J2
Junior Member
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To discover, you must lose sight of the shore
Posts: 55
Raleigh, North Carolina
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At the risk of stating the obvious, it is all about interval. And you should throw in a little "situational awareness" too ... like they teach fighter pilots. Motorcycles are not too far removed from fighter aircraft. They depend upon their maneuverability. Here is a situation that few think about: You are standing still at a stoplight in a line of cars. Nobody seems to maintain their interval there. Everybody lines up nearly bumper-to-bumper at a stoplight. The last accident I experienced was generated by this circumstance. As the line of vehicles started to pull away, one driver (a young kid) suddenly got spooked and slammed on his brakes. We were all accelerating from a standing stop, so I had a fraction of a second before eating his bumper. I wasn't going very fast, but I took a spill, a little road rash, but I broke the fender on my plastic pony (a 150cc scooter). It was the cager behind me that got my attention, but he was good. He managed to avoid my overturned scooter without hitting the car in the adjacent lane. I heard his tires squeal as I was rolling off the road for the ditch.
Another thing about interval. I maintain it and some jerk will often pass me and put his fat butt right into that reaction space between me and the car ahead. So, I have found that I either have to maintain less than a car length in interval to keep the jerks out or just back off more when some A Hole pulls into it.
And about situational awareness ... I have been riding since 1965. I have had 5 accidents ... lets call them negative experiences, as in Rubber Side Up. I walked away from all of them because I saw the situation developing and was able to mitigate the impact ... either slow down and slide or head for the boonies and leave the bike altogether.
Of course, my number could come up any time. If some cager pulls out right in front of me or makes a left turn right across my path, and I'm doing even moderate speed ... I am probably going to die. When someone asks me whether I would recommend they take up two wheels, I tell them that they should consider this. When I had young children who needed a dad to be around, I did not ride.
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