On Saturday I got some chores done early, then it just got too hot to work in the yard so I went for a long ride.  My ride was on rural roads and I was just out to spend some time riding and relaxing in the heat.  I found out I can go 175 miles with my GT550 tank before I hit reserve...that is pretty cool!

On one road I came up behind a tractor that was followed by a pick up truck and a car....and the road was curvy and it had a double yellow line.  We all cruised along at 15 mph for about a mile and the road straightened out and there was about 1/2 mile of straight road and the yellow line went away....passing was legal and I waited to see what the other 2 drivers ahead of me were going to do.  The truck and car made no indication of wanting to pass and they stayed behind the tractor at the 15mph speed of farm tractor.  When I decided that they weren't going to pass and I had plenty of room....I put my turn signal on and hit the gas and passed the car, truck and tractor without any problems.  Then.....as I clicked on my turn signal and started to move back into the right lane and I checked my rear view mirror......I saw the car make a left turn into a driveway wiithout using a turn signal!  It was at that instant I learned the car was going to make a turn into the driveway on the left side......... and if I had made the pass just a few seconds later than I had....she would have been turning right into me while I was passing.....and I would most likely have been in a very serious accident.

I have been reflecting on this for days......it was so close to being a very serious accident even though I had done everything legal.  The driver of the car should have used a turn signal to indicate she would be turning and I would not have attempted the pass.......maybe she checked her mirror and saw that I was passing - but I doubt it.  I think in the future this incident will be on my mind......I may not be so anxious to pass for a while!  

OK, play that same situation against the mountain rules for survivability.   You would have already pre-passed the cars on the double yellow one at at time already and would have been in front of them already.

They would have been very durn well aware of you and that you wanted to pass them a long time ago if you had been eating their asses one by one as per the mountain rules.

If that cager had pulled over to turn left in the instant you were passing them , you'd have been hit anyway.   There is no real protection against active cager stupidity such as you describe.  

However, if you saw them start to move over you could have hit over to the left hand shoulder as you would be going say 15-20 mph faster than them at that point in time you would have likely cleared them.  

The odds of them pulling over into you with your engine going at full song and with them seeing you coming on up the line of cars would have been much much less^*.  

You see, they would still have had to slow down to make that acute left angle turn to make the driveway, so you would have been able to swerve over and still move ahead of them with your plus speed at that critical point in time.   Plus they would HAVE to be seeing you by then as they would be steering their bumping into you ....

Cagers are dangerous -- the only safe place for a cager is BEHIND you.

You can avoid a lot of things by intentionally taking to the shoulder.   Or the gravel road, or the median, or like Lancer, splitting the lanes between the oncoming cars.   Better to do that than try to combat a ton and a half of cager steel.    Or, if you have to, throw the bike down into the loose gravel and dance away from that big assed front bumper of the F150 Ford truck on foot, it is much better to abandon the bike than to go under the F150's tires with your bike .....

     all real examples are  from the last mountain trip and from previous mountain trips .....


^*Unless it was done on purpose, and I have seen shite like that done on real roads with real cager drivers.  Road rage is real, and getting stuck behind a slow trailer is likely to bring that rage out some when the bikes start dancing on past.  I have seen a cager open a car door on a bike that was splitting lanes because the cager couldn't move and the bike could -- road rage is senseless when it happens.