increase-in-motorcycle-fatalities-leads-to-bike-safety-talks
- Thread starter TK4
- Start date
An increase in accidents? What relevance does this have to me...........? Should I be concerned?
I'm mid sixties in age, have 30+ years riding, 10+bikes, about 300,000 km experience, don't drink and ride, don't commute on 400 series highways, I'm not lane splitting at 200 km/h at 2 AM on a weekend, not racing my buddies from one Timmies to another.very Friday and Saturday night at 3 AM...........
From my perspective, the risk of riding has not changed. If you're riding like an idiot, then suffer the consequences,
I'm mid sixties in age, have 30+ years riding, 10+bikes, about 300,000 km experience, don't drink and ride, don't commute on 400 series highways, I'm not lane splitting at 200 km/h at 2 AM on a weekend, not racing my buddies from one Timmies to another.very Friday and Saturday night at 3 AM...........
From my perspective, the risk of riding has not changed. If you're riding like an idiot, then suffer the consequences,
Lane splitting with significant speed difference
Riding on shoulder
Excessive speeds
Aggressive riding
Entitlement
I see it every single day. Everyone is doing it. The culture has changed for the worse. It's just a matter of time for these riders.
They suffer for a minute. Their loved ones suffer forever. Insurance rates rise.
Riding on shoulder
Excessive speeds
Aggressive riding
Entitlement
I see it every single day. Everyone is doing it. The culture has changed for the worse. It's just a matter of time for these riders.
They suffer for a minute. Their loved ones suffer forever. Insurance rates rise.
I thought I was the only one that rode for pure enjoyment and avoided all those things you mentioned...but yes, we should be concerned.
First off, the perception becomes that motorcyclists are horrible, irresponsible people and if they are injured or killed, they had it coming.
The officer in this clip made a comment about accidents happening at left turns and blamed the motorcyclists for going too fast. While that may be true, do cagers hear this as having free reign to turn left in front of a motorcyclist and if anything happens it was because the biker was going too fast? I would hate to think this is true but the culture has changed so drastically to a point where no one gives a flying **** about anyone else so it may not be so far fetched.
I am seeing far too many bikes on 400 series highways erratically lane splitting or riding the shoulder. It is just a matter of time for these folks.
Not to mention that we all pay for the behaviours of the few with high insurance premiums.
I think the point he was trying to make is that a person turning left is likely not expecting an approaching bike doing 120 km/h in a 60 zone, if they see the bike at all. I don't think his comment means it's open season on riders.
I live not too far from the Timmies at Dundas W and the 403 on the Mississauga / Oakville border. This is a gathering point for riders and tuner car owners. We can hear bikes screaming up and down the 403 at 2 - 3 AM all summer long. The drifters use a close by industrial area as a playground for 10 - 15 minutes and then move on before the police area.
The Timmies / strip mall parking lot has 3 main access points. Pick a nice Friday or Saturday early AM day and send in a few unmarked police cars to lock down the exits, then have another fleet of cars move in to check licenses, insurance, registration, illegal modifications and loud exhausts. Bring a fleet of tow trucks and flat beds because there will be a significant number of vehicles towed.
The 80/20 rule applies here. Actually it probably the 98/2 rule in that a fairly small number of riders are riding like lunatics and I suspect a lot of them are unlicensed and uninsured. Focus enforcement on them.
Your point "the culture has changed so drastically to a point where no one gives a flying **** about anyone else" sums up the situation.
Nanny state has brain washed us into thinking someone else is looking after us.
Corporate policies pressure us and their pathetic rewards program has us worrying about job security and our erratic real estate market. Get there faster and do more. Drive, teleconference, do lunch and listen to a symphony all at the same time.
The cell phone propagates stupidity. Anytime I set up a training session where the timing of the sequences is critical it's "I gotta take this call".
Mothers out with their children are chatting with friends instead of teaching their kids to watch of traffic, look both ways. Spacial awareness is non existent. Go to any parking lot and watch people walk and drive like fat cows grazing in a pasture. It's not just the young.
Stupidity has reached critical mass and there is no way to fix it other than Roman decimation.
Keep the above in mind as you ride.
One thing that bothers me is the blame the rider attitude. Where is the corporate responsibility?
Where is the parental advice?
