bugjuice
1st August 2005, 19:12
tonight on the stroll home I witnessed a real close brown-pant moment, a near crash which would have hurt a little.
The road is a 3 lane road, lane 1 was stopped, cos of the traffic waiting to turn left. The other two lanes were flowing free and pretty empty. A car was waiting to turn from a drive way and go right, so having to cross the 3 lanes. A kind van driver stopped in the left lane, after the rest of the traffic had moved on, to let the car out. Unfortunately cos it was a van, it made seeing other traffic hard. So s/he had to nose out, which they did. A bike didn't see this till the last minute, of which, the cars bonnet was almost across his lane. On go the anchors, and of course, the biker gets abusive. Don't know if he learnt anything from it, but hopefully they did, cos it wasn't anyone's fault.
So, how to avoid this? and possibly more...?
The key to the future of what's going to happen, is simply to look ahead. If the rider had spent a second scanning the traffic, they would have realised that the left lane had stopped half way down the que, while the rest had moved on.. Which would indicate to most, that someone could be pulling out. It could also be other hazards, such as animals in the road, or people, or a 'fender-bender', which would mean traffic behind would be pulling out and people getting out of cars.. Also, if a right lane is stopped, it could be someone letting traffic cross the road, so mind for that when you're filtering.
Some other things to watch for are high vehicles. You can't see in general, what's in front of them. And people use this as a great place to cross the road. The worst is often buses, as they've possibly just dropped off people, and they cross in front. Really slow down passing buses. Toot if you really need to - I do, since I've scared the crap out of plenty of people..
Most of this is to be observed during heavy traffic. Most of the time, everything else should be more obvious. But just think and look ahead - it could save you a trip over a car hood..
The road is a 3 lane road, lane 1 was stopped, cos of the traffic waiting to turn left. The other two lanes were flowing free and pretty empty. A car was waiting to turn from a drive way and go right, so having to cross the 3 lanes. A kind van driver stopped in the left lane, after the rest of the traffic had moved on, to let the car out. Unfortunately cos it was a van, it made seeing other traffic hard. So s/he had to nose out, which they did. A bike didn't see this till the last minute, of which, the cars bonnet was almost across his lane. On go the anchors, and of course, the biker gets abusive. Don't know if he learnt anything from it, but hopefully they did, cos it wasn't anyone's fault.
So, how to avoid this? and possibly more...?
The key to the future of what's going to happen, is simply to look ahead. If the rider had spent a second scanning the traffic, they would have realised that the left lane had stopped half way down the que, while the rest had moved on.. Which would indicate to most, that someone could be pulling out. It could also be other hazards, such as animals in the road, or people, or a 'fender-bender', which would mean traffic behind would be pulling out and people getting out of cars.. Also, if a right lane is stopped, it could be someone letting traffic cross the road, so mind for that when you're filtering.
Some other things to watch for are high vehicles. You can't see in general, what's in front of them. And people use this as a great place to cross the road. The worst is often buses, as they've possibly just dropped off people, and they cross in front. Really slow down passing buses. Toot if you really need to - I do, since I've scared the crap out of plenty of people..
Most of this is to be observed during heavy traffic. Most of the time, everything else should be more obvious. But just think and look ahead - it could save you a trip over a car hood..