Keep a Safe distance, and wear your PPE

Posted: Wed Jun 29, 2016 2:14 pm

From the looks of things this guy was doing most everything right and he had his helmet and riding jacket. He did survive with only minor cuts and bruises.

Could have been much worse.

Stay Safe everyone!

Motorcycle Runs over a Boating Mat on the Highway

Posted: Wed Jun 29, 2016 3:03 pm

Doesn't mention the injuries to his legs from riding in shorts.......

Ride safe my friends.

Posted: Wed Jun 29, 2016 4:54 pm

I know the road well. Busy place. He is very lucky.

Posted: Wed Jun 29, 2016 5:12 pm

Got to practice practice practice emergency braking and countersteering.

Posted: Wed Jun 29, 2016 5:30 pm

swiftnick wrote:

Got to practice practice practice emergency braking and countersteering.

Very sage advice.........

Posted: Wed Jun 29, 2016 6:33 pm

I always make sure I spend as little time as possible around tractor trailers and people transporting "loose" things. Unfortunately this puts me above the speed limit.... kinda a lot.

Posted: Thu Jun 30, 2016 1:44 am

SEsmick wrote:

I always make sure I spend as little time as possible around tractor trailers and people transporting "loose" things. Unfortunately this puts me above the speed limit.... kinda a lot.

A lot easier riding this way than having to worry all the time about what is coming up behind or beside you!

Steve

Posted: Thu Jun 30, 2016 1:57 am

SEsmick wrote:

Unfortunately this puts me above the speed limit.... kinda a lot.

I've noticed that about you... Wink

I think a more experienced rider would not be in that situation in the first place, but he probably fixated on that object and rode right into it. If he would have gone left he would have avoided that object.

Posted: Thu Jun 30, 2016 2:11 am

CDN1100F wrote:

SEsmick wrote:

Unfortunately this puts me above the speed limit.... kinda a lot.

I've noticed that about you... Wink

I think a more experienced rider would not be in that situation in the first place, but he probably fixated on that object and rode right into it. If he would have gone left he would have avoided that object.

+1on that Chris...that's the way I saw it..target fixation. I hope someone stopped the guy towing the boat. Rule of thumb.. Don't follow. Pickups, flat beads or anything being towed whenever possible, u never know what come at ya.

Posted: Thu Jun 30, 2016 9:10 am

In NY, on many limited access highways, trucks and trailers are prohibited from the left lane. That boat s/b in the right or middle lane at best in my mind.

Don't see this as target fixation though,......It starts to fall and he makes a decision to move right (so to me he took evasive action and didn't just go straight into the threat) but the object was moving right like he was and cut off his escape. If he chose left, he may have been on the median at 70 mph so I see what happened and why he was thinking go right. . I thought his main mistake was following this type threat too closely. Once he started his evasive move and the object drifted in his path , he did drive into it though. Could he have changed to a left swerve at that point? Not likely.

In my mind, stay away from any vehicle carrying anything, any truck, trailer or any vehicle you can't see around from behind.

Had two debris in roadway close calls...One while riding two up with the wife around Christmas on the 1100f, when riding in heavy traffic on the Long Island Expressway at around 70 mph when I saw the SUV in front of me go into an unexpected panic stop and swerve from while we were both driving in the far left HOV lane. My instinct is to go the opposite way from that vehicle, but as he swerved, I saw a Christmas tree across the lane and I swooped behind him and missed it. Some dumbass had been in the HOV lane at 70+ mph with a Christmas tree tied on his roof with string. The traffic flow in that situation was about two car lengths between vehicles at that speed. Too close for safety purposes but that's the flow of traffic here.....Studies showed the LIE has traffic density of three times what the book says to use.
Also came across a cars drive shaft laying across a full lane on the SOB expressway at night (unlit road) that I had to swerve around in the dark at 6 am ..I mean how do you lose a drive shaft and leave it there? Not like it falls and you don't know and continue on......

Also been hit in the shoulder with a piece of a blown tire that got kicked into the air by another vehicle running it over.....

Debris is particularly dangerous when you drive in traffic that doesn't maintain the one car length for every ten mph distance the book says to use. The diminished reaction time means that if your initial decision to go right or left is wrong, you bite the big one....

I used to occasionally see Spike from this site, riding his 900F in traffic most of the year from long island into NYC on the LIE, doing this type commuter driving daily, and I had a lot of respect for his riding that he could manage that over a period of time, because in my mind it's real dangerous .

NY has parkways that trucks and trailers and cargo aren't allowed on, and they are generally safer because those dangerous vehicles aren't on there and there is much less debris to kill you on a bike.

Posted: Fri Jul 01, 2016 3:04 am

Steven...Agreed. I think in that situation I would have assumed it was going to fall of the boat, fuck I probably would have thought the boat was going to fall off. I certainly wouldn't have started accelerating towards the back of the boat. Grab a gear and some gas and head on over to the right...a bit sooner.

Posted: Fri Jul 01, 2016 4:49 am

I think he wasn't totally alert and maybe a bit green. I've avoided some close calls like that just from riding experience, agility, and keeping keen awareness. I tend to ride like they're kind of all out to get me riding a bike. One daydream can be one's last. Always keep the head in the game on a bike, because the others out there certainly won't do it for you.

Posted: Fri Jul 01, 2016 4:02 pm

This exact situation actually happened to me when I was at school. On the mass pike,it was a self employed contractor and he had many rolls of unsecured Insulation in his pickup, there were 4-6 cars in between the pick up and me I just got lucky I wasn't in the way as it rolled down the highway.

Another time i was on coming back from a job and a tractor trailer's two wheel hub just came right off the axle and started rolling into oncoming traffic. I was amazed at how much energy it had, it smashed into a rockwall then careened back across traffic... the trailer driver had no idea. Didn't hit anyone though.

We stopped him at the stop light and told him he lost a wheel and he says "yeah they're designed to do that". And I assume he thought we meant his tire. "nonono.... I mean you lost the wheels, not the tires" kinda of an oshit moment for him!

-Sebastian

Posted: Mon Jul 04, 2016 1:04 am

CDN1100F wrote:

I think a more experienced rider would not be in that situation in the first place, but he probably fixated on that object and rode right into it. If he would have gone left he would have avoided that object.

A more experienced rider likely would have gotten on the brakes a lot sooner also. I count nearly 2 seconds between the object clearly falling into his path and seeing the brake light. At 70mph that's about 200 feet traveled or a lot of braking room.