Motorcycle Safety Strategies For a New Year
By Steven M. Magas, Ohio’s Bike Lawyer[1]
“Perception/Reaction Time” is a common phrase used by Accident Reconstruction Experts. From years of study and research we know that when you are motoring along and stuff starts to happen a period of time elapses between the start of bad stuff happening and the time your brain recognizes bad stuff is happening. This is your “Perception Time.” Once you perceive the bad stuff, there is another delay while brain tries to figure out what to DO, if anything, about the bad stuff it has now perceived.
One important finding of the Hurt Report is that by the time you recognize the danger, you probably have TWO SECONDS or less until impact. What you DO in those two seconds will lead to one or more of a long continuum of results – from nothing happening to you, to being scared, to minor or major injuries to death! A motorcyclist, no matter how skilled, is more likely to stay safe if she/he learns how to avoid problems before they develop, instead of how to react to dangers on the road once they pop up.
When I talk to motorcyclists about safety and how to stay alive on the road they generally want to brag about how well how they handle the bike or how they’ve had to “lay 'er down” to stay alive. However, relying on emergency braking to get you OUT of trouble is usually a horrible strategy and usually tells me that the rider is about 8-10 seconds behind the curve.
Don't get me wrong—learning how brake effectively is a critical skill every rider must develop and practice. It’s just that relying on emergency braking or swerving to save you is like having a plan to run out and buy a fire extinguisher the moment the house catches on fire. If the situation has deteriorated to the point that you are implementing your emergency plan, it’s probably too late to save you.
The Hurt study and others found that the average time from the event that starts the “collision sequence” (i.e., the start of the bad stuff happening, such as a car beginning a turn across your path) to the actual impact was 1.9 SECONDS. Seventy-five percent [75%] of riders had less than 3.0 SECONDS between the start of the accident sequence and the crash. THREE SECONDS.
Perception of the problem, remember, is only step one. Perception can be delayed if the rider is too busy watching the cute motorist to the left or worrying about a crashing 401K! Once the “perception” is achieved [i.e., the “Oh Crap” moment occurs], reaction time begins.
Most experts will testify that the average reaction time to traffic hazards at about 1.5 to 2.0 seconds, averaging around 1.7 seconds. A defensive back might be 1.0 seconds. A 51 year old lawyer with stuff on his mind, closer to 2.0. A young man trying to gain his balance while standing on the seat…well… let’s just leave THAT topic for another day…
Think about this - if you swerve, add another half-second for the time delay due to counter-steering and developing the correct lean angle before your motorcycle begins to head in the desired direction. These little delays leave almost no time for evasive action to succeed. Interestingly, roughly 30 percent of riders in the Hurt study took no evasive action at all. Perhaps there was too little time… perhaps they just froze. However, once you cross the magic mathematical boundaries of time and space, even highly skilled braking won't get you out of trouble – it may just slightly delay the beginning of your very rapid deceleration.
What does this mean? Let's say you're going down the boulevard at 30-mph – or 44 feet per second. You fail to notice that an SUV is about to turn left in front of you. When the big vehicle turns left across your path it is still 100 feet away. With your delayed reaction time of, say, two seconds, you’ve now covered 88 of those 100 fee and you’ve got exactly 12 feet to react and get the bike stopped! It ain’t gonna happen. The best you can hope for is that your panic braking slows you so the impact with the side of the SUV isn’t quite as severe. Even worse, when faced with death or a world of pain seconds away, the Hurt Report concluded that most riders do a miserable job of braking and swerving.
The Hurt Report found that riders with formal training (mostly California Highway Patrol and LAPD motorcycle officers, who had passed rigorous training course and spent hours per day on huge bikes) were no more likely to use the front brake than you or I when faced with death/life circumstances.
Instead of thinking you're going to save yourself with your lightning-fast reflexes and well-honed skills, you are MUCH better served by taking the advice of Jim Oullett, one of the authors of the Hurt Report, and working on learning and practicing strategies designed to keop you OUT of situations where you have to rely on reflexes and skills. Take a look at Jim’s 11 tips for the wise and use them to make 2009 your Safest Year Ever! Regular readers of this column will note that Jim hammers on many of the same points I try to make here each month!
11 TIPS FROM JIM OULLETT FOR SAFER MOTORCYCLING
1) CONSPICUITY. Do all you can to make it easy for car drivers to see you. Probably 90 to 95 percent of car drivers who screw up say they never saw the motorcycle. Car drivers don't want to hit you. Honest. But some of them need extra help to know you're there. Do all you can to make it easier for them to see you. Use your high beam during the day. High beam is more conspicuous than low beam. Trading that cool-looking black leather jacket for something bright wouldn't hurt, either.
