Have rabbited my way through a red light and turned hard left to avoid a rear-ender. Car then proceeded to hit the vehicle turning right across the intersection.
If a man is alone in the woods and there isn't a woke Hollywood around to call him racist, is he still white?
yep good plan.sit there looking at your mirrors in case and miss the green or the plonker changing in to your lane. how about other road users taking responsibility for their actions so we can concentrate on ours. there is no perfect solution, just do the best you can.
You're fucking kidding me right? In over 20yrs of road riding I've avoided being tail-ended 2 times through checking my mirrors, and never missed the 'green' (plonker changing into my lane at a red light would only be avoided if I was checking my mirrors...). You do realise you don't have to sit there, staring into your mirrors right? Or is that concept to hard for you to grasp. A simple check, every few seconds, with the bike in gear will enable you to avoid being tail-ended. If you don't want to protect yourself, instead relying on others to do it for you, then that's your funeral.
The more I think about it the more I think your post was a simple troll. With your logic you might as well not worry about checking for danger signs when riding, just rely on others to ensure you have a safe ride.![]()
Ummm....actually I not only watch my mirrors at the lights...I also stop with a distance and angle between the car infront that would allow me to hit the gas and avoid the "death from behind" that may be coming.(car locking up or failing to stop!)
Case in point:
I was riding into work last winter....main north highway, when it started to hail...and I mean REALLY hail!
I watched a car several vehicles ahead....STOP!...on the highway!(So he could look at hail??..fuck knows?)
I immediately remembered the rather large 4x4/ute that I had passed a few minutes earlier...checked my mirrors and saw the headlights coming...fast...to bloody fast!!
I gassed it and pulled off the road completely!....and sure enough, the 4x4/ute locked up and power slid into the rear of the car that was INFRONT of me!
...that could have been me gone!, crushed between the two.
ALWAYS CHECK YOUR MIRRORS & ALWAYS HAVE AN ESCAPE ROUTE!...learnt this at advanced rider training(and its already saved my arsed more than once!)
Ride Safe KBers...and trust no-one on the road! front, side or rear! - there panel damage...could be our life!
When Life thows me a curve
...I lean into it!
Not really. Your standards seem unrealistically high. Yes, at the lights I sit back from the car in front, and leave the bike in first so I can piss off quick if I have to. In the case in question there were apparently no warning signals, the woman made no attempt to stop. To avoid that you would basically have to be staring at your mirrors.
There is a grey blur, and a green blur. I try to stay on the grey one. - Joey Dunlop
I am sick of people saying we have to take all the blame for anything that happens to us on the road. Sure you were lucky enough to twice see a situation coming from the rear, but what if it had been whilst you weren't staring at your mirrors, cause your original implied you expect them to be staring at the mirrors. As a biker, because we are more vulnerably we do take more care to protect ourselves but because we are human we can't do everything. There are some bikers that haven't yet learnt just how vulnerable they are but they are a low percentage and make up the potent Darwin award contenders. NZ has a bully society and the more we say sorry and tug the old forelock the more we will be marginalised and picked on. The deadly peddles get more respect because they stand up and say screw you cagers, stop figging killing us and learn to drive.
No warning signals? What, was the intersection directly after a corner? A simple check every few seconds will tell you how fast a car is approaching, don't like what you see, get out of the way. One result is the car stops and you look silly. The other result is car flies through the intersection and you look alive.
Maybe my standards are unrealistically high. That's if you consider ensuring my safety on the road isn't compromised by other road users 'unrealistically high'. Do what works for you, I'll continue doing what works for me. BTW, one of the situations I avoided was on an open road at a stop sign. The car flew through the intersection at open road speed (luckily without hitting any one). If I had the attitude it was too hard to do and that I should simply place the fate of my existence in other road users I'd be pushing up daisies. But like I said, do what works for you.
Fuck I give up.
In many ways i agree with what your saying, but i also have a more realistic view on how much we can do. AS much as you say you can avoid every scenario that comes your way, i think you are only human and there will be situations that are completely out of your control that will eventually bite you in the arse. No guarantees either way really. I think both yourself and others do all that is possible, as do i, but i still don't know that i am capable of avoiding an absolute idiot every time i hit the road.
Trumpydom!
Apparently I don't give up, this I just couldn't resist.
Blame? When the fuck did I say blame, or even imply blame. I'm talking responsibility. Taking responsibility for your own safety. Do you get that? If not, please find someone you do trust who is more intelligent than you to explain the difference. It may just save your life one day.
'Lucky enough'? Luck ain't got nothing to do with it. Luck would've been me staring blankly waiting for the light to change when I glanced down at the ground, noticing a vehicle approaching at speed in my mirrors. Nope dude, wasn't luck at all, it was planned. Luck for is for losers.
Humans are flawed, we are not perfect. We get distracted by our own thoughts and actions, let alone those of the people around us. Do you think you're going to stamp that out? Because until we do the roads will never be a safe place to assume on. And to assume that other easily distracted road users are going to act in a way to ensure someone else's safety is just a quick road to an early grave.
Years ago I worked for a car yard where the owner said to me 'every person that comes onto the yard is a buyer'. Being young and on the 'showroom floor' I thought he was wrong, and pointed this gem of wisdom out to him. I'll never forget the look on his face. I pondered later why he looked at me like that, and it dawned on me. Sure, not every person who comes onto the yard is a buyer, but if I treat them like they are instead of dismissing them I'll increase my chances of selling more cars. Still to today I sell cars to people I initially thought were never going to buy a car, but they did.
If I had approached them without that way of thinking, guess what, I never would've sold them a car. So I transferred that lesson over to many things I do in life, including accident avoidance. I believe I can escape every accident, because if I don't believe that one day I might decide there is nothing I can do and let fate take over. I'd rather go down trying every possible way of avoiding it then just simply telling myself there was/is nothing I could've done.
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