Assess risk and stay alive
Apr 21 '09
The Bottom Line Most people may have the ability to drive, but are still a manace on the road. Constant focus and risk assessment can keep you alive.
My wife was near the bottom of the cement staircase that leads from near vertical to our garage up to our house when, Whoops! I listened to her throwing out all manner of cuss words from near the garage. Had she forgotten her keys? I looked out the window and there she was. On the ground face up, twisted umbrella, purse with contents spilled all over the ground, and soaked like a setter during duck season. Twenty years younger and she would have probably bounced right back up, twenty years older and we’d be looking at hip surgery. So should I finish my PB&J or go down and help her?
As it turns out she was nearing the bottom of the staircase and began to search for her keys. The rain started picking up so she extended an arm out and pushed the automatic release to open the umbrella. The next thing she knows she is six feet further down the stairs and in a mangled mess of personal items.
Evaluating the situation it was easy to see that her tumble could have been easily avoided had she assessed her risk before walking down the stairs. Not meaning that she needed to stop and take fifteen minutes to decide how to go down the stairs, but simply be vigilant or alert to her surroundings and situation. Experienced racecar drivers, soldiers and motorcyclists do this in fractions of a second. Unfortunately average Joe or Josephene doesn’t. What my wife experienced was a comedy of physical error that could have been avoided by simply paying attention and making the right choices.
Over the last three months these errors have destroyed more than pride, they have destroyed lives. Let me share them with you:
We hired a new mechanic a few months ago to deal with the increased workload that the economic crisis has brought upon the shop. After two weeks of working hard and showing off his abilities, he got his first paycheck with us. So in celebration of a job well done it was off for some beer and then some more beer. Leaving a nearby Biergarten he misjudged the speed of an oncoming semi truck. The truck didn’t even bounce as it flattened his Corolla.
A nice woman from up the street, the spiting image of the tweety birds granny was crossing the street here in town. She’d looked both ways and was on a fifteen foot wide crossing point. Pedestrian signs were all around, flashing red lights, speed bumps prior to and after the crosswalk. Probably the safest place in town to cross the street. A young woman about 20, driving below the speed limit decided to send a text message. She looks down for just an instant. I suppose you know the rest.
My top graduate from two years back was finally getting his life together. He’d joined the service, was out on his own and had quickly made a name for himself as the guy who would pitch in and help out anyone, anytime. He had decided to take advantage of the nice South Carolina weather and scrimped and saved to buy his first real motorcycle. With the MSF course under his belt and the road miles piling up, he was quickly gaining valuable experience about why average Joe Driver really doesn’t know how too. He was wide-eyed and alert. Unfortunately the sixty year old woman talking on her cell phone who made an illegal left turn across the median to catch a side street, did so unexpectedly. It happened so quick that my young friend didn’t stand a chance. His life was snuffed out before it got going.
All these accidents can be blamed on miscalculations. Inattention to the rules of the road or to common sense. It took me years to understand the left turn. Having grown up in the country, I thought it meant the fools that turn left out of their driveways. After all, those were the closest calls that I had encountered. Years later after analyzing driving habits I realized it was a term used in built up areas. It means the person coming at you turns left into your lane. It’s the number one cause of motorcycle fatalities. I know there are numbers of clubs and organizations that are pushing to make this a manslaughter charge rather than a fail to yield. I highly doubt it will ever happen considering the number of really bad “and drunk” drivers we have running our government. That extends to their privileged offspring as well.
What I would advise for all you new and even experienced riders that haven’t thought about it in a while is to:
1. Slow down. Take a real good look at your speed. Legal speeds will get you killed. Higher than legal speeds will do it faster and leave a lot less room for error. Your reaction time doesn’t get any quicker as your speed goes up, so you end up a lot further down the road at 70 MPH than you do at 50.
2. Ride with your high beam on during the day. It may bother the heck out of the guy coming at you, but Id rather have him give me the finger than do a left in front of me. Also we now have those stinking daytime running lights being put onto a number of cars in the U.S. These should be outlawed because they camouflage the motorcyclist. There’s nothing worse than fading into the background, so crank up the high beams. Heck, I even install those PIA high output super whites just to be really annoying.
3. Two fingers over the brake and throttle off near intersections, side roads and parking areas. Keeping two fingers over the front brake reduces reaction time and gets you stopped faster. After way too many years of riding this way with nothing in the way of close calls to write home about, I found myself distracted driving by a dry cleaners. Young thing in sundress to the left. As I looked back to the road, I found crazy soccer mom in SUV stopped dead, just feet ahead. I never thought I could manage a stoppie on a VFR, but sure did a nice one, and saved my hide. Old Dawg learned big lesson. Sun dresses are better admired from a static.
4. Get trained: MSF also has an advanced rider courses. Get into one every few years. Read about riding. There is plenty of wisdom in print, so stay up to date. Also get on a track. It can wean you off of the need for speed on the street, and put into perspective your actual abilities. You can also improve your riding technique and bike control. You may find the bikes that Motporn is pushing are either overkill or more than you bargained for. Nothing like seeing a Paul Puffychest come off a few laps white as a ghost and ready to trade down.
5. Use the best riding gear you can. Invest in a good helmet, leather jacket, boots and gloves. If you’ve ever seen someone’s legs or feet mangled from riding in shorts and flip flops, you’ll get the picture real fast. Aside from protecting you in a spill, they also allow you to concentrate on your riding. Don’t buy the story from the beanie topped tat guys that a full-face helmet cuts your peripheral vision or that you can’t hear. HA HA.. These helmets are designed to allow full vision and by lowering the windblast noise you get with and open face, you can hear important sounds like horns.
6. Finally and this is probably the most important point. 99% of the people on the road don’t know how to drive. I don’t mean that they don’t know the mechanics of driving. What I mean is that they don’t heed the rules of common sense behind the wheel. They allow distractions to grab their attention. How many people really turn off the cell phones when they drive? They admonish kids, rather than set out passenger rules. They drink soda, smoke, adjust the radio dial. Most won’t keep their cars maintained with good tires and brakes, they’ll take dumb chances, they can’t estimate speeds, they believe themselves to be correct even when doing wrong. It covers all age, racial and classes in society. So my best advice is to always remember that only you can cover your back, cause no one else will.
My wife thought that she could take her hand off the railing for just a moment. She didn’t think about the wet stairs, her plastic soled shoes, the purse swinging off her left arm creating a change in balance, her natural top heaviness, her refocus on the act of opening the umbrella, how the wind might have taken it, or the change it would create in balance. “I just didn’t think about that” she said. Instead she was wondering where her car keys were and about her shopping list. Any time a body is in motion, whether its on foot or two or four wheels, you must focus on what you are doing, or you just may just end up flat on your back. Alive or Dead.
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