Walked away with minor injuries. Shoulder is swollen, but I think it'll be alright, I'm icing it down now and taking inflam pills.
Driver in front did a left turn as I was passing and didn't give a long enough signal.
More pissed that my GoPro clone was running but when I checked it, it stopped recording about 15 min prior. Still have 1 hour of space on the SD card and battery was still good, but it didn't catch the important part of the ride.
The new Shift knee/shin guards work awesome! Steel toe boots took a hit and no damage to my feet.
Side bag took a nice hit and ripped the straps, but I'll find a way to repair them.
Got the Shift knee/shin guards off Amazon for dirt cheap, < $30 IIRC. Had the leg, rear/hip guards on too, but wasn't an issue this time.
Here's the link to the knee/shin guards, I can say they REALLY did their job tonight.
I was passing the car on a two lane city street where there's 1 lane each direction. In CA you're required to give 100 feet turn signal before turning. He didn't give 100 feet and clearly didn't check the side mirror before making a left turn. I was already in progress of passing when he made the quick left turn.
I had a similar situation that could have been a really bad one, a lot of broken bones or worse, death. Was at fairly high speeds.
Thank goodness for ABS and a great handling bike.
Two lane stretch of road in the middle of nowhere.
Passed a car with a work van up ahead of them, got back in my lane for a few seconds then back into the opposite lane to pass the van, was still at least several hundred feet back (or more) but clear visibility and I had just whacked the throttle.
Van decided at the last second to turn with no signal. I braked hard and swerved quickly back into the right lane and went around them on the right, just as they were covering up the opposing lane in their turn (they took the turn very fast, you could tell it was one of those almost missed the turn).
They may not have seen me/registered I was passing as I was moving it, so it would have been partially my fault (maybe legally could have pinned it on them but I was riding aggressively).
It was close, but the bike handled it so well/smoothly that it really didn’t scare me or get my heart rate up, even after I had a couple seconds to process.
This is very close to what happened. He signaled and turned pretty much the same time. If I has 1 more second of warning everything would have been fine.
I was able to ride away and my shoulder is being iced down and doesn't seem very bad, so I'm not going to make a deal out of it, but I think he should have signaled longer or looked in the mirror. I know he didn't give 100 feet of signal, that's 1/3 of a football field. He gave like 5 feet of signal, but I know that most don't even signal turns at all.
+1 for good gear. If you are like me you ask yourself "is it worth the price?" then things like this happen and the answer is easy. More so, it just reaffirms what we all should know by now. Put your damn gear on! It is easy, not hot, is necessary, and 'yes' you can still look like a cool Bad ass.
Wear it and YOU too can live to share your story.
Glad you are more then OK.
I was in the process of passing him, he did one of those "signal and turn quick" things and I had no time to react. He came into the area where I was passing him and that's where we hit.
He was supposed to give 100 feet of turn signal before turning, but he didn't. He also didn't check the side mirror before turning left to see if someone was passing him.
I didn't think much damage was done, but ends up my fender is in three parts now, I'll have to epoxy it back together (no big deal).
My shoulder is still sore, but I'm icing it down and the swelling is going down. Expect it will be healed in a week or so.
I had my GoPro clone running at the time, but it didn't save it to the file. My guess is that it stores video internal, then writes it to the SD card and the accident happened before it writes it to the SD card.
Pisses me off that the camera didn't catch it because I know for a fact this guy hit the signal then turns right after or at the same time. 100 feet is 1/3 the length of a football field, there's no way he gave 100 feet of signal, but I can't really prove it because the damn camera didn't save it to file.
FWIW, I'm a lawyer in Cali, and I would suggest lawyering up soon and hard if the dude sues you, or his insurance does. Litigating motorcycle stuff is tricky, and of course insurance companies are terrible.
I ride with a bright yellow Roadcrafter suit and bright yellow helmet and I see people looking at me but they don't see me--turn right in front of me. I don't know what the fix is for this and it's the most dangerous part of motorcycling. I thought bright colors would help but apparently not.
I'm not sure what the best answer is. In this case, I had the right to pass and he signaled and turned at the same time. It's really an issue of following the law. The law states that you need 100 feet of turn signal before you turn, but who actually does that?
I hear that some 90% of the accidents are driver error. In this case, the guy didn't even see that what he did was wrong. Quite a few people don't even signal a turn / lane change. He didn't bother looking because he didn't expect someone to be passing him.
IMO, the best bet is full gear and defensive riding.
I had a strobe light on the other bike. Anytime someone would be turning left in front of me, I'd hit the strobe light so they would see me.
I saw a video from Fast Eddy, he had a pulsating headlight that looked pretty interesting.
I think a pair of LED lights that aim towards the left and pulsate would really help.
Personally, I think defensive riding is the best option. Expect them to do stupid things and allow a bit of space between you and the stupid people trying to kill you.
The strobe light is a good idea. Like what cyclists use. Strobe LED running light's might make you more visible.
Australia 919s don't come with running lights. But the LED headlight I fitted to my bike had a running light option. I wired the running lights to my low beam. Now it's even more irritating for oncoming traffic.
What do you mean "running" light? A light that is on whenever the bike is on?
I thought all motorcycles did that.
In the US, when you turn the bike on, the headlight and front yellow turn lights comes on. I thought that was standard.
What I saw was the two headlight system where the 2nd light would pulse. We only have the one light, so adding a 2nd that would pulsate would really add to the safety.
LED running lights are becoming more common on bikes, like what you see on cars.