2) Freeways are good; surface streets are bad. Areas around shopping districts are the worst. Limited-access roadways such as freeways are good because car drivers can't turn across your right-of-way, so use freeways as much as you can.
3) In busy urban traffic, stay in the mix with the cars. Not out ahead of them; not behind. When you go through intersections where cross-traffic wants to use the pavement you own, stay right next to a car's front fender so you're not in the driver's blind spot and use the car as a shield. This is especially true at night because it's even harder for car drivers to distinguish a motorcycle from nearby traffic. Many riders who get picked off are the ones 30 yards ahead of a big clot of cars, or 20 yards behind.
4) Move away from potential hazards. If you're alone when you come up to an intersection where a car is waiting to cross your path, the more lateral distance you put between your path and the other guy's starting point the better. For example, if you're nearing an intersection where a car coming from the opposite direction can turn across your path, move to a lane closer to the curb. It'll make it easier for the car driver to see you, and give you more time to react, which is probably even more important than skilled braking. The key is looking AHEAD 10+ seconds and recognizing potential hazards before they become REAL hazards!
5) Never assume the other guy has seen you. Keep your eye on a vehicle that's positioned where it could violate your right-of-way. When you've decided the other driver has seen you and you start looking farther down the road, that's the moment he'll choose to turn.
6) Take it easy when you're out carving canyons. As you approach a turn, pick out which rocks and trees look good to hit, because you don't want to hit the unfriendly ones (which, actually, are all of them). If you need a little extra time to run through this mental drill, let off the gas. And remember that if you hit a post-and-rail barrier, which is used to decorate the outside of a lot of curves, it will probably break every bone in your body.
7) No booze before riding. None. Ever. Your risk of causing your own crash skyrockets when you drink and ride. Riders with more than one beer in their systems are about 40 times as likely to crash as sober riders. And a drinker's favorite way to crash is by running off the road, which has a higher fatality rate than any motorcycle-car crash except head-ons because there are so many rigid fixed objects waiting to, uh, welcome you. Trees, fire hydrants, parked cars, culverts, the list goes on and on.
8) Avoid riding in the center of lanes on the freeway. It's safer than trusting the guy behind you not to rear-end you. In the Hurt study, more riders on the freeway got nailed from behind while staying in their lane than riders who crashed while lane-splitting. But don't go too much faster than the traffic flow and be really careful when coming up to a car with an open space in the lane next to it, especially if the lane with the space is moving faster than the one with the car.
9) Be patient with lost and distracted drivers. In residential neighborhoods, you should understand that the idiot in the car in front of you, the one who's poking along at 15 mph, is looking for an address. Cool your jets and hold back, because the second you try to pass him, he's gonna turn across your path into a driveway. The five or 10 seconds you lose waiting for this car to get out of your way is a lot less than the time you'll lose waiting for the cast to come off your leg.
10) Don't lay it down. You lose only about 8-10 mph every second you spend sliding on the ground while giving away your perfectly good skin. If you do a good job using both brakes, you can lose 15-20 mph every second you brake and save on band-aids, too. About the only time to put yourself down on the pavement is if you're on an elevated curve (like a freeway interchange) and you're about to hit the low outside wall. The wall is usually high enough to save your motorcycle but not high enough to keep you from flying off into the wild blue yonder. I've never seen a rider survive that fall. The government ought to raise those concrete retaining walls to at least chest-high.
11) A loud exhaust is not safer. By the time you're close enough for a car driver to hear you, he's already in your path. In fact, you run the risk that the driver will be so alarmed he'll stop dead in your path. On the other hand, loud exhausts sure work wonders for pissing off the people behind you and making 'em hate motorcyclists. If you're serious about staying out of an accident, make yourself seen, not heard. If you just gotta have a loud exhaust, find another excuse for it.
GOOD LUCK AND GOOD RIDING!!
[1] Steve Magas, Ohio’s “Bike Lawyer,” is an avid rider and Ohio trial lawyer who has handled more than 150 “Bike Cases.” Steve’s practice focuses on representing riders injured or killed in crashes caused by errant motorists, dogs or faulty products. Steve rides a 2004 BMW R1150RT and is a year round commuter riding tens of thousands of miles each year. Steve offers a FREE CONSULTATION ABOUT YOUR CASE. You can reach him by calling
513-484-BIKE or sending him a note at BIKELAWYER@AOL.COM.