Let's Ride Page 17
MAKING YOURSELF VISIBLE
IN ADDITION TO BEING aware of your surroundings and the other drivers, you need to make other drivers aware of you. When another driver says he didn’t see the motorcyclist he just killed, he’s most likely telling the truth. Motorcycles are small vehicles compared with all the four-wheeled traffic on the road, and it’s easy for other drivers to miss seeing them.
Your job is to make that less easy. It helps to wear bright-colored clothing and helmets, or even wear vests and riding suits made of reflective high-visibility material. You might even want to consider getting a brightly colored motorcycle. I find that when I’m riding a brightly colored bike, say yellow or orange, I have a lot fewer situations where people make left turns in front of me than I do when I’m riding a black bike.
But I’m somewhat limited in what I can wear when it comes to reflective vests. I’m a member of a club, and one of the club’s bylaws is that I have to wear a garment prominently displaying that club’s insignia when I ride. Plus I like black motorcycles, so I start out with two strikes against me. Even so, there’s a lot I can do to make myself more visible when I’m riding, like riding with my high beam on during the day. This goes a long way toward getting the attention of other drivers.
I also make a point of always signaling my lane changes and turns early, giving other drivers time to notice my bike and see what I’m going to do next. When I change lanes, for example, once I’ve looked in my mirrors and determined that the lane I’m moving into is clear, I activate my turn signals early and sometimes even supplement the turn signal with a hand signal, just so there is no question about my intentions. I get stopped by the cops all the time (I think they watch too much television and believe everything they see). Often the cops will say they stopped me because I didn’t use my turn signal. When they say this, I know I’m dealing with a dishonest cop, because I always use my turn signal.
Another trick I’ve developed for making myself more visible is to give my brake pedal a light tap, even when I’m not slowing or stopping, just to make my brake light flash and get the attention of cars that may be behind me. And I’m not afraid to use my horn. I don’t give a damn about being polite when it comes to life-or-death situations, and if another driver doesn’t see me, my life is in danger. If it takes a blast from my horn to let the other driver know I’m there, then I’ll blast my horn.
One thing to remember: even if you think you’ve got the attention of another driver, don’t bet your life on it. The driver might be looking right at you—you may even think you’ve made eye contact with him or her—but in reality the person is looking right through you. Instead of seeing you, he or she could be looking at a cell-phone screen, reading a text message.
ZONES OF AWARENESS
TO BE AWARE OF what’s going on around you, scan your surroundings in a methodical way. Your eyes are your tools for getting information about what’s going on around you. To get the most out of them, you need to keep them moving all the time. Don’t let your eyes fixate on any one object for more than a fraction of a second. Once you’ve determined something isn’t a threat, move on to the next thing.
Scan all aspects of your surroundings, and don’t just focus on other traffic. Watch for animals, debris, and the condition of road surfaces. Keep your eyes open for piles of loose gravel or sand in corners, which can be as slippery as ice. Make sure you include your rearview mirror as part of the landscape you’re scanning, but also turn your head slightly to check your blind spots, especially when turning, stopping, or changing lanes (again, see the upcoming information about soft lane changes).
You need to pay more attention to some areas than others on a motorcycle. Imagine the region around your bike is the face of a clock. Because you are always traveling forward on a motorcycle, the area between eleven o’clock and one o’clock is the area from which danger will come at you most rapidly and most frequently, so this area should get the lion’s share of your time when scanning. Focus on your intended path. Concentrate on the area about twelve to fourteen seconds ahead of your bike, since you’ll need at least this much time to react in an emergency situation. Keep your eyes up. This will aim your vision ahead, where the greatest danger lies.
Watch for subtle clues, like a shadow on the road ahead. It might indicate some oil, fresh tar, or some other slippery surface that could cause you to lose traction and crash. Be aware of movement in the bushes on the edge of the road, which could be a sign that an animal is about to enter the road in front of you.
You need to make the area in front of you your primary focus, but that doesn’t mean you can ignore the other areas. You need to pay attention to what you see out of the corners of your eyes. A flash of movement might be a deer getting ready to jump out in front of you, or it might be a car pulling out of a driveway into your lane. Or that SUV barreling down on you in your rearview mirror might be driven by some texting fool who really doesn’t see you. Most danger will come at you from the front, but you need to be aware of all 360 degrees of your surroundings, from twelve o’clock back to twelve o’clock, especially at intersections.
INTERSECTIONS
INTERSECTIONS ARE THE MOST dangerous places you can be on a motorcycle, because they are where other vehicles behave most unpredictably, but you can do a lot to minimize the danger. Remember, an intersection is anywhere that traffic can cross your lane of traffic. This means that driveways and other crossings are forms of intersections.
The most dangerous intersections are the odd ones where several roads converge at once. You’ll encounter these where multiple roads meet or where frontage roads run along a main road. The average car driver always seems to be confused to some degree; at complicated intersections, the degree of confusion spikes and people drive in an especially stupid manner because they don’t know what they are supposed to do.
