Nasty Wreck

[RonTV]

Can't say much, but for sure it's a mistake to use the horn. Could use that time, even if it's only a fraction of a second, to possibly avoid an accident. May not have mattered here, but the horn does zero in a scenario like this.

 

[EricV]

The only two things I can think of are visibility (bright aux lights, and airbag vests.). Some things can’t be avoided. This not a risk free activity. Personally I don’t screw with horn in tense situations. Scrubbing speed and avoiding may have helped but the accident looked inevitable.

Please read the thread again. Please understand it doesn’t matter AT ALL if they see you. They WILL still do things that can kill you. Conspicuity is a lie. It accepts the false premise that you expect other people to keep you safe. Only YOU are going to keep you safe.

Time and time again other road users see you just fine, and still do dumb stuff that can kill you. I’ve first hand witnessed someone pull out in front of a fire engine, with full lights, siren, horn blasting, get T-boned and get out of their car screaming “I didn’t see you”.

Nothing you do will impact the person about to kill you. You need to be the one doing something. You need to see them, anticipate them and avoid them. That’s YOUR job.

 

[EricV]

The vests are meant to be worn over the jacket, not under it. I've had mine (Helite) inflate twice, once simply dropping the bike on its side with me rolling away; the other at relatively low speed on a muddy road. The first thought is "I can't breath" because it is confining, and the second thought is "I can't move my neck" before realizing it is also a cervical collar. Can't imagine having it INSIDE of a jacket!
I like the Helite because the replacement cartridges are relatively inexpensive and you can repack it yourself.

I agree with your comments on the vests being worn on the outside. But, several are marketed to be worn on the inside. It’s one of those things you see and immediatly understand is a Bad Idea™, and yet, they are out there.

Klim Ai-1. “Intended to be worn under compatible jackets"

Alpinestars's Tech-Air 5 system uses an airbag-enabled vest that can be worn under any jacket and combined with matching jackets or race suits from the Italian company.

Sizing Note: Tech Air 5 should only be worn UNDERNEATH a properly fitting Alpinestars Tech Air ready jacket or any jacket with 1.57" (4cm) of space around the circumference of the rider's chest.

I recently read about the results of a rider wearing the Alpinestar under a one piece leather track suit. A lot of broken ribs and other damage. Quite obvious to me that he didn’t have enough room under the suit, and the leather one piece was an inappropriate choice for that airbag vest.

There are. a bunch of Chinese airbag vests being sold as well, some under, some over. Not sure I’d trust those for my personal safety, but at a cost often 50% cheaper than the main players, people do buy them.

 

[Checkswrecks]

Please read the thread again. Please understand it doesn’t matter AT ALL if they see you. They WILL still do things that can kill you. Conspicuity is a lie. It accepts the false premise that you expect other people to keep you safe. Only YOU are going to keep you safe.

Time and time again other road users see you just fine, and still do dumb stuff that can kill you. I’ve first hand witnessed someone pull out in front of a fire engine, with full lights, siren, horn blasting, get T-boned and get out of their car screaming “I didn’t see you”.

Nothing you do will impact the person about to kill you. You need to be the one doing something. You need to see them, anticipate them and avoid them. That’s YOUR job.

Eric -
I agree that you can't trust the other driver one single bit and have had to document cars which rear-ended fire vehicles. Was at a Traffic Incident Management (TIM) responder conference just last week and the number of responders killed is staggering.

BUT

Anything to make us more conspicuous is a good thing imho. A riding buddy has the amber Skene Photon lights which have a flicker and at dinner last night we were discussing this very thread. He said he's tried running with them on and off for long stretches and the flicker really does catch people's attention, because the flicker rate has to do with the optic nerve. https://skenelights.com/patented-conspicuity-flicker.html

It's also why I run the amber driving lights on the Stelvio. They are harder to ignore than all the white headlights that cars generally run.

 

[Sierra1]

. . . . Nothing you do will impact the person about to kill you. You need to be the one doing something. You need to see them, anticipate them and avoid them. That’s YOUR job.

Exactly the mindset that I've been using ever since I was a kid on a bicycle. Being visible is great, but that doesn't mean they're going to actually see you.

People don't see red and blue lights and wig-wag headlights. People don't hear sirens.

 

[Checkswrecks]

Agree again

Still doesn’t mean to not try and that was my point.

 

[gv550]

Agree again

Still doesn’t mean to not try and that was my point.

I have a Goldwing with factory airbag, do you think it could have reduced injuries in that collision?

 

[Checkswrecks]

I have a Goldwing with factory airbag, do you think it could have reduced injuries in that collision?

