I must be one of those idiots in a cage

[rocketman1]

It appears to be that most of us are idiot drivers, at some time
I once pulled out in front of motorbike in my car. YES I DiD. IDIOT!!!!
I looked left, no vehicle, looked right, no vehicle, looked left again, no vehicle, so I took off only to be blasted by the horn of a yellow Honda VTR1000. FAAAARK I thought, I just about hit that bike, or the bike just missed me.
It was my fault, no questions there, I just had not seen the biker, it was behind my left hand pillar and mirror, as I was moving forward at the give way, the bike was obscured as I moved forward. I really felt bad because I always look out for bikes as I am biker. BUT
I just did not see this bike. So this puts me in the idiot cager class, blind to seeing motorbikes.

So I know exactly what happens when I see a car vs bike at intersection, I do feel pang of guilt for the driver.

What I have decided to do is stop at all give way signs, this gives a me a wee bit of time for the bike to move out from behind the pillar.
I hope I have learned to look three times for bikes. Hope this works in future.
So I have done this once, so if every cager / idiot has to make the same mistake just once in their lifetimes, thats far to many close calls/ crashes.


What else I tend to do is move off at intersections, (turning right) delaying my entry completely into the left lane until I am a wee way down the road.
Ok I am possibly down the centre line for a few metres but at least I can see whats coming head on, and gives the vehicle coming on the left some chance of sneaking to the left of me. Sound strange but it works.

[AllanB]

Shit man, the amount of times I've been cruising on the open road in the car and been blasted by a passing bike over the years ..... as motorcyclists we rarely take into account the acceleration of our bike that we all love compared to your average cage. And car drivers have not idea how quickly we can accelerate on a motorcycle.

Be safe, blow on your pie, and keep a lookout for motorcycles.

[caspernz]

The whole driving/riding experience continually evolves. I remember when I first started driving trucks, the sheer lack of being able to look all around was daunting. Nowadays the main concern I have is how big a blind spot a mirror and A-pillar can create. At junctions or even roundabouts, it requires a concerted effort to look around the mirror and A-pillar blind spot to minimise the near miss thingee.

All up I reckon we're all guilty of the occasional whoopsie. The main thing is to take the urgency out of our riding/driving isn't it? Not to say ride like a nana, just to be aware of our surroundings.

[BMWST?]

i try to move my head to look around the bloody a pillar and mirror

[Motu]

Modern cars are terrible for visability - huge A pillars, almost no vision to the rear. Kids being run over in driveways, they should be looking at the vehicles involved too. We have better mirrors, but more blind spots now. We all get wake up calls....well, the experts don't, but they are lying.

[JimO]

cage.....................so sons of anarchy

[jonbuoy]

I reckon we can expect to see more "collision avoidance" technology from driver-less cars in the near future. Won´t be long before the car won´t let you pull out of a junction if it senses an imminent collision. Which can only be a good thing for bikes but still wraps the driver of the car in an ever increasing bubble of isolation.

[Berries]

What I have decided to do is stop at all give way signs,

I would hand in your licence Grandad. What's next, stop at green traffic signals to make sure it is safe to go ahead? How long before you get rear ended by a rider who expects you to know the road rules?

[OddDuck]

Covergence. If you're coming up to the intersection and the other guy is converging to the same point as you, there's relatively little motion to notice. He'll just seem to get a bit bigger in your field of view, nothing more.

Modern cars don't help either. Crap visibility, as mentioned. Sporty lines plus stronger passenger cages, with thicker beams, and much smaller windows. Every time I've been in a recently built car I've marvelled at how crap the view to the rear is.

So easy to miss... kudos to the OP for posting this. I had a very similar experience driving my car, just in the weekend - turned right across the centerline into a road, too close for comfort across an oncoming cyclist who I should have given way to. I really hadn't seen him at all. Classic SMIDSY stuff. Was kicking myself for that one for a while.

[Banditbandit]

yeah we all fuck up .. we are human after all ..

After a few incidents such as you describe, on four wheels a look I lot harder than I do on a bike ... humans learn from fuck ups ... if we didn't fuck up we'd never learn anything ..

[EJK]

You must be Chinese. Open your damn eyes!

Speaking of Chinese, I drove to Queenstown and back during the long weekend. It was that Chinese New Year holiday period. No offence to Chinks but their driving is fucking shit. Double parking on Queenstown main road, no indicating, wrong side of the road, cutting corners through Cardrona... You name it.

[Banditbandit]

You must be Chinese. Open your damn eyes!

Speaking of Chinese, I drove to Queenstown and back during the long weekend. It was that Chinese New Year holiday period. No offence to Chinks but their driving is fucking shit. Double parking on Queenstown main road, no indicating, wrong side of the road, cutting corners through Cardrona... You name it.

Fuck me .. I've seen Pākehā do all that - come to our country and not learn the laws, or the language, or the customs ... don't fit into our society ...

Hoki atu koutou ..

[george formby]

Heh. Yeah, looking properly. I try my best but get caught out now and again. Failed to see a steam locomotive crossing the road ahead of me recently.

[Tazz]

Shit happens. Ideally it doesn't happen twice

[RGVforme]

I reckon we can expect to see more "collision avoidance" technology from driver-less cars in the near future. Won´t be long before the car won´t let you pull out of a junction if it senses an imminent collision. Which can only be a good thing for bikes but still wraps the driver of the car in an ever increasing bubble of isolation.

Assuming this new Tech is good enough to 'see' motorcyclists' also or suffer from the same bike is just to skinny to be seen problem we have now.

I would like to see one of those "Smart stop" cars roll up behind a lone stopped bike at 50kms and see what the result is.

Unlike some on here who will never admit it most are human and make mistakes the rest is preparation timing and blind luck on the riders part.