Smith117
Posts: 1447
Status: offline
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: petdave Someone who is distracted by a phone, yelling at their kids in the backseat, shaving, speaking in sign language (i shit you not) will be less predictable than a rider, because they end up crossing the lane dividers pretty much based on how well their front end is aligned. Ahh but what you have now is a comparrison between predictable vs. unpredictable and visible vs. invisible. Predictability is fine and good, but to predict, you must first see. You can't predict where a vehicle's going to be, if you don't first see where it is. A large car is always more visible than a tiny bike. Most people can agree on this. So it's in the motorcyclists best interest to be not only as visible as possible, but also as predictable as possible. In my anecdote, I fully knew where the two sport bikes where. They "were" waiting in line behind me, that is, until the light turned green. Then as I made my way through the turn and into my lane (you can't signal right when making a left hand turn) they darted around me with about half a lane to spare, if not less. I had purposefully been driving 'extra carefully' because I had skittish passengers, but had I been driving as "defensively" as I usually do, they would have had nowhere to go and would have seriously eaten curb, followed by trees and whatever else it took to stop their forward movement. This is my point. The OP went on and on about how motorcyclists aren't "seen" by car drivers. Most of us can agree that this is true. However, if you KNOW you can't be seen, are you then going to up the danger level by risking dangerous maneuvers that are un-neccessary because you don't like how slow traffic is going? Is a wheelie down the freeway seriously what you'd call 'playing it safe?' Is riding the center line between two lanes and the cars in those lanes what you would call the 'proper' way to handle a bike? The OP talked about bikes not being seen. There are cars which have blind spots big enough to hide an entire SUV. If and when I get my bike, I will be VERY aware of this and I am not going to be doing any showboating on my bike. Without s steel barrier between you and what you hit, there's just......you. I don't know about you, but just because I rock doesn't mean I'm made of stone. So you can bet I'm not going to risk it.
|