InsuredDisaster
03-16-2007, 06:40 AM
"My what big gear you wear."
"The better to be seen my dear."
-Exchange between Little Red Driving Dude and the Overdressed Rider.
WARNING: Long rambling post. Read at your own risk.
I started riding motorized bicycles, then went to a motorcycle, and now I have a Yamaha Razz. With the bicycle, I wore no gear save for a bicycle helmet and constantly had people turning left in front of me or litterally inches behind me. I decided that the people were not expecting what looked like a bicycle to be going 30mph and thus, would look, see me down the road, and then look elsewhere. This was especially bad at night until I took a 55watt spot light for a car, two orange running lights and welded that all to the front of the bike. I powered this with a battery and it looked like a motorcycle when you looked at it at night. Suddenly, I never had anyone turn left in front of me again at night.
I got the motorcycle and along with it, full motorcycling gear and a helmet. I chose my gear for high visibility, and using what I had learned from not getting hit while riding the motorized bicycle, I only had one person nearly violate my right away. I swerved and honked which woke the other driver up. I've read a lot about the classic "left turn crash" which occurs when drivers turn left in front of motorcycles (or anything for that matter) causing an accident. There are two schools of thought here. One is that the drivers really do not see you, either physically or mentally. The other is that drivers do see you, but don't take you seriously and go anyway. To remedy the first situation, you use a headlight, wear bright colored (think, really bright and weird colors) gear and drive in ways that minimizes the possiblity that you could be "hidden" by other cars.
To describe the "mental" seeing that must take place, have any of you nearly run over bicyclists on sidewalks? Sidewalks are actually extremely dangerous places for bikes because bikes go a lot faster than pedestrians. Drivers look for pedestrians and then look at cars, etc. The bike wasn't in veiw a few seconds ago, but now has moved in the way of the car and gets hit, or the driver wakes up and crisis averted. Another example is seeing a small light of a bike infront of you at night, but not actually seeing it in a way that you are doing anyting about it. If any of you do ride bikes at night, get a flashing head and tail light. Drivers frequently miss the "steady on" variety.
The "I see you but you are no threat to me" school of thought is something that I also put some faith in. One motorcyclist rode around in dark clothing and turned off his headlight for a period of time and counted the number of times his right of way was violated. He then turned the light back on and rode with extremely bright clothing. Funny thing was, he counted roughly the same number of incidents with both set ups. Then he dressed up his bike and himself to make himself look like a motorcycle cop. The number of incidents dropped to nothing. Apparently, the idea of a cop on a motorcycle will scare drivers into either registering you or waiting a bit longer to go. I've found similar results with cars. I used to drive a "regular" car and would have about one near collision ever 3-4 months due to some idiot turning infront of me. I now drive a used police car that looks like it is still in service. I've had ZERO incidents of idiots turning in front of me in 2.5 years.
Additionally, there is the matter of size to consider. People tend to misjudge the speed of motorcyclists because they are used to judging things like cars and trucks. Some people also say that smaller items register as less a threat so this sort of fits into the second school of thought.
Now I'm on the scooter. I've had it for 10 days now and I've put about 550 miles on it. I read that the median impact speed for motorcyclists in one study of about 900 crashes was 21mph or so and I have decided to wear full motorcycling gear. This consists of a silver (color is in the top three best colors to choose for visibilty) full faced helmet, a motorcycling jacket, motorcycling pants and boots. Yes, I probably do look like some kind of retard tooling around on his scooter at 25 mph. I get called names and I don't get any dates. Big deal I'm riding and they aren't.
Something I've noticed however is that nobody turns in front of me. EVER. I'll be well away from a car that is going to be turning but they will wait. And wait, and wait. ..... and wait. And then when I pass, they will go. I have ruled out the possibility that they are just wanting to get a better look at the moron coming down the road in all this gear. Instead, I think that they see the gear and figure that I must be going much faster than I really am. So if the smaller sizes register slower, I've managed to overide the other drivers' perception of size=speed with more gear=he must be going fast. I am going only 25 mph so theoretically, if the smaller size=slower thing works, other drivers would think I would be going at closer to 20 mph. Even at 25 mph, the other drivers would have enough time to pull out and sit in the road for 5 seconds before they started to go on some occasions. If they thought I was going even slower, they should feel that they have more time to make the turn. So I figure they must think I am going much faster than my 25 mph due to all the motorcycling gear. It is the only thing that seems to make sense at this time.