Yes to some extent. It's exactly the collision the GW bag was made for.
Plenty of YT videos on it.

 

[Madhatter]

lights are great , horns are great ,sirens are great , emergency lights are great , but non of these listed are as great as the "I didn't see him or hear him "or what ever lie they will say . LEO and other enforcer types have bought into the big lie . every day I see a road rage thing happening , saw it today .
ive not had many "close calls" on a motorcycle , but one night had beeves and butthead try to take me out , missed them by inches . I chewed some butt , asked them "if I pulled my gun and pointed it at your head and fired ,as long as I missed its ok , right ? " they had no answers but they were very sorry they met me . said "we didn't see you" wrong answer . you didn't bother to look , laced with F bombs , was my response . I let them live , had they hit me they would have told the LEO the lie , we didn't see him . and I might have bee n history . till people start getting punished this will never change .

 

[RCinNC]

I think that the action of blowing the horn in the milliseconds leading up to a high speed emergent situation should really be examined to find out why this is a go-to response in so many crashes.

In the defensive driving/pursuit driving classes I took as a police officer, blowing the horn was never taught as a crash avoidance/mitigation action. It wasn't taught during my driver's ed courses in the early 80's. It's not effective in any way, and it actually diverts your brain from performing more important functions in an impending crash. So how did this become such a common response for a driver to make in the milliseconds before a crash occurred? And because there's a limit to how much information your brain can take in, process, and direct an appropriate response, how many crashes could have been avoided if the driver's brain was focused on things like braking, or changing direction, rather than hitting the horn button (or in the case of a lot of riders, pulling in the clutch and grabbing a handful of throttle to bounce off the rev limiter)? And because it isn't something that's taught during driver training, the whole horn-blowing action seems like an autonomic response, and yet it has no benefit in a survival situation. Autonomic responses like throwing out your hands to break a fall, or putting up an arm to ward off a blow, make sense from a survival perspective, but blowing the horn in an impending crash really doesn't.

People not perceiving impending hazards while driving isn't a big lie they tell to avoid culpability. It's a very real phenomenon, caused by a variety of environmental factors like poor training, distracted driving, fatigue, chemical impairment, vision problems, etc. Even commercial pilots, who are a damn sight better trained than the average driver, can suffer from the same problems. Eastern Air 410 crashed because the entire flight crew got so distracted by trying to fix a burned out warning light that they didn't notice they'd disengaged the autopilot and the aircraft gradually lost altitude until it crashed in a swamp. They were so distracted by their task that they didn't even notice a warning chime going off in the cockpit. The design of modern vehicles seems to intentionally introduce distracted driving, with multi-function infotainment screens occupying a huge portion of real estate on the dashboard. Couple that with cell phones, and you are creating the ideal environment for the "I didn't see him" response to a crash.

Though it's not a one size fits all solution, more intensive requirements for driving would certainly reduce the number of crashes. Mandatory drivers' ed in high school, longer and more intensive training programs prior to licensing, graduated licenses based on vehicle type, size, and engine displacement, higher penalties for moving violations. etc. In a country like the US, where there is the delusion that being an excellent driver is a genetic quality possessed by at least all red blooded males, any attempts to actually require more training to drive would be met with howls of nanny state-ism, like those sissy Europeans. So we have to accept the reality that drivers/riders aren't likely to get any better, at least any time soon. That's why the airbag vest is probably the most important rider safety innovation to come along in a long time. With things like lighting, and high viz clothing, they still depend on other drivers actually perceiving you; your survival is still partially depending on someone else's actions. The airbag vest is active protection, and gives you a much better shot at compensating for another driver's actions.

 

[Madhatter]

naval aviator montra . aviate ,navigate and communicate . we should be maneuvering to miss , look for an out when possible , we know where we are going so skip the navigate , and after yo aviate then its time to communicate . vigorously .
my first instinct was to steer right and brake hard , that guy was to close when that started . but it might have been what saved his life .
RCin NC , all you wrote is great , some times its more simple , all those things about distraction fatigue etc. they are still going to say , I didn't see the motorcycle . the didn't do what they should have done , paid attention .

