To quote the motorcycle god that is Ogri:
Driver. 'But I didn'tsee you'.
Ogri. (about to inflict severe violence on the driver) 'Thats because you didn't XXXXXXX look!'
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They do look, but they don't see.
It's a common accident on Cheshire's plentiful single carriageway A roads - sometimes a vehicle can lost in the wider A posts that are needed on cars these days, but also drivers coming out of side roads somehow seem to look last the immediately approaching vehicle and just see space.
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Sorry - "last" should be "past".
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A common reply to the question, " Why did you pull out infront of the vehicle approaching?"
is " It was travelling too fast!"
To which I ask the question, "Do you always pull out infront of vehicles that are travelling fast?"
Nothing much to ask after that one!
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Fullchat
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I went out with SWMBO yesterday afternoon. The Motorcycle runes were not good. It was too hot for one thing. Lots of cars around including a nice looking Porsche 911 (new un - why the hell do Porsche feel the need to put a chav type TURBO badge on the back of it ?) ......anyway, having travelled through a nice but busy and cobbled village centre, saw this woman emerge from a side road pusing a bicycle, slowed down, sounded horn (which is whimpy) - now how invisible is a R1200GS, two up, fully loaded with wired in front lights, a bike that is reegarded as a two wheel Humvee ?? Well apparantly I'd had the BMW Motorrad optional cloaking device engaged, she didn;t even look. Bikey is hardly quiet either. No escape route as the walls narrowed the road to a single track, braking from this speed would have been marginal to say the least on this surface, I was doing barely 10mph as SWMBO engaged Klaxon voice behind me, if I'd have braked stopping half a ton of bike and passangers would have caused mayhem. I don't think she even saw me.........serves me right for slagging that cyclist on here earlier in the weekend.
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I can recall at the very least three occasions where my late father, an exceptional motorcyclist from a period before the war until the late 1960s, had to drop his bike on its side to avoid hitting vehicles pulling out from side roads in front of him or going straight across his path turning right.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
What\'s for you won\'t pass you by
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It wasn't an option yesterday - the dynamic risk assesment was that I would have struck the rear wheel with the nearside crash bar/cylinder, which might have flicked me off, but as I said yo don;t mess wtth half a ton of bike. This is where BMW's brakes are far to fierce in operation.
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After many years of motorcycling, I've developed a very wary eye on drivers who are about to turn across my path. I've had a number of incidents when eye contact is made, and then the manoeuvre executed by them, despite the obvious danger. I've managed to stop or avoid contact, except for one incident. In 1978 a coach was turning right at an intersection from the right lane. I went straight through the intersection in the left lane, and was hit on the right side by a car. The driver said he saw me coming and thought he could get round in time. Wrong. One damaged Z1 Kawasaki, one degloved right lower leg. A couple of positives were that the bike was repaired by insurance and I got to meet a nice nurse in hospital, who is now Mrs PM of 27 years standing. There's a silver lining etc...
I have noticed that women seem to have more difficulty with the whole speed-time-distance estimation exercise. Most of us can see a car coming and determine whether we have room or time to cross before it. On the bike, I find that a greater proportion of women are either over-cautious, or over-confident (dangerous) when called upon to estimate closing speed of a vehicle. Is this a genetic thing, like map-reading skills, or just lack of training?
Disclaimer: Many women are fine drivers and are considerate on the road. Many men are appalling drivers and also cannot judge distance and speed.
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I'm intrigued by the brain's capability to judge speed/distance via the eye; even more fascinating at night when the clue is two diverging dots of light. Do current bikers find people "pulling out" happens more at night or less? Having only one point of light to work from (and, thus, having to judge how rapidly that one point is expanding) must surely be even harder to get right...
Tim{P}
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Yes a certain factor is almost certainly the frontal aspect ratio. A car, has a front aspect that widens as it gets nearer, hence providing a degree of visual feedback. Bikes, being so much narrower, and with just one single focal point do not offer this visual clue and provide no clue of approach speed.
Most "pulling out into bike" accidents are in 90 degree situations, widen or narrow the angle of visibility and the driver gets an appreciation of speed and timing,
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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I find, as a driver, that when confronted with one approaching light, be it a bike or a car with a squint, I simply cannot judge their distance and speed. In such circumstances I'll just sit and wait for them to pass, regardless of how long it takes, rather than risk pulling out in front of them. If it's a bike, that's fine. If it's a car with a squint I'll have a futile yell at them for driving with a light out.
And in response to the original post, my experience is that the more beligerent someone is about something and the more aggressively they insist that you're in the wrong the more they realise that they are actually in the wrong themselves regardless of whether or not they admit it. "The lady doth protest too much, methinks" etc.
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>>cannot judge their distance and speed.
I would think that the majority of "car pull out in front of bike" accidents are not cases where the bike was seen and its distance/speed misjudged. I would say that in the majority of cases teh bike simply isn't seen at all.
Firstly we don't look as far as we can when we look left or right, we look as far as we think we need to essentially that is the distance that within which we believe a car can reach us. Therefore something moving faster may be further away than we actually look - and more often that will be a bike than a car.
We also subconciously draw conclusions which we use to affect how far we look or how carefully we look; e.g. if you see a crossroads interrupting the flow then we won't normally look across it, failing to rememebr that a vehcile, particualrly a bike, could get across that junction pretty quickly and get into the position of affecting or being affected by our pulling-out manouver faster than we have allowed for. Consequently a lot of bikes get nailed shortly after they've pulled aroudn or away from a hazard.
These and other similar reasons would also be the reason that most of the people who pull out in front of a bike are the more experienced car drivers who have built up this stock of reference data. A new driver, presuming that they look at all, will typically look further and more thoroughly wihtout drawing subconcious conclusions and is therefore perhaps more likely to see a bike.
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ISTR a learned gentleman saying that we only see what we expect to see. i.e. we look for cars coming and if there aren't any there then we pull out.
I can well believe this. Every instance of folk pulling out in front of me is in daylight as I don't tend to ride at night.
Martin
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"Therefore something moving faster may be further away than we actually look - and more often that will be a bike than a car"
Perhaps when checking to pull into another road, we subconsciously assume no-one is doing more than the limit? And also perhaps, a bike is more likely than a car to be exceeding it ? ;o)
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as I'm sure you're aware, she knows she's the guilty party. She feels (is!) stupid and is trying to move the fault.
And
The more beligerent someone is about something and the more aggressively they insist that you're in the wrong the more they realise that they are actually in the wrong themselves regardless of whether or not they admit it.
This is actually what I was getting at with my final sentence about self searching; yes, I shrugged it off, but it amazes me why people feel the need to dig the hole deeper rather than literally put their hand up and say "sorry". In my own experience such honesty usually saves the day, and when they get home they'll think "damn, what a plonker I was" (having first told the hubby/missus why the other party was at fault) and realise the other party thinks even less of them for their groundless defence; why therefore do it in the first place?
"There's 'owt so q u e e r as folk", as my father will say. (potential swear filter bypass felt justified given the context of usage)
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My wife actually did that the other day. Pulled out on someone approaching her from the right on a roundabout then shouted "Haven't you heard of give way from the right?" at the other driver.
Been kicking herself repeatedly for it, and calling herself all the names under the sun, but only realised her error once she got home.
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I guess sometimes drivers don't see bikes because of the blind spot in each eye. If you glance to the right at a junction you will see almost everything within your field of vision, but a bike is probably narrow enough to be within the blind spot of one eye.
To avoid this effect you only have to turn your head so you can see oncoming traffic with both eyes.
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