Yet another near miss ...

[Whynot]

yet again i had a near miss on the way to work today ...
It is reasonably hard to explain so for assistance i have attached diagrams as follows

diagram 1
Following a truck (big blue splodge) and a queue of cars on open road (blue splodges).

diagram 2
I (green line) pull out to pass a few before the next corner. About the same time two things happen, car a bit further up in the queue moves to the centre line indicating to turn down driveway shown. Also an oncoming car appears around the bend.

now the traffic was doing around 80-85 behind the truck ... i guess i would have been doing 100-110 by the time i realised the situation.

I quickly survey the options ...


Option 1 - stay on right and go around turning car.
Probably outcome - either hit oncoming car or turning car turns across lane and takes me out.


Option 2 - Attempt to swerve back into lane and around stationary car
Probably outcome - make contact with stationary car and/or cars passing on left as the road is not particularly wide at this point


Option 3 - Stop in the 20-30 metres left before hitting the stationary car
Probably outcome - possibility of missing car ... likely impact at low speed


looks like option 3 it is ... and can anyone guess what happened ?



So, what i need to know is who, if anyone was in the wrong here ?
From what i remember of the road code in this situation the car involved should have pulled over to the left instead of stopping in the middle of the road ....

Obviously we still need to account for these situations however and maybe i could have been a little more suspect while overtaking.

[McJim]

You need to have 100 metres of clear road in front of the vehicle you are overtaking before an overtaking manoevre is legal.

Of course this law makes every manoevre on the motorway illegal coz no-one pays any attention to it - but it's there for when the police want to charge you.

If you'd hit the turning car - my guess is the police would have charged you (usually blame is apportioned to the car behind as they have greater visibility of situations and therefore more responsibility).
If you'd hit an oncoming car - the police would have charged you for being on the wrong side of the road.
If you'd hit the car on your left - the police would have charged you for dangerous driving.

The car turning right - in their defence there was no need to move to the left as the way was clear - when the way ceased to be clear they were already commited to the right turn.

Expect the unexpected - this is Auckland.

Glad you're alright.

[Disco Dan]

tricky one, tech you were in the wrong i reckon. should have waited until after the bend. then overtake one car at a time...

in that siuation you described i would have tried to cut back into flow of traffic, maybe even get onto the left of the cars etc if there was room..

[Whynot]

all good points there.

I still feel that in the situation (a busy 100k main road) that it would have been safer for him to pull over to the left as this seems to happen a lot out here.

basically the problem is there is suddenly a stopped car in the middle of the road and all the following traffic have to then avoid it.

[Whynot]

tricky one, tech you were in the wrong i reckon. should have waited until after the bend. then overtake one car at a time...

in that siuation you described i would have tried to cut back into flow of traffic, maybe even get onto the left of the cars etc if there was room..

yea i was only ever intending to overtake 2 or 3 cars especially once i saw the oncoming one ....

this was actually a fairly long bit of straight road, my diagrams are obviously not to scale

[Ixion]

Just one of those things, I reckon.

You need 100 mtrs of clear road before overtaking. But you had that when you started the overtake.

And the turning cage wouldn't have seen any need to pull left , because there was little oncoming traffic. He couldn't have mind read your intention to pull out.

So basically you both did something completely reasonable, but conflicting.

In a perfect world the ultimate defensive driver would anticipate and allow for such a possibility.

But in the real world, if we tried to second guess every freakish might-be we'd never go anywhere.

I've even seen Wally do a Hitcher in that situation - pull right to the centre lane, indicate right, and start backing up in reverse. Overshot his driveway I guess.

Me, I'm a dodger not a braker (so many of my bikes haven't had brakes) , so I'd have tried to pull into the gap left by the turning car. But it all depends on the dynamics of the moment.

[The Big J]

Without having any claim to angelic driving myself, I think when you overtake you should have a mental expectation of what every vehicle around you is going to do. And when they veer from that prediction conservatism should win over, you should slow down enough to ascertain what is going on. After all, wouldn't this have looked the same as if the car pulled out to overtake/cut you off?

My point is that in your manoeuvre you should have been aware from the outset that you were taking a risk and therefore should have been in a state of 'high-sensitivity' to things going wrong and slowed the moment you saw the vehicle out of the line of other cars in your peripheral vision. I think of it like a rally driver taking risks you wouldn’t take on an open road but that driver takes steps to anticipate and minimise risks.