In the case single vehicle motorcycle crashes, were they really single vehicle or was there a co-racer that fled or a cage that did a cut off and didn't hang around?
I think what they're trying to say is that a lot more people on the road (motorcycle riders included) are acting more and more reckless. So even if your level of safe riding hasn't changed in the past 30 years, there's more outside risk coming your way increasing your chances of getting affected by an idiot on the road.
I see it in my commutes, more erratic behaviours, i've only got 10ish years under my belt but the first 5 years i was commuting on the motorbike 2-3 times per week into downtown toronto. You notice patterns after a while.
Even while driving the car, i can notice more dangerous behaviour among the general population.
As someone else mentioned, entitlement is a big factor in this (can i use this word?) pandemic. I feel like it's been amplified post-covid, people are hella impatient. Lane blocking at traffic lights has become commonplace downtown to the point that we need police officers directing traffic (i mean wtf happened during covid that we can't manage that ourselves anymore?!). There's just a lot of wrong happening on the road and people are more and more unpredictable making it more hazardous for everybody involved.
Priller
Well-known member
I know cops have some pretty ingrained preconceptions about motorcyclists, so I'm naturally skeptical when they jump to the conclusions that all motorcyclists are immediately at fault. For example, if someone is doing 120 on the 401, technically they are speeding and that excessive speed could then be considered a factor in a crash, thus absolving any involved driver and transferring blame to the motorcyclist. It's only semi-pertinent to this thread, but I ranted at length about this in another thread, and having thought about it, I think the following have all added up to create an awful mess in Toronto:
- Main Character Syndrome as the end product of 75 years of unbridled consumerism, and ad culture shouting at everyone that they're the most important person in the room, leading to many who struggle to understand the basic concepts of cooperation and collective effort.
- Poor infrastructure management means we haven't upgraded our roadways and public transport options to keep up with the massive population growth in Southern Ontario, leading to a lot worse traffic and more frustrated, impatient, and flat out angry drivers. Add misguided attempts to discourage driving in the city (without providing an option that works for many drivers, as cycling in from the suburbs doesn't really work for most, and transit is slow and extremely expensive) to make it really crazy.
- Above mentioned population growth has driven up housing costs so people are forced to commute longer and longer distances through worse traffic, with similar results as the above.
- Above mentioned population growth is mostly immigration from countries with very different driving styles than we're historically had in Canada, and because our licenses are generally distributed in Cracker Jack boxes, nobody is actually taught the social norms for driving here. Even if they were, I'm not sure it would make a huge difference. This is a huge part of the problem, I think, as there is now no predictable driving approach from other drivers, as they will operate as they did where they learned, which then leads to huge frustration and road rage for others who expect different choices. I have driven in places where the traffic appears to be chaos (Bangkok, for example, or Rome), but because everyone is operating with the same expectations, there is very little road rage (or a lot less) because other drivers broadly do what you expect them to do. Because Toronto now doesn't have anything resembling a homogenous driving culture, there are a thousand different approaches on the road, each conflicting with the others. I want to be clear that this is not an anti-immigration point, that's a separate discussion, but merely a rational consequence of massive demographic shifts with zero enforcement on the governmental side.
- Policing seems to be broadly absent in the past couple of years in enforcing any of the rules of the road besides the occasional speed trap. I drive the QEW from Hamilton to Toronto and back three days a week, and I might see one cop a month on that road, and the last time I saw anyone pulled over is well over six months ago. It's an absolute wild west. This leads to increasingly brazen driving from the drivers who are willing to push the limits, followed by the middle sheep (addressed in the next point) noticing and following suit.
- Working in construction, I had what I called the 10-70-20 rule for labourers. 10% would work hard no matter what. 20% would only work hard in brief spurts when being immediately supervised, but as a general rule would dodge it at every opportunity. And 70% in the middle would work to the level of whatever the guy next to him was doing. If you didn't get rid of the 20% at the bottom quickly, they would 'infect' (to your pandemic point) the 70% guys around them with a poor work ethic. I think very similar rules apply to drivers, though the percentages may vary somewhat. Some will always follow the rules, no matter what. Most will do as others do. And some will bend the rules whenever they can. But if that middle group sees the rule benders getting away with it over and over again with zero consequence, more and more of them will follow suit to the point where the vast majority of drivers is mimicking the bad group: cutting down merge lanes, driving alone in the HOV lane, cutting into on-ramp lines at the last second, driving in the oncoming lane to make a left turn, the examples are endless. With the total lack of enforcement noted above, this has truly become a pandemic of selfish driving.