Has anyone else thought similarly? Any of you "naked" riders had a lot of close calls?
"The better to be seen my dear."
-Exchange between Little Red Driving Dude and the Overdressed Rider.
WARNING: Long rambling post. Read at your own risk.
I started riding motorized bicycles, then went to a motorcycle, and now I have a Yamaha Razz. With the bicycle, I wore no gear save for a bicycle helmet and constantly had people turning left in front of me or litterally inches behind me. I decided that the people were not expecting what looked like a bicycle to be going 30mph and thus, would look, see me down the road, and then look elsewhere. This was especially bad at night until I took a 55watt spot light for a car, two orange running lights and welded that all to the front of the bike. I powered this with a battery and it looked like a motorcycle when you looked at it at night. Suddenly, I never had anyone turn left in front of me again at night.
I got the motorcycle and along with it, full motorcycling gear and a helmet. I chose my gear for high visibility, and using what I had learned from not getting hit while riding the motorized bicycle, I only had one person nearly violate my right away. I swerved and honked which woke the other driver up. I've read a lot about the classic "left turn crash" which occurs when drivers turn left in front of motorcycles (or anything for that matter) causing an accident. There are two schools of thought here. One is that the drivers really do not see you, either physically or mentally. The other is that drivers do see you, but don't take you seriously and go anyway. To remedy the first situation, you use a headlight, wear bright colored (think, really bright and weird colors) gear and drive in ways that minimizes the possiblity that you could be "hidden" by other cars.
To describe the "mental" seeing that must take place, have any of you nearly run over bicyclists on sidewalks? Sidewalks are actually extremely dangerous places for bikes because bikes go a lot faster than pedestrians. Drivers look for pedestrians and then look at cars, etc. The bike wasn't in veiw a few seconds ago, but now has moved in the way of the car and gets hit, or the driver wakes up and crisis averted. Another example is seeing a small light of a bike infront of you at night, but not actually seeing it in a way that you are doing anyting about it. If any of you do ride bikes at night, get a flashing head and tail light. Drivers frequently miss the "steady on" variety.
The "I see you but you are no threat to me" school of thought is something that I also put some faith in. One motorcyclist rode around in dark clothing and turned off his headlight for a period of time and counted the number of times his right of way was violated. He then turned the light back on and rode with extremely bright clothing. Funny thing was, he counted roughly the same number of incidents with both set ups. Then he dressed up his bike and himself to make himself look like a motorcycle cop. The number of incidents dropped to nothing. Apparently, the idea of a cop on a motorcycle will scare drivers into either registering you or waiting a bit longer to go. I've found similar results with cars. I used to drive a "regular" car and would have about one near collision ever 3-4 months due to some idiot turning infront of me. I now drive a used police car that looks like it is still in service. I've had ZERO incidents of idiots turning in front of me in 2.5 years.
Additionally, there is the matter of size to consider. People tend to misjudge the speed of motorcyclists because they are used to judging things like cars and trucks. Some people also say that smaller items register as less a threat so this sort of fits into the second school of thought.
Now I'm on the scooter. I've had it for 10 days now and I've put about 550 miles on it. I read that the median impact speed for motorcyclists in one study of about 900 crashes was 21mph or so and I have decided to wear full motorcycling gear. This consists of a silver (color is in the top three best colors to choose for visibilty) full faced helmet, a motorcycling jacket, motorcycling pants and boots. Yes, I probably do look like some kind of retard tooling around on his scooter at 25 mph. I get called names and I don't get any dates. Big deal I'm riding and they aren't.
Something I've noticed however is that nobody turns in front of me. EVER. I'll be well away from a car that is going to be turning but they will wait. And wait, and wait. ..... and wait. And then when I pass, they will go. I have ruled out the possibility that they are just wanting to get a better look at the moron coming down the road in all this gear. Instead, I think that they see the gear and figure that I must be going much faster than I really am. So if the smaller sizes register slower, I've managed to overide the other drivers' perception of size=speed with more gear=he must be going fast. I am going only 25 mph so theoretically, if the smaller size=slower thing works, other drivers would think I would be going at closer to 20 mph. Even at 25 mph, the other drivers would have enough time to pull out and sit in the road for 5 seconds before they started to go on some occasions. If they thought I was going even slower, they should feel that they have more time to make the turn. So I figure they must think I am going much faster than my 25 mph due to all the motorcycling gear. It is the only thing that seems to make sense at this time.
Has anyone else thought similarly? Any of you "naked" riders had a lot of close calls?