Cager F.U of the day kills two
in [Motorcycles]
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From: don (Calgary) on 8 Jul 2010 17:22 On Wed, 07 Jul 2010 23:14:04 -0600, High Plains Thumper <hpt(a)invalid.invalid> wrote: >Twibil wrote: > >> There is no possible way that the normal human reaction time for >> judging closing rates can cause a biker to rear end a car stopped on >> the road ahead of him unless he was (A) going *way* too fast for >> conditions, or (B) was simply not paying attention. > >or (C) following at an unsafe distance (too close). > >I agree with you, I think there are more to the facts than presented in >the on-line news article. It better to avoid conditions that build for >an accident. One scenario that comes to my mind is if they were following a truck or one of those rolling billboard RV's and the truck/RV swerved to avoid the stationary vehicle at the last second leaving the bike in a difficult position to attempt a similar swerve. That doesn't make the rider any less at fault. You still should not hit a stationary object.
From: J. Clarke on 8 Jul 2010 17:38 On 7/8/2010 5:22 PM, don (Calgary) wrote: > On Wed, 07 Jul 2010 23:14:04 -0600, High Plains Thumper > <hpt(a)invalid.invalid> wrote: > >> Twibil wrote: >> >>> There is no possible way that the normal human reaction time for >>> judging closing rates can cause a biker to rear end a car stopped on >>> the road ahead of him unless he was (A) going *way* too fast for >>> conditions, or (B) was simply not paying attention. >> >> or (C) following at an unsafe distance (too close). >> >> I agree with you, I think there are more to the facts than presented in >> the on-line news article. It better to avoid conditions that build for >> an accident. > > One scenario that comes to my mind is if they were following a truck > or one of those rolling billboard RV's and the truck/RV swerved to > avoid the stationary vehicle at the last second leaving the bike in a > difficult position to attempt a similar swerve. > > That doesn't make the rider any less at fault. You still should not > hit a stationary object. In any case, any motorcyclist who can't duplicate any swerve that a truck or an RV makes has something wrong with either him or the bike. This is like the argument a while back about braking in which someone observed the wondrous miracle of a bike outbraking a pickup truck.
From: High Plains Thumper on 8 Jul 2010 22:43 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. -- HPT
From: Ben Kaufman on 9 Jul 2010 07:04 On Wed, 07 Jul 2010 19:59:21 -0400, "J. Clarke" <jclarke.usenet(a)cox.net> wrote: >On 7/7/2010 5:42 PM, Ben Kaufman wrote: >> On Tue, 06 Jul 2010 00:49:08 -0400, "J. Clarke"<jclarke.usenet(a)cox.net> wrote: >> >> <SNIP older parts> >>>>> In more than 40 years of driving and riding, and more than that of being >>>>> a passenger in highway vehicles, I do not recall a car in the road in >>>>> front of me ever being other than highly visible. >>>> >>>> How would you recall something that you didn't notice? >>> >>> If one does not notice cars in the road in front of one one does not >>> survive 40 years on the roads. >>> >> >> That's if you *never* noticed cars in front of you, which is not what I said. > >I've never not noticed a car in front of me. > >>>>> If you can't see a >>>>> car in front of you in broad daylight you should not be operating motor >>>>> vehicles. >>>>> >>>> >>>> It's not a question of seeing, it's a matter of the unexpected registering in >>>> the brain. >>> >>> If a car in front of you does not register in your brain then you should >>> not be driving. >> >> It's not black and white. It's a question of how fast it registers. > >If it doesn't register when you see it then it registers too late. > >>>> This is why they sometimes have warning signs with flashing >>>> lights that there is a traffic light or stop sign coming up on some roads. >>> >>> Generally those are used when the sign or lights are around a blind curve. >>> >> >> No, I've also seen plenty of them on straight roads too, especially near schools >> or when a highway is going to end. > >I've never seen a traffic light or stop sign warning near a school or >where a highway is going to end. I've seen flashing lights that >indicate a school zone or that the highway is going to end though. >> >>> Seriously, you're arguing like Ralph Nader or some other New Yorker who >>> has never actually operated a motor vehicle once in his life. >>> >> >> Ad Hominem is not going to do it. > >No, but your singular inability to see motor vehicles in the road in >front of you eventually will. Making unsubstantiated claims about my abilities is not going to do it either.
From: Ben Kaufman on 9 Jul 2010 08:08
On Wed, 7 Jul 2010 15:28:27 -0700 (PDT), Twibil <nowayjose6(a)gmail.com> wrote: >On Jul 7, 3:03�pm, Ben Kaufman <spaXm-mXe-anXd-paXy-5000- >doll...(a)pobox.com> wrote: >> >> >> Depth perception tells you how far away something is, not how fast it's moving. > >Ben, I'm a retired racer and track instructor. I know how quickly the >normal human eye can judge speed differences, and I know that because >I rely on exactly that ability for my survival every single time I >climb on my bike. > Pete, you snipped my explanation of how speed perception works. Would you claim that if you performed the "one second" experiment you could tell how fast a car in the distance was going? >There is no possible way that the normal human reaction time for >judging closing rates can cause a biker to rear end a car stopped on >the road ahead of him unless he was (A) going *way* too fast for >conditions, or (B) was simply not paying attention. And that's all >there is to it. > >You can look for excuses as to why that accident wasn't the biker's >fault for the next six months, and that will *still* be all there is >to it. This is not true. All I have said with respect to this biker is "We don't know". The discussion of speed and object detection were "devil's advocate" responses to people who think they are certain they do know what happened. 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. Ben |