Blind driveways and blind intersections have to run a close second to complicated intersections for degrees of danger, but they’re all dangerous. Following a few simple practices can make them less dangerous:
Slow down when riding through any intersection. The more dangerous the type of intersection, the more you should slow down. Slowing down puts you in control of the situation by giving you more time to scan the intersection for potential dangers. The earlier you can detect possible danger, the more time you have to prepare to deal with it.
Make certain an intersection is clear before you proceed through it. Be sure that the person in a stopped car isn’t just changing the CD in the stereo or applying makeup. If that is the case, the driver may finish doing whatever it is he or she is doing and pull into your lane just as you’re passing through the intersection.
When passing through an intersection, be extra diligent about practicing the other safety techniques discussed elsewhere in this book: cover your front brake lever, watch the front tires of other vehicles, and position your bike so that you have the best visibility and are most visible, and so that you have the most safe space in which to maneuver.
When passing through an intersection while another vehicle is blocking your view, pay extra attention to possible left-turning vehicles that you might not see at first. If the vehicle blocking your view is in the left lane and you’re in the right lane, you can position yourself for the best view by riding on the far right side of your lane, positioning yourself as far away from potential left-turning vehicles as possible. If you’re following the vehicle, your best position might be on the far left side of the lane, where you’ll be most visible to the turning vehicle.
As you prepare to stop at an intersection, pay special attention to the vehicles behind you. Be even more careful if you’re stopping on a yellow light because a lot of people interpret a yellow light as a signal to floor it and drive like hell. That person may be looking at the light, or at traffic in the cross street, and might not even see you until he or she has run you down.
This situation is so lethal that you should always scan for a possible escape route in
case you need one. Choose the side of the road that will give you the most room to maneuver, which will usually be the side of the lane that is farthest away from oncoming traffic. When you do stop, don’t pull right up behind the vehicle in front of you; that way, if someone behind you doesn’t stop, the emergency escape route that you identified as you entered the intersection won’t be blocked by the vehicle in front of you.
It’s important to always leave yourself enough room to maneuver whenever you stop, whether you’re at an intersection or not. Even when you have to stop because freeway traffic stops moving, monitor the traffic behind you. Make sure you have room to move forward, even if that means you have to ride between parked cars. That way if someone behind you doesn’t stop, you’ll have at least some sort of clear space to use for getting out of the vehicle’s path.
To do this, your bike will have to be ready to go. When you sit at an intersection, or anytime you have to stop where there is traffic around you, make sure you leave your bike in first gear, with the clutch lever pulled in. That way if you need to get out of someone’s way in a hurry, you won’t lose any time shifting into gear. Remember, a split second is the difference between living and dying.
Leaving my bike in first gear has been a hard habit for me to adopt. When I started riding, motorcycles had foot-operated clutches and hand-operated shifters. The shifters would be operated with a lever attached to the gas tank that was connected to the transmission with linkage rods that ran down from the tank. These shifters never really worked well because of all that sloppy linkage, so we used to get rid of the linkage and use levers coming straight out of the transmission for shifting. We called them “suicide shifters.”
Using a suicide shifter meant that we had to push in the clutch with our left foot and reach down and shift with our left hand. This was an awkward operation while moving, but when a bike was stopped, keeping the bike in gear while holding the clutch pedal down with one foot bordered on impossible. We had to shift into neutral before we stopped so that we could let the clutch pedal out and hold the stopped bike up with both feet. This habit became so strongly ingrained in me that to this day I have to remind myself to keep my bike in gear at a stop.
BLIND SPOTS
I SUSPECT THAT POORLY designed driver’s education programs over the past sixty or seventy years are responsible for a lot of the lousy driving habits we have today. I know they are responsible for the fact that, by my count, seven out of eight drivers don’t know how to use their side-view mirrors.
Side-view mirrors are a relatively recent tool in the United States. Europeans had them for many years, but we didn’t really start to get them on cars until the 1970s, and when we did get them, no one knew how to use them correctly. Especially driver’s ed teachers. Side-view mirrors are designed to cover the blind spots you can’t see with your rearview mirror, but for many years driver’s ed teachers taught kids that they were supposed to point the mirrors at their rear bumpers. For all I know, they still do. When the side-view mirrors are pointed at the rear bumper, the driver sees only the same area in the side-view mirrors as he or she does in the rearview mirror, and his or her blind spot is still as blind as ever.
The correct way to use side-view mirrors is to position them so that you can see what’s in the blind spots to the sides of your vehicle. But since most people haven’t figured this out yet, they’re still driving around with blind spots. And blind spots are deadly for motorcyclists. Never ride alongside the rear part of a car, because most likely the driver has no idea you are there. It’s best not to ride beside any vehicle if you can help it, but if you have to ride beside one, at least make sure that you’re riding in a spot where the other driver can see you if he or she bothers to look.
THE SOFT LANE CHANGE
SOMETIMES WE PRACTICE LIFESAVING techniques without even knowing we’re doing them until someone explicitly points them out to us. This happened to me when I read about “the soft lane change” in a book called Ride Hard, Ride Smart (Motorbooks: 2004), written by a fellow named Pat Hahn who coordinates public information and education for the Minnesota Motorcycle Safety Center.
