Very close call on Highway

[trebororr]

30 years and counting, I guess I have a lot of luck.

Did you guys really have enough time to safely move to the right lane? watch the video again and tell me. It's easy to say he didn't ride properly and didn't leave enough space but realistically in Toronto if you leave more of a gap than what he did, everyone will be taking up the space in front of you and make it more dangerous with people shoving their cars in that gap. At least to the left he knows cars are not going to crash into him.

Anyways, to each their own, none of us were there.

That is where you said it.

As someone who has also been hit from behind while stopped at a stop sign on my motorcycle by a fool in a car I (possibly) feel the same physical pain as you. The point I am making is that when you leave space you have more options and with the increased number of options comes the greater possibility of making the best choice for yourself. If you leave a proper gap, you have the option of braking, but if you try that an realize that the driver behind is not paying attention and not stopping you have then the option of moving around to other lanes. Motorcycles will not outbrake most other vehicles, but they will certainly out accelerate most.

 

[ZX600]

in Toronto if you leave more of a gap than what he did, everyone will be taking up the space in front of you and make it more dangerous with people shoving their cars in that gap.

.

For ZX600, so what you are saying is that you follow the vehicle ahead of you closely because that is safer than giving more space? How do I argue against that kind of logic?????

Again, I said 'If you leave more of a gap" and not that "I follow the vehicle ahead of me closely"

I consider his gap adequate under the circumstances, if you leave "more of a gap" someone will get in between reducing the gap even more.

If you are going to paraphrase someone at least do it adequately.

 

[JD_PICKLE]

Glad you (op) were able to have an out and be safe.
Glad you weren't driving a transport.

 

[dextasy]

Completely disagree, just because he didn't freak out and grabbed a handful of brakes doesn't mean his reaction was poor.

I would have done the same, as someone that got hit from behind on a motorcycle, I much prefer to do what the rider did (go on the left of the car in a controlled manner) than to grab a handful of brakes and have someone behind me plow into my back or make a aggressive move to the right lane without having the proper time to shoulder check.

He did the best thing someone could have done in that situation and the results demonstrate that.

I wasn't saying that he should have come to a complete stop. Given his following distance that probably would not have been the best thing to do, but he sure went in between those cars with a lot of speed and very little room to manoeuvre. I feel he could have scrubbed off a bit of speed before going in between the cars....that side of the lane looks sketchy for hard braking.

 

[ZX600]

I wasn't saying that he should have come to a complete stop. Given his following distance that probably would not have been the best thing to do, but he sure went in between those cars with a lot of speed and very little room to manoeuvre. I feel he could have scrubbed off a bit of speed before going in between the cars....that side of the lane looks sketchy for hard braking.

Says the hooligan

 

[trebororr]

Again, I said 'If you leave more of a gap" and not that "I follow the vehicle ahead of me closely"

I consider his gap adequate under the circumstances, if you leave "more of a gap" someone will get in between reducing the gap even more.

If you are going to paraphrase someone at least do it adequately.

You are like a politician: you are correct, you did not write the "exact words" that you follow vehicles ahead of you too closely (those are my words), but when you say that the poster's gap was adequate under the circumstances what you are implying is that he wasn't following too closely (not doing anything wrong or illegal). No professional organization involved in teaching driving/riding on a public road considers the following gap of the the poster as adequate; not sure what your qualifications are. Since you consider that gap as adequate of course you would disagree with my statement regarding "following too closely".

An appropriate following distance will allow the operator or a motor-vehicle to stop if a stop is so required. If you are following at an appropriate distance and then decide that stopping is not in your best interest (in the situation you are in due to following traffic) then at least you have a choice. The poster of the video had no choice, swerve or collide; colliding with the stopped car was not a viable choice.

 

[inreb]

No professional organization involved in teaching driving/riding on a public road considers the following gap of the the poster as adequate; not sure what your qualifications are.

Mexican

 

[ZX600]

Mexican

Señor Mexican for you.

 

[Brian P]

In the original video, compare the following distance from the bike to the van, to the typical following distances in the other lanes. It's not a whole lot different. In summer, I routinely see riders following a lot more closely than that ...