I am not saying you shouldn’t have overtaken in the situation. We make our own decisions about these things but your exit strategy/reaction time is limited with a limited field of vision. I am saying that when you cease riding ‘defensively’ as we all do, you need to be assertive about things going wrong because it doesn’t matter how wrong the other driver is when you’re on the ground.

Thinking about mistakes you make is how you learn. Good on you for reviewing it.

[KLOWN]

i'm sure in the road code it says if your are going to turn right on a 100k limit area you hae to pull over to the left untill it is clear BOTH ways before making the turn, ie if there are cars behind you you pull over to tthe left let them pass then do your right hand turn. But i think I have only ever seen one person do this.

[Whynot]

i'm sure in the road code it says if your are going to turn right on a 100k limit area you hae to pull over to the left untill it is clear BOTH ways before making the turn, ie if there are cars behind you you pull over to tthe left let them pass then do your right hand turn. But i think I have only ever seen one person do this.

like this ....

http://www.ltsa.govt.nz/roadcode/key.../turning5.html

[Squeak the Rat]

My understanding is that the road code is not a legal document.

You may find that there is no law requiring drivers to pull left, but there may be a case for charging some drivers with careless if their actions could cause an accident.

Happy to be corrected by some one who knows.....

[Ixion]

like this ....

http://www.ltsa.govt.nz/roadcode/key.../turning5.html

There's an "if" in there .

If there are other vehicles moving fast or following too closely, or the road is narrow, signal left for at least 3 seconds and move across to the left-hand side of the road

You don't HAVE to wait on the left. But you should if your sitting on the centre line is going to be hazardous. But on some roads, pulling over to the left would mean you'd never make the turn. Real world, we have to season theory with practicality.

[TLDV8]

yet again i had a near miss on the way to work today ...
It is reasonably hard to explain so for assistance i have attached diagrams as follows

diagram 1
Following a truck (big blue splodge) and a queue of cars on open road (blue splodges).

diagram 2
I (green line) pull out to pass a few before the next corner. About the same time two things happen, car a bit further up in the queue moves to the centre line indicating to turn down driveway shown. Also an oncoming car appears around the bend.

now the traffic was doing around 80-85 behind the truck ... i guess i would have been doing 100-110 by the time i realised the situation.

(1)The answer is here.... The common situation for vehicles following a slower vehicle is to bunch up.There is then no escape.

I quickly survey the options ...


Option 1 - stay on right and go around turning car.
Probably outcome - either hit oncoming car or turning car turns across lane and takes me out.

Out of the question.


Option 2 - Attempt to swerve back into lane and around stationary car
Probably outcome - make contact with stationary car and/or cars passing on left as the road is not particularly wide at this point

See (1)


Option 3 - Stop in the 20-30 metres left before hitting the stationary car
Probably outcome - possibility of missing car ... likely impact at low speed


looks like option 3 it is ... and can anyone guess what happened ?



So, what i need to know is who, if anyone was in the wrong here ?
From what i remember of the road code in this situation the car involved should have pulled over to the left instead of stopping in the middle of the road ....

Right,Wrong and a Roadcode book have little bearing when you are in hospital or worse.

Obviously we still need to account for these situations however and maybe i could have been a little more suspect while overtaking.

You did not assess the situation properly..... Who hasn't at sometime,me included.I will give you some free advice and hope you never test it in person.When you hit something solid on a motorcycle,it stops now and you carry on.If you are lucky,you don't hit anything with your body parts,get some bruises and live for another day,lesson learn't.
Expect the unexpected.

[XP@]

Go buy your lottery ticket, then take your lottery ticket to an empty carpark and practice stopping.

I've had the same thing a couple of times... trying to scrape your eyeballs off the inside of your visor is fun!

[SN4PD]

It's just one of those things that happens when you overtake round a corner.....

Just gotta remember that its only a 250, and not as easy to power your way out of trouble as a bigger bike, learn it's limits and perhaps slow down (or speedup) a little.

Though it wouldn't recommend it, the other option would have been to brake, pull left and if you couldn't merge back in, lane split between the left hand traffic and the car turning right, which would probably be the option I would choose in that situation.

[cowboyz]

looking at the diagram i would have put my front wheel on the right hand of the next car in front of me and lane split as sn4d says and not thought any more of it. Happens all the time. I don't do the stopping thing and you dont want to be travelling slower than the line of traffic.