- This topic has 16 replies, 10 voices, and was last updated 14 years, 10 months ago by gsmurfette.
Interesting scenario
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June 22, 2009 at 9:13 pm #3043ranetteParticipant
I was heading back home after my mind clearing afternoon ride through the twisties when I saw a situation developing and wanted to know if anybody else had come upon the same and how they reacted.
I was on a state highway, speed limit 55, coming up to the right hand turn onto local roads that takes me home. I was heading south. As I slowed down getting ready to make my right turn, heading north, on probably a 2 foot wide shoulder, were two kids on bicycles. We have tons of bicycles on the roads up here, most dress like Lance Armstrong and follow the rules of the road, but these were kids traveling the wrong direction on a state highway. The thing is I could see that they were going to cross over the road right at the same time I was going to make my right hand turn. I’ve made that turn countless times, if you count the times in my car, literally thousands and I’ve always had the right of way, never had to yield. I took a quick look behind me and there was a car with the right indicator on as well, not exceptionally close and by this time we weren’t going very fast. My choice was to speed up and make sure I got to the intersection before they did, or hit the breaks, possibly surprising the car behind me because he or she had probably also made that turn thousands of times never having to worry about yielding. It probably wouldn’t have resulted in a collision because of the moderate speed, but you never know for certain.
I chose to speed up giving the little rug rats a nasty look as I sped past, you could tell they hadn’t even considered stopping before crossing the intersection. Thinking about it right now I think being on a motorcycle I did the right thing. However if I had been in my gigantic buslike Ford Flex, I think the best thing would have been to risk the chance of being rear ended and put on the breaks as my immense car might have blocked the view of the car behind me meaning they might not have seen the kids on the bikes, which might have been disastrous. I didn’t look behind after the turn but assume, taking into account their proximity to me, the kids rode in front of the trailing car without any incident as I didn’t hear any horns or skids. Any thoughts on whether I handled it correctly or not?
June 22, 2009 at 9:40 pm #20039MunchParticipantAs for my opinion I would have done the same thing….it’s easier for the kids to get out of the way then it would have been for you should you had stopped suddenly and had the car crawl up your rear.
Only thing I may have done differently would have been to beep my road runner style horn to grab their ( the kids) attention.June 22, 2009 at 10:08 pm #20040zeppelinfromledParticipantIt depends on the specifics of distance, but being a fairly new rider, I probably would have slowed down to let them go first (with a few flashes of the brake light for the car behind me). If it looked like the car was clueless and wasn’t slowing down enough, I can always speed up and miss the turn if I have to. Missing the turn isn’t the end of the world.
I run into the same dilemma a lot with bikes going the same direction as me. I could speed up ahead of them and make the turn, or slow down and let them go first.
For now, as a new rider, I err on the side of not forcing myself to take turns quickly. I’d rather set the speed of a turn myself, instead of rushing through it to avoid someone on a bicycle.
June 22, 2009 at 10:11 pm #20041eonParticipantI’m not sure there was a right/wrong option in this case. Each choice had good/bad things going for it. If stopping meant it had to be a sudden stop then I would have kept going also. I might have braked if a gradual slow down was possible where you could keep an eye on the car behind and if I had an escape route if he was not slowing quickly enough. Advantages of this are you slow that car down and prevent him from hitting the kids.
Disadvantages to speeding up? If the kids had sped up would you have had a way to avoid them? In general I try to avoid speeding up to avoid incidents. Your available options tend to disappear rapidly as speed increases.
But I would have got on the horn quickly and early. Since I started riding I tend to use it the way it was intended, as a means of alerting others to your presence, not as a sign of displeasure.
June 23, 2009 at 4:26 pm #20068SantaCruzRiderParticipantI’ve been in this type of situation fairly often, in part because I live in a beach town, near a bunch of schools with lots of kids. It’s not uncommon for them to be riding the wrong direction in the street or on the sidewalk (which is legal for children, but a bit scary when they suddenly appear in front of you).
I always err on the side of stopping — kids are just too unpredictable and they often have no concept of your right-of-way. But my view may not be typical, as I’ve stopped in the middle of a road to bring traffic to a halt to keep a dog from getting hit. It’s not because I can’t easily get around, I just feel vested in doing what I can to keep someone’s pet or kid from getting hit.
BTW: When I was a 14, I got hit by a car while riding my bike on the wrong side of the road. Guy wasn’t looking for me and figured he had the right of way. I got hurled into 3 lanes of traffic, but managed to get out of the way. It was the second time I’d been hit by a car — first was a drunk driver who blew a stop sign — do I’m partial to kids on bikes.
June 23, 2009 at 5:45 pm #20076Clay DowlingParticipantI’m partial to kids on bikes.
You’re probably also a lot more careful when you’re walking or biking, too. No better reminder to keep a weather eye than getting hit by a car. Twice.
June 23, 2009 at 7:21 pm #20086bigguybbrParticipantI probably would have lightly applied the rear brake just enough to get the indicator light to turn on, judge if the car behind slowed up any, and if so, slow down, the whole time with an escape route in mind. When I want the attention of the driver behind me I tend to tap the breaks a few times, as a flashing light garners more attention than a solid light. I’ll do this even when stopped at an intersection to make sure approaching vehicles see me.