I haven’t actually researched it but have heard that during the day they do make you more visible than regular headlights due to the nature of how the light looks/works.
On my KTM it would run during the day with only the running lights. I had other guys on group rides in front of me tell me they were very visible in their mirrors.
In low visibility situations/times (not night) I would flip on my high beams also as the running light stayed on all the time.
This gave two different light sources that contrasted with each other and theoretically should draw more attention than a single source/type of light.
>On my KTM it would run during the day with only the running lights. I had other guys on group rides in front of me tell me they were very visible in their mirrors.
When you say "running lights" does that mean the headlight and the front turn signals lights?
What I was thinking of was having two headlights and one of them blinks on/off whenever the bike is on.
@ 2:40 you can see when he turns on the bike. I guess it's not really a headlight, but the area around the light.
The running lights I am referring to is the two rows of led’s over the top of the regular headlight on the KTM and the thin strip under the headlights on the BMW.
These lights do not provide enough light for night driving.
But the nature of this type of light is supposed to make it more visible to others during the day than regular low/high beam headlamps.
Even though the headlamps provide much greater output for the riders to see at night.
I think Audi was the first to implement/popularize this style of DRL in the early 2000s.
Of course the more lights you have on and/or having them pulsate can probably only improve visibility to other drivers.
Yea, but we don't have dual headlights on the 919. So I was thinking if the newer LED lights don't take too much power, you could mount one or two of them below the regular headlight and have them modulate.
I think one of the LED bulbs have a ring round it, so maybe the ring could modulate.
Did the guy slow down right before making his move? or no?
I also drive super defensive and try to stay only behind cars at higher speeds.
But at the end of the day how do you drive defensively if there's just one car with you on the road and they do some random fast movement and run you over ?
How do you see a pot that randomly falls on your head from a balcony above lol ?
He didn't slow, he wasn't going very fast and there wasn't any other traffic around, so he just turned left as I was passing him.
I asked on a forum and didn't get a clear answer on who was in the right. Imagine a two lane road with a dashed yellow so that you can pass people. You pass someone in the middle of a city block and they turn left into you as you pass them.
I remember turning left into my driveway once and someone was coming up on my very fast and I realized that he would have passed me if I was any slower.
The one law that I know he broke was that he signaled as he was turning instead of 100 feet before he turned. Most people don't seem to care about turn signals and how important they are. Sadly, my knock off GoPro clone didn't write the recording to the microSD card. Seems the accident caused the camera to not write to the file. Ironic that you have the camera for this exact purpose and it fails. I hear real GoPro cameras write direct to the drive.
You can't expect to be perfect, maybe a small horn kinda thing would have helped, but it's really about getting drivers to pay attention.
Modulator lights have actually shown to be more difficult for people to gauge your distance. Often mistakenly thinking you were farther than you actually were.
I follow the guidelines of more lights, contrasting helmet/gear/bike colors, and defensive riding. My rule for defensive riding is 2fold: 1. No one cares about you and your puny 500 lb bike, ride accordingly. 2. If you're reacting to a situation, you're already too late. Be proactive.
So keep your head on a swivel at all times, and be constantly gauging at least 2 different actions everyone around you could do and be prepared as if it'll actually happen. Yes it's a lot of brain power, but you get used to it. Being Deaf, all my information is visual and vital. It's certainly not like driving. If you find yourself zoning or spacing out, you're not paying attention. One technique I use to practice is when I'm scanning my environment, I'll ask myself things like "what's the color of the 3rd car behind me and the next lane over?", "how many people are in the vehicle 6 vehicles ahead of me?", or what was the make and model of the vehicle 2 cars ahead and the next lane over?" If I cannot answer the question or get it wrong, I need to pay closer attention!
Other people are not responsible for you, you are. Ride accordingly.
No one cares about you, ride accordingly.
No one cares if you are in the right or have the legal right of way, ride accordingly.
Lots of good points Pvster. And well put.
I'm guilty of daydreaming when riding. I've gotten into strife before, daydreaming on a bike.
I don't think I'll ever ride through a city again. Don't have the nerves for it anymore. I'm sure I would become a temporary Australian.
I'll just stick to the bush, quiet country roads and very small towns. And chill.
Things haven't changed since I started riding so many years ago.
Almost everything happens in town.
Almost everything involves a car.
Almost everything involves some kind of intersection.
We were told of three thresholds, assuming no prior car driving experience:
1-some number of intersection experiences involving you making a left hand turn, I see to remember the number 6.
2-your first two seasons
3-making a point of not riding around town, other than enough to get out of town to no longer be in an urban riding setting.
The word was that by the time you made it through to 3, the chances of being in an accident plummeted.
Another recollection.
When the helmet law was brought in, Ontario's primary death cause of motorcycle fatalities literally flip flopped from being extremely head injury related to something like only 15 % being head injury related.
Yea, paid the price for that in 2013. Daydreaming, woke up surrounded by 1st Responders being hustled to LifeFlight by ambulance. Completely my fault.
Specific to this discussion, I remember one of the guys working on the lifeflight making two trips into the ER to carry all of my gear they'd pulled off of me. He piled it on a table, topped with my scarred up helmet. Every doctor that walked in the room thereafter gestured toward the gear and said, "Good thing you were wearing that today." Scarred up helmet, ground up and ripped heavy leather jacket and a hole torn into the palm of a leather glove. Had one tiny little scratch on my forearm caused, I believe, by my knit shirt I was wearing as the base layer.
also being a car guy, makes it easier to identify all the car makes and models around me
pretty helpful
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