Cager F.U of the day kills two
in [Motorcycles]
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From: Rob Kleinschmidt on 9 Jul 2010 15:31 On Jul 9, 4:15 am, Ben Kaufman <spaXm-mXe-anXd-paXy-5000- doll...(a)pobox.com> wrote: > On Thu, 8 Jul 2010 00:55:07 -0700 (PDT), Twibil <nowayjo...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > >On Jul 7, 6:44 pm, Ben Kaufman <spaXm-mXe-anXd-paXy-5000- > >doll...(a)pobox.com> wrote: > > >> > In other words: Was he out running his sight distance? > > >> We don't know. > > >Yes we do. > > >He hit her. > > Until further information about this accident is available , we don't know the > reason why he hit her. What we know is that he was traveling at a speed too fast to allow him to stop when he saw a stationary obstacle in the road. This is outrunning his sight or stopping distance and it's generally considered bad practice for obvious reasons.
From: High Plains Thumper on 9 Jul 2010 20:46 J. Clarke wrote: > Ben Kaufman wrote: > >> On the other hand, we do know how and why that car became stopped >> in the middle of the highway, which is why I do have a highly >> unfavorable opinion of the woman. > > Which makes the rider no less an example of Darwin at work. Darwin awardees seems run rampant. Utility company marked a gas line for a nearby project. Then during grading, a contractor's heavy equipment operator proceeded to hit the gas line where marked, causing a nearby hospital evacuation until the utility could shut off the gas and repair the line. Yup, Darwin is alive and well. -- HPT
From: High Plains Thumper on 9 Jul 2010 20:55 Ben Kaufman wrote: > "Bob Myers" wrote: > >> Do you agree that having, say, a car-sized boulder fall off the >> side of a mountain a stop in the middle of a road creates a >> dangerous situation? > > Yes. Now please tell me *who* created this dangerous situation? That is an extreme hypothetical situation, which likelihood are very slim, IMHO. >> OK, now let's extend that to a car that for some reason stalls just >> around a curve, without sufficient shoulder for the driver to get >> it completely off the road. > > Fine, now please tell me *who* intentionally caused the car to > stall? Stuff happens, situational awareness is an important skill to have, better to prevent an accident than to be right and maimed or dead. >> Or, let's say, a line of cars stopped due to construction going >> on. > > A construction site? You mean the kind that post warning signs and > have personnel or police directing traffic? Yup, most likely cause of an accident would be a motorist failing to heed those posted warning signs and flagmen signals. >> Bottom line - it really doesn't matter how a Big Solid Stopped >> Object winds up in the middle of the road. It is the >> responsibility of any driver/rider to be aware of what's ahead of >> them, and to avoid collision with anything you are approaching from >> the rear. You are never ever assured of a clear road ahead of you; >> you HAVE to use your eyes, and to correctly regulate your speed for >> the conditions at the moment (including just how much of that "road >> ahead of you" you can see). Period. > > The bottom line is that a dangerous situation increases the > probability of an accident. We are not robots and do not operate at > 100% thoroughness 100% of the time so even a diligent driver can miss > something, (as evidenced by the dancing bear video) that he could > have avoided if given some heads up about what to look for. Yes, but often it is a number of failed actions that contributes to an accident outcome. > Dangerous situations caused by acts of nature or mechanical failures > are mostly outside of our control. On the other hand intentional > actions that cause dangerous situations are within our control, and > when the reason for the action falls way short of a justification for > the increased risk of an accident then this person has made a bad > decision on the order of "I see that red light but I'm not stopping > for it." Yup, but still by exercising situational awareness and moderation in space, distance, speed, etc. will help to avoid an accident even though there was a sense of deliberateness by the other party. -- HPT
From: High Plains Thumper on 11 Jul 2010 19:15 Rob Kleinschmidt wrote: > Ben Kaufman wrote: > >> Until further information about this accident is available, we >> don't know the reason why he hit her. > > What we know is that he was traveling at a speed too fast to allow > him to stop when he saw a stationary obstacle in the road. > > This is outrunning his sight or stopping distance and it's generally > considered bad practice for obvious reasons. It is more than just bad practice. What is sad is the rider took his daughter with him in death. Now the mother and wife have 2 to grieve for. It is bad to ride in a manner to have the deck stacked in disfavour of the rider. -- HPT
From: Ben Kaufman on 13 Jul 2010 09:15
On Thu, 08 Jul 2010 20:43:57 -0600, High Plains Thumper <hpt(a)invalid.invalid> wrote: >don (Calgary) wrote: >> High Plains Thumper wrote: >> >>> True. That thing about spacial awareness about the surroundings is >>> a necessary survival skill. I avoided becoming a statistic about 6 >>> years ago, returning from the Reeky T-Shirt run to Colorado City, >>> TX. On US 84, I noticed an impatient SUV leaving a petrol station >>> to my left whilst passing an older couple in their full size cage. >>> Speed limit was 70, cage was doing 65. I instinctively rolled off >>> the throttle falling behind the couple. Shortly after, the SUV >>> crossed the opposing 2 lanes, didn't even bother to stop in the >>> median, shot past me and hit the couple's left front quarter. They >>> went off the road into an open cow pasture. Fortunately there were >>> no trees for them to collide into. >> >> I am sure that was one of those pucker moments we have all >> experienced. Glad you made the right decision. > >I'm glad too, I lived to tell about it. > >> I had a close call while driving my truck a few weeks back. A car >> went through a stop sign without even slowing down. I slammed on my >> brakes and managed to miss the car by a couple of feet. After I >> caught my breath I thought to myself had I been on the bike, I would >> have been watching that car, expecting the unexpected and would have >> been on the brakes far sooner. In my truck I wasn't paying attention >> as I would have on the bike. It was a bit of a wake up call for me. > >It is amazing how motorcycle riding makes one more keen a driver in a >cage. I had a similar experience some years ago, my son was driving our >Dodge mini-van from Hereford TX to Vega. I was in the right passenger >seat. I noticed an impatient woman in an SUV come quickly to a stop >sign to the right of us. We were traveling 55. Immediately, I told my >son to slow down. No sooner had I told him that and he backed off the >throttle pedal, she shot right in front of us without coming to a full stop. > >We barely missed her. Had he not backed off, we would have hit her. >Being safe is more important than being right and possibly injured or dead. Amen. I also road bike and having my right of way infringed upon is pretty common. When this is about to happen to me I will treat my safety as the priority while other bicyclists will aggressively press to maintain their right of way, which usually ends in a screaming match between the cager and the bicyclist. Ben |