What Hahn means by “soft lane change” is easing into a lane when you’re changing lanes rather than darting into the new lane. This will allow you and anyone else on the road time and space for mistakes. No matter how thoroughly you’ve checked the lane you plan to enter, there’s always something you might have missed, like a car in the next lane over deciding to occupy that same lane, or some fool weaving through traffic at 100-plus miles per hour.
To perform a soft lane change, first check your mirrors and blind spot to make certain the lane you want to move into is clear (as you would anytime you change lanes). Next, signal your lane change (again, just as you would anytime you change lanes), but instead of moving from the center of the lane you’re in to the center of the next lane, just move to the line that divides the two lanes and hold that position, leaving your turn signal on. Before you move all the way into the next lane, once again check your mirror and glance over at your blind spot to make certain you didn’t miss something or that some kid with a fast car and a death wish isn’t zigzagging through the lane.
Leave your turn signal on while you do this. If you’ve missed something and there’s a car you didn’t see, the driver should have realized your intentions by this point. The person will most likely either honk his or her horn at you or move over to let you in. Either option is better than getting hit by the other vehicle.
You’ll complete the lane change only after you’re absolutely certain that no other vehicle is vying for the same space. Don’t turn off your turn signal until after you’ve safely completed the lane change. All of this should happen in a matter of seconds, which is a lot longer than you might think, but the extra time taken could mean the difference between you getting where you’re going or you ending up in a hospital or a morgue.
You should practice soft lane changes not just every time you ride a motorcycle, but anytime you operate any vehicle on public roads. This is the surest way to avoid hitting hard-to-see vehicles while changing lanes, such as motorcycles, for example. If you always practice soft lane changes, the life you save may be my own.
PRESERVING SAFE SPACE
ON A BIKE YOU don’t have fenders and bumpers and safety cages and crumple zones to protect you in case of an accident. Instead, you have flesh-and-blood legs and arms that are no match for three tons of sport utility vehicle. Because you are so vulnerable, you need to keep as much space as possible around you.
You do this by safely positioning your bike on the road. Always put your bike in the position that gives you the best view of the road ahead of you. Don’t follow vehicles too closely, because in addition to blocking your view of the road ahead, tailgating takes away valuable time for you to react in an emergency. This is especially true when following a truck. If you find yourself following a truck, make sure to keep extra space between you and the truck. Better yet, make sure to choose a lane in which there are no vehicles in front of you, if that is at all possible.
If traffic is too heavy and there are no clear lanes available, stay to the right or the left of the lane so that you can see past the vehicles in front of you. Avoid riding in the center of the lane because in addition to affording the least visibility, that is the slipperiest part of the lane. Car engines, transmissions, and radiators are located between the car’s wheels, and most of the slippery liquids that drip from a car on the highway build up in the center of the lane. The wheels that pass on the edges of the lane tend to keep the wheel tracks clean and free of slippery buildup, so you’ll get your best traction there.
As you become more familiar with traffic patterns you’ll learn to make traffic work for you instead of against you. On multilane roads you can position your bike in the right lane so that vehicles in the left lane will block oncoming drivers making left turns from hitting you. This is a skill that will require you to be able to read and assess a situation i
nstantly, and you need to be confident of your riding skills and reaction times.
On occasion this will necessitate riding more aggressively than you might normally so you can keep up with fast-moving traffic, or even ride a little faster than the rest of traffic, but this isn’t always a bad thing. Some studies have even shown that a motorcyclist riding just a bit faster than traffic is safer than a motorcyclist riding slower than traffic or even just the same speed as traffic. That seems to be the case in my experience.
This doesn’t mean you’ll have an excuse to ride as fast as you want. The key here is to ride slightly faster. As we mentioned earlier, deviating from traffic flow is a sure way to get into an accident. If you’re riding slightly faster than traffic, you’re doing so because you’re trying to increase the safe space around your motorcycle. You’re speeding up to move into a free space in traffic and avoid getting boxed in by other vehicles. Always try to find a spot in traffic that provides you with the most room possible. Sometimes this will mean you have to change lanes to find one with more safe space in which to ride, but that doesn’t mean you’ll be zipping in and out of traffic like a lunatic. You’ll be changing lanes safely and sensibly, using the soft-lane-change method described in the last section.
Poor road conditions or poor weather conditions will require additional time to respond to unexpected events, so you’ll need even more safe space in such conditions. You can get that safe space by slowing down, giving yourself more time to react. Debris on the road will also require you to slow down to give yourself more reaction time and thus more safe space.
You’ll even need to be aware of the safe space around you when you park your motorcycle. Since motorcycles are so hard to see, someone might consider a parking space you’re occupying empty and try to park in it. You may be standing there, putting on your helmet and gloves, and the next thing you know you’re looking at the undercarriage of a Dodge Ram. When you pull into a parking space, position your motorcycle so that it is as visible to other drivers using the parking lot as possible.