 

[Wallkeeper]

lots of great discussion. The important fact is whether you are in the right or wrong, in these cases size matters and the motorcycle along with the human body on it will lose. Issac Newton may have been an asshole but he was a very smart asshole

Paranoia is a survival trait. When I ride, I am cultivating it because I know someone is out to get me

 

[RCinNC]

Pretty much all that stuff I wrote boils down to "I wasn't paying attention, and I should have been". Naturally, people should be devoting every second behind the wheel to the act of driving and nothing else. In a perfect world under ideal circumstances, everyone would drive with scrupulous attention to detail, with zero distractions, and would treat driving with the seriousness that it deserves. That has never, and won't ever, happen. Even a momentary lapse of attention, like when you're looking to the left when you should be looking right, can result in a catastrophic accident. A partial remedy is intensive training, and maintaining what amounts to a sterile cockpit while driving. That'll never happen either. No one behind the wheel, or in the saddle, is ever going to devote 100% of their attention, 100% of the time, to the act of driving, and all it takes to get killed is another driver's (or your own) second or two of lapsed attention. Punishing people after the fact for not paying attention is cathartic, and often justified, but it won't resurrect the dead. We're never going to approach the act of driving with the seriousness that we should, so the next best solution is to do our best to make the inevitable crashes more survivable. In a world of cars, riding a motorcycle is ridiculously dangerous, to the point that, if good sense was the only factor to consider, they'd just ban the activity altogether. Things that result in simple fender-benders with cars can easily be fatal to a rider, and you really can't design a motorcycle to be anywhere near as crash-survivable as a car. That's why airbag suits are such an important safety development for riders; they're the last line of defense that could save your life when all the other safety measures that rely on a driver actually seeing you, inevitably fail. We don't have the collective will as a society to force people to become better drivers; the best we can hope for is technology that'll make it harder for them to kill us.

 

[Loachdriver]

Do most motorcycle accidents involve another vehicle (e.g., classic “left turner”)?

 

[Sierra1]

Do most motorcycle accidents involve another vehicle (e.g., classic “left turner”)?

Once upon a time, #1 was the left turn. But #2 was being hit from behind. That's the one that blew my mind. The article I read didn't have an explanation either.

 

[HeliMark]

naval aviator montra . aviate ,navigate and communicate . we should be maneuvering to miss , look for an out when possible , we know where we are going so skip the navigate , and after yo aviate then its time to communicate . vigorously .
my first instinct was to steer right and brake hard , that guy was to close when that started . but it might have been what saved his life .
RCin NC , all you wrote is great , some times its more simple , all those things about distraction fatigue etc. they are still going to say , I didn't see the motorcycle . the didn't do what they should have done , paid attention .

Not sure where the montra actually came from, that aviation one is used through out the aviation community. I used to teach it when I was teaching flying in the late 70's, early 80's.

I think that the action of blowing the horn in the milliseconds leading up to a high speed emergent situation should really be examined to find out why this is a go-to response in so many crashes.

In the defensive driving/pursuit driving classes I took as a police officer, blowing the horn was never taught as a crash avoidance/mitigation action. It wasn't taught during my driver's ed courses in the early 80's. It's not effective in any way, and it actually diverts your brain from performing more important functions in an impending crash. So how did this become such a common response for a driver to make in the milliseconds before a crash occurred? And because there's a limit to how much information your brain can take in, process, and direct an appropriate response, how many crashes could have been avoided if the driver's brain was focused on things like braking, or changing direction, rather than hitting the horn button (or in the case of a lot of riders, pulling in the clutch and grabbing a handful of throttle to bounce off the rev limiter)? And because it isn't something that's taught during driver training, the whole horn-blowing action seems like an autonomic response, and yet it has no benefit in a survival situation. Autonomic responses like throwing out your hands to break a fall, or putting up an arm to ward off a blow, make sense from a survival perspective, but blowing the horn in an impending crash really doesn't.

When I went through the LE academy drivers training, I remember that they use to preach that at around 54 mph, you would "out run" your siren. Not that you were faster then the speed of sound, but by the time someone else heard it, and processed what it was, you were where they were. Saw that many times when I was in a black and white on the streets. Now, add that a car/motorcycle horn is a lot less db's, and agree the horn doesn't help any, and unnecessarily diverts some of your attention. After, if you avoid the crash, the horn and finger does help, kinda...

 

[Sierra1]

. . . . After, if you avoid the crash, the horn and finger does help, kinda...

Yup. Once I'm sure the threat is past . . . . the finger starts flying.

 

[Madhatter]

there is a youtube guy , ex navy pilot that uses that Aviate Navigate Communicate as he discusses the causes of plane crashes , mostly private pilots who kill themselves for failure do do the obvious . most likely where I picked it up from him .

 

[RCinNC]

That's Hoover, on Pilot Debrief. I'm not a pilot, but I really enjoy his dissection of aircraft crashes.

 

[Madhatter]

me too... it is hoover . there are too me some things that are similar in motorcycles to airplanes , especially small private aircraft .