BM-GS
9th December 2008, 19:37
Hi all,
Just noticed that North Shore CC is promoting a Motorcycle Safety campaign, starting with a "Look Out For Bikes" advert for the cage-pilots to ignore.
They did mention that there'd be an aspect of getting bikes to keep out of trouble themselves, but there were no clues on what that might involve.
Thinking on one of my own incidents, road positioning would be a great thing to mention, but I doubt they will. Moving around in the lane to give pulling-out traffic a chance to see you (and hopefully they'll then avoid you) is something which may have prevented a smash I had. There was an article in one of the UK mags ages back about this and they used the anaolgy of how dragonflies capture their prey - by remaining in the same position relative to the background from their prey's point of view, so that the prey doesn't see the dragonfly until it gets really close and stats to take up a significant proportion of the scenery (the "looming" effect). Think about it from the point of view of a car at a junction - bikes are small and less noticeable than cars. By the time the bike is close enough to "loom" you're pretty-much on the bonnet. Weaving about in your lane (gently, carefully and watching out for the other nutters out there) will make you move relative to the background, so they'll see you sooner than they might otherwise have done.
This makes sense to me, and might help another. Couple this with headlight on/off to the conditions (if you have the option nowadays) and your choice of lid/leathers colouring and we start to take the power back. Which beats getting driven into.
Just noticed that North Shore CC is promoting a Motorcycle Safety campaign, starting with a "Look Out For Bikes" advert for the cage-pilots to ignore.
They did mention that there'd be an aspect of getting bikes to keep out of trouble themselves, but there were no clues on what that might involve.
Thinking on one of my own incidents, road positioning would be a great thing to mention, but I doubt they will. Moving around in the lane to give pulling-out traffic a chance to see you (and hopefully they'll then avoid you) is something which may have prevented a smash I had. There was an article in one of the UK mags ages back about this and they used the anaolgy of how dragonflies capture their prey - by remaining in the same position relative to the background from their prey's point of view, so that the prey doesn't see the dragonfly until it gets really close and stats to take up a significant proportion of the scenery (the "looming" effect). Think about it from the point of view of a car at a junction - bikes are small and less noticeable than cars. By the time the bike is close enough to "loom" you're pretty-much on the bonnet. Weaving about in your lane (gently, carefully and watching out for the other nutters out there) will make you move relative to the background, so they'll see you sooner than they might otherwise have done.
This makes sense to me, and might help another. Couple this with headlight on/off to the conditions (if you have the option nowadays) and your choice of lid/leathers colouring and we start to take the power back. Which beats getting driven into.