: Take a two lane road with no median barrier. Whether cycling, motorcycling or driving I have no choice but to trust that road users coming towards me stay on their opposite side of the road. I have to hope that they are not subject to a moment's distraction, or mechani…

That's an interesting example, as if I trusted oncoming cars to stay on their side of the road I'd be dead many times over. It's very common for cars to pull a few feet over the center line to go around an obstacle (such as a bike going their direction...) without adequately checking if the space they're pulling into is unoccupied. This is one of the reasons you want to stay toward the center of your lane rather than drifting towards the middle of the road, even when a bend in the road would make that the natural thing to do.

Re: Lethal memory fail: Why drivers see, and then forget motorcyclists

#118

Post by scarejunba »

timwaagh wrote: post #36

i'm a lifelong (nonmotor) cyclist finally learning to drive. what i notice is that driving is a lot more complex than cycling. you have so little space and so much vehicle. you have to stay in lane, take care when cornering. you are ultimately relying on cyclists or pedestrians not to do anything rash because the chances of you being concentrated on something else when a sudden crossing happens are significant. In wh…

Many drivers use their phones while driving. Few, if any, cyclists do. That seems fairly strong evidence for the relative difficulties.

Re: Lethal memory fail: Why drivers see, and then forget motorcyclists

#119

Post by kaikai »

taneq wrote: post #18

As a motorcyclist and defensive driver I find these kind of articles worrying, because they imply that riders are rolling around trusting other people not to hit them. The first rule of motorcycling, that you accept when you swing your leg over a bike, is that no matter whose fault any collision might be, it is your responsibility and yours alone to anticipate and avoid all such incidents. "But he pulled out in front…

I’m a motorcyclist, and I don’t get how this works for you in real life.

If I’m riding down the road and there’s a car stopped at a stop sign or intersection, and we make eye contact, yes I assume they see me. I do not come to a full stop in the middle of the road to let them turn just in case they forget we looked at each other. There’s no way to ride that defensively and not get hit by car drivers behind me, or make weird illogical trade offs that otherwise increase my risk of being hit. Yes, we can all ride defensively, but at some point we’re trusting other drivers to behave logically.

Re: Lethal memory fail: Why drivers see, and then forget motorcyclists

#120

Post by vgoh1 »

gowld wrote: post #53
vgoh1 wrote: post #17

A few tips from a long-time motorcycle rider... 1. When crossing a car that could potentially accelerate into your path, train yourself to keep a hand on your front brake. 2. Get better at emergency stops. Train your self to "wait for the weight", meaning progressively apply front brake so that the weight of the bike transfers to the front tire before full application. Practice emergency stops so you don't end up wit…

11. Vary your speed relative to traffic to create relative motion for other drivers to see.

That is a good one. I should add to that, and this may be contriversal, that riding slightly faster than traffic is better than riding slightly slower. When I am approaching traffic, the ability to respond to traffic is in my attentive hands. When traffic is approaching me, I have to wonder if some texting teenager is going to ram into the back of me. Now, some might say that "speed kills", and that is true, so YMMV, that is my own personal take (and honestly it would take all the fun out of it going slower than traffic!).
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