Reasons I wouldn’t have spead up to blow past kids
1. They are kids, and kids are irrational and unpredictable. I don’t approach anything unpredictable with any amount of speed on my bike.
2. They have the least saftey equipment if anyone in the scenario and are therefore the most vulnerable.June 24, 2009 at 12:16 am #20098MunchParticipantOne thing you have to bare in mind also…. you are asking people that have the luxury of assessing the situation for about 5 mins then critiquing. Arm chair quarter backs as I like to call us will always have very different “rational” answers. It’s different when in the very situation with mere seconds to process, evaluate and execute.
Like Elwood said… you took all the appropriate steps, it paid off, end of story. Right or wrong is really moot.June 24, 2009 at 12:50 am #20101ranetteParticipantVery true, but that is what I was asking people for, and I do value, and thought about, every opinion that I got. Given the same situation I’m pretty sure I would have proceeded the same way with the addition of getting on the horn immediately, that’s a no brainer that I missed. So much of my emergency reaction skills are based on what I learned in both of my MSF classes, if one of the MSF drills had included a horn honk I think it would have been second nature. Wonder why that’s not a part of any MSF drill. Anybody have any thoughts on that? Captain?
As for whether speeding up was more dangerous, only if there had been another unexpected obstacle after the turn. I was close enough to the turn that I knew if I accelerated there was no way I wasn’t going to cross that intersection before they got there. Believe me, I may be referring to them as little idiots, but in those moments I was much more concerned with their safety than I was with mine. You have to figure that if I had collided with them they would have come out of it a lot worse than I would have.
June 24, 2009 at 12:24 pm #20111bigguybbrParticipantThey disabled the horn in our class for the well being of the riding instructors and their hearing from students accidentally hitting them
June 24, 2009 at 12:37 pm #20112CBBaronParticipantI’m not sure on the rules when there are not sidewalks but in cases where there are the pedestrians crossing the street have right-a-way over vehicles making a turn. Ofcourse these were not pedestrians and there was no sidewalk however I think in the case of an accident the judgments would favor the kids. However the kids were being stupid and you probably did the right thing to avoid an incident.
If cyclist are following the rules of the road it is the responsibility of over taking traffic to miss “them”. However I understand the frustration at some cyclists. As a cyclist myself who follows all the rules of the road I am very disappointed to see many cyclist riding on the wrong side of the street or blowing through intersections. Those cyclist do “share the road” well and just make it more difficult for those of us who try to.
Craig
June 24, 2009 at 1:55 pm #20121ranetteParticipantI don’t think our horns were disabled but I’m not certain. Seems as if the horn is an important piece of safety equipment that even the newest of newbies would be capable of using and it is totally ignored by the MSF. My scooter has a Stebel horn which is like a little fog horn, pretty startling coming from such a small bike. The Duc has a standard motorcycle, meep meep, horn.
Back to what Eon wrote, we definitely don’t use the horn as a warning device as it was originally intended, we tend to use it in anger. I’ll actually quote myself, I was in India last year and if anybody has ever been there, one thing they’ll never forget is the roads, they are truly something to see, but an observation that I made in a blog that I kept was, “The horn, which is never dormant for more than a few seconds, is used as an alert ‘Hey I’m here look out for me,’ rather than the loud ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ we use it for back home.” The Indian roads are crammed with every vehicle imaginable on 2, 3, 4 or more wheels. Things that would literally be a felony here are accepted as normal every day driving maneuvers. I was there right before I became obsessed with all things two wheeled so didn’t take note of the types of bikes that I was seeing, only with the fact that you’d see entire families on tiny scooters(infant on the handlebars, no I am not shitting you). If anybody is interested in reading the blog it can be found http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog/ranette/1/tpod.html
June 24, 2009 at 4:24 pm #20125zeppelinfromledParticipantAt the beginning of my MSF, when the instructors were going over the basic controls, then included the horn. And they said something like “go ahead and hit it once now to get it out of your system,” and at least most of the horns worked.
I mostly end up using the horn when someone doesn’t start moving at a green light. I also use it pretty frequently to mean “hey man, that thing you did was pretty stupid and dangerous,” but that’s less common. I definitely have perfected the short, polite tap on my car’s horn since I moved to the city.
June 24, 2009 at 7:51 pm #20135eonParticipantI think a discussion of bicyclists behavior warrants its own thread in the off topic forum as I’m sure it would get heated pretty quickly
I will just say as a life long bicyclist (whose parents met in a bicycling club and grew up surrounded by bikes), the cyclists in this country drive me crazy. I would not have believed there could be so many arrogant SOBs. Ok, I’d better put my soap box away as this is a topic that gets me worked upJune 24, 2009 at 8:05 pm #20136SafetyFirstParticipantHaving spent a lot of time in college on two wheels, without the motor, I can say being on bike is frightening at times.
Honestly, more so than on a motorcycle.
Out of no where, someone pulls out in front of you at the strip mall, blocking the sidewalk you’re on. You’re crossing the street, and just about get plowed down by someone making a right turn without stopping for the stop sign, late for class.
If you think you aren’t seen on a motorcycle, a bicycle is worse.
I look out for them when I’m on the road. Mainly, because a lot of them might not be as defensive as they could be.
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