- To all of the above, you can then add constant distraction, and nanny driving systems that lead to a sense of invulnerability. Ironically, these are allowing the increasingly bad driving to continue while mitigating the worst of the injury and fatality stats for four-wheeled vehicles, but do little to benefit motorcyclists (see Tesla self-driving not even registering motorcycles in many cases as the most obvious example).
As you can tell, I get 6-9 hours a week to ruminate on this as I dodge truly sociopathic drivers into the city and back...
TK4
Well-known member
The Don Valley Speedway is the same. I live about 2 kms from the Don Mills Rd. Exit and some nights it sounds like NASCAR.
Thursday night Timmy's meetup at Lakeshore/Leslie got the TPS treatment a few years ago. It only had to happen a few times and the bad actors went elsewhere. Covid didn't help, but it isn't like it was.
I don't know... I drove a cab in the '80s and '90s and haven't noticed it getting worse... the average driver was clueless in the '80s and the average driver is clueless in the 2020s... cars are better/safer now.
We, us drivers, aren't very good at it. REAL driving lessons would help. I paid for my daughter to take driving lessons when she was 17. They taught her how to pass the test... I had to UN teach her and teach her how to ACTUALLY drive. She really hated learning emergency stops, but had a great time flinging the truck around sideways on the antifreeze soaked parking lot (scared ME senseless, but she was having fun AND she learned how to control a slide... something NOT taught at driving school but something that comes in real handy in Ontario winters). At "driving" school, they DISCUSSED emergency stops, didn't DO any (because it's not on the test. To pass the test you have to stop quickly, NOT as fast as possible).
Ask the "average" driver if they know what THRESHOLD braking is
in Germany, you know... where every driving comparison ends, it takes a minimum of a year, with much class room instruction and many hours behind the wheel, and about $5000 to get a license (and part of that is knowing how to change a tire and how to install a fan belt at the side of the road)
We, us drivers, aren't very good at it. REAL driving lessons would help. I paid for my daughter to take driving lessons when she was 17. They taught her how to pass the test... I had to UN teach her and teach her how to ACTUALLY drive. She really hated learning emergency stops, but had a great time flinging the truck around sideways on the antifreeze soaked parking lot (scared ME senseless, but she was having fun AND she learned how to control a slide... something NOT taught at driving school but something that comes in real handy in Ontario winters). At "driving" school, they DISCUSSED emergency stops, didn't DO any (because it's not on the test. To pass the test you have to stop quickly, NOT as fast as possible).
Ask the "average" driver if they know what THRESHOLD braking is
in Germany, you know... where every driving comparison ends, it takes a minimum of a year, with much class room instruction and many hours behind the wheel, and about $5000 to get a license (and part of that is knowing how to change a tire and how to install a fan belt at the side of the road)
There are way more cars on the roads now, roads built for 80s and 90s traffic. I remember rush hour was 4:30-5:30. There are more traffic lights too as areas got built up and needed more roads and traffic lights/stop signs/crossing guards. Drivers today have lots of distraction going on too. Back then you got an AM radio and if lucky an under dash cassette/8 track player.. In the 80s I used to commute from Mount Albert to Yonge/College area, 60-70 minutes (404 only went to Stouffville) and complained! No way will I even try to go downtown until after 10:00. Each time I have a meeting downtown (infrequently), I say it will be good to go, I haven't been there for some time; I am always sorry. One time I got smart and took the subway , there was some issue and I was stuck between York Mills and Lawrence for 25 minutes, no cell reception either.
So, ya no motorbike into the city unless it is late at night. Ya I'm old.
So, ya no motorbike into the city unless it is late at night. Ya I'm old.
Lol had this happen last weekend in Smiths Falls. I'm just entering town and there's a kid around 10, probably almost halfway in the middle of my lane. I look over and the family is walking on the sidewalk adjacent to him, without a care in the world. I had to go into opposing traffic to avoid this person. I blame the parents, 150%
I just imagine if someone came along instead of me and had been staring at their phone.