I don't like following vehicles that I can't see through or around.

If you accept the following distance and the circumstances "taken as they are" at the moment the van swerved, the rider did about the best that could be expected. There was a gap to the left, he went for it. Hard braking is bad for two reasons (1) as plenty of you folks have already pointed out, there's no guarantee that the driver behind you is on the ball, and (2) out in the shoulder, there is likely to be a lot of debris on the pavement, not conducive to hard braking. As they say with aircraft, any landing that you can walk away from is a good one ...

The engine stall may not have anything to do with the rider. That bike probably has a carbureted engine. My own carbureted bike will stall if it goes from cruise to idle too quickly ... Fuel wetting the intake ports takes a while to disperse; shut the throttle too quickly and the engine goes too rich to fire for a moment. In normal riding you'll never notice it, but pull in the clutch and shut the throttle from cruise and it will simply drop right to zero and stall. And no, you cannot re-jet to fix this without causing other, much more serious problems. Fuel injection has programming to work around this. Carbs don't.

 

[TwistedKestrel]

Hell, my shiny nearly new 2011 Ninja 1000 would stall if you pulled in the clutch and dropped the throttle

 

[ZX600]

In the original video, compare the following distance from the bike to the van, to the typical following distances in the other lanes. It's not a whole lot different. In summer, I routinely see riders following a lot more closely than that ...

I don't like following vehicles that I can't see through or around.

If you accept the following distance and the circumstances "taken as they are" at the moment the van swerved, the rider did about the best that could be expected. There was a gap to the left, he went for it. Hard braking is bad for two reasons (1) as plenty of you folks have already pointed out, there's no guarantee that the driver behind you is on the ball, and (2) out in the shoulder, there is likely to be a lot of debris on the pavement, not conducive to hard braking. As they say with aircraft, any landing that you can walk away from is a good one ...

The engine stall may not have anything to do with the rider. That bike probably has a carbureted engine. My own carbureted bike will stall if it goes from cruise to idle too quickly ... Fuel wetting the intake ports takes a while to disperse; shut the throttle too quickly and the engine goes too rich to fire for a moment. In normal riding you'll never notice it, but pull in the clutch and shut the throttle from cruise and it will simply drop right to zero and stall. And no, you cannot re-jet to fix this without causing other, much more serious problems. Fuel injection has programming to work around this. Carbs don't.

The problem with this thread is that many newer and even experienced riders have these concepts of what is safe, mostly from something they read or from some conversation at Tim Hortons, so to them it becomes black and white (i.e. always ride on X tire track, etc) when in reality you need to do what is safe even if it goes against what it says on the MTO book; Also real daily driving is dynamic and you need to use your judgement at every second and not go by 'What is supposed to be right"

This is why you see so many threads on the fallen riders sub forum.

 

[SpeeDemoN]

Wow nice, BMW Z8!

 

[Baggsy]

The problem with this thread is that many newer and even experienced riders have these concepts of what is safe, mostly from something they read or from some conversation at Tim Hortons, so to them it becomes black and white (i.e. always ride on X tire track, etc) when in reality you need to do what is safe even if it goes against what it says on the MTO book; Also real daily driving is dynamic and you need to use your judgement at every second and not go by 'What is supposed to be right"

This is why you see so many threads on the fallen riders sub forum.

Sure, but you also get this:

Completely disagree, just because he didn't freak out and grabbed a handful of brakes doesn't mean his reaction was poor.


I would have done the same, as someone that got hit from behind on a motorcycle, I much prefer to do what the rider did (go on the left of the car in a controlled manner) than to grab a handful of brakes and have someone behind me plow into my back or make a aggressive move to the right lane without having the proper time to shoulder check.


He did the best thing someone could have done in that situation and the results demonstrate that.

I'm just saying for someone who was completely blaming the Van, he so did many things wrong in the video.
I think near the end of the video you can see the van way off in the distance. If the bike had rear-ended the car, it wouldn't have been the van's fault. You can only control how you drive. That's something that way too many people learn the hard way.