In the absence of meaningful enforcement the province could use technology to calm traffic on the 400 series highways in the GTA.
I maintain that really aggressive behavior and crazy reckless driving / riding is confined to a relatively small number of drivers.
Expand and enhance the COMPASS system to use high resolution cameras programmed to capture the license plate numbers of vehicles weaving in an out of traffic, excessively speeding or other behaviors that can be defined and captured automatically. Get civilian employees or cops on modified work duty to review images and then send the registered owner a meaningful and painful fine. Structure process so that repeated violations result in significantly increased fines.
Monitor the payment of fines and aggressively pursue people who do not pay their fines. Followup letters and then a visit from police to pull the license plates off of all of your vehicles. Do not permit the transfer of vehicle ownership from one family member to another unless all fines are paid in full.
I'm not advocating for a police state, but there are solutions to take the "exceptions" off the road and make it safe commute for all.
I maintain that really aggressive behavior and crazy reckless driving / riding is confined to a relatively small number of drivers.
Expand and enhance the COMPASS system to use high resolution cameras programmed to capture the license plate numbers of vehicles weaving in an out of traffic, excessively speeding or other behaviors that can be defined and captured automatically. Get civilian employees or cops on modified work duty to review images and then send the registered owner a meaningful and painful fine. Structure process so that repeated violations result in significantly increased fines.
Monitor the payment of fines and aggressively pursue people who do not pay their fines. Followup letters and then a visit from police to pull the license plates off of all of your vehicles. Do not permit the transfer of vehicle ownership from one family member to another unless all fines are paid in full.
I'm not advocating for a police state, but there are solutions to take the "exceptions" off the road and make it safe commute for all.
I'm not sure how video cameras are supposed to distinguish dangerous actions from ordinary lane changes, BUT I will say this ...
The average-speed cameras in the UK on motorway roadworks zones are annoying as heck (50 mph) but nobody's driving aggressively there. What's the point of doing aggressive overtaking if you're going to get a big ticket in the mail?
They use the overhead sign boards to progressively reduce the speed limit when approaching a jam. (I've seen that in Germany, too.) This avoids having people being caught by surprise. And people do slow down ... the backside of the sign board may have a speed camera.
I didn't see any vehicles without number plates. I know they have ANPR in police vehicles. I'm pretty sure any vehicle out in public without a number plate is going to be seized.
I'm not in favor of such aggressive enforcement unless rules make sense first, and here, that means higher speed limits anywhere outside built-up areas.
The average-speed cameras in the UK on motorway roadworks zones are annoying as heck (50 mph) but nobody's driving aggressively there. What's the point of doing aggressive overtaking if you're going to get a big ticket in the mail?
They use the overhead sign boards to progressively reduce the speed limit when approaching a jam. (I've seen that in Germany, too.) This avoids having people being caught by surprise. And people do slow down ... the backside of the sign board may have a speed camera.
I didn't see any vehicles without number plates. I know they have ANPR in police vehicles. I'm pretty sure any vehicle out in public without a number plate is going to be seized.
I'm not in favor of such aggressive enforcement unless rules make sense first, and here, that means higher speed limits anywhere outside built-up areas.
The poor driving habits exhibited are a result of the low skill/knowledge requirements around licensing combined with the (relative to Europe) low cost to drive and own a car along with lax enforcement. The same goes for commercial trucks. The countries where it's worse are also countries where the "system" is more porous or less developed than here.
It's not going to get better until a government decides that it is willing to offend some people and tick off some more by telling people that they don't have the skills necessary to drive safely and the cost of driving your oversized RAM 1 ton quad cab 4X4, or your expensive SUV is going through the roof with a road tax based on fuel consumption, carbon footprint, dead pixies per km. or some other measure.
In short, it's NEVER getting better.
It's not going to get better until a government decides that it is willing to offend some people and tick off some more by telling people that they don't have the skills necessary to drive safely and the cost of driving your oversized RAM 1 ton quad cab 4X4, or your expensive SUV is going through the roof with a road tax based on fuel consumption, carbon footprint, dead pixies per km. or some other measure.
In short, it's NEVER getting better.
The parking lot is private property.
