Pass on the right? Wrong.

[parainbow]

My crash happened 2 years ago, but I recently relocated to NorCal and hope others here can learn from my mistake, too.

I was on my morning commute down the mountain east of San Diego, thoroughly familiar with the road and traffic patterns. Weather and road conditions were ideal. At that point, I had 4 years and 80K miles of riding under my belt, and had completed formal rider training each of those years.

I had been following a Ford Expedition doing ~10 mph under the 55 mph speed limit (no passing zones there, and I wasn't in a rush) for 4-5 miles on a 2 lane state route. I was annoyed, but still maintaining a 3-4 second following distance in a spot where I knew he could see me in all of his mirrors. I also had a hi-viz jacket and full HID headlight kit.

There is a gas station at the bottom of the hill on the left, and to my relief, his left turn signal came on (imagine that, a way to let others know what you're going to do). There was no oncoming traffic. I backed off a little more and slowed slightly to 40 mph. Once he started towards the centerline, I moved towards the fog line and began to accelerate gently. As the gap between us closed to 2 vehicle lengths, he started to move back to the right, left turn signal still on. A WTF flag went up, and I backed off the throttle, but did not brake. I was going 30-35 mph at that point. The shoulder there is over 12 ft wide, so I figured I still had plenty of space if things got hairy. A second later, as I entered his blind spot, he swerved violently to the right, all the way onto the shoulder, and stood on his brakes. There went my "space."

My choices at that point were max effort brake but still smash into his rear, or swerve right. My instinctive reaction was the latter. I almost pulled it off, but my left knee caught the right corner of his steel bumper, hard enough to dent it, and my left handgrip smacked the quarter panel, jerking my front wheel to the left. I became a projectile at this point, flying ass-over-teakettle, ahead of my bike.

I landed feet forward on my left hip, then my head and everything else smacked. I came to a stop 65 ft past the point of impact. End result was cracking the top third of my tibia in half vertically, completely mangling my knee, which required 5 pieces of titanium to reconstruct, internal de-gloving of my left hip (the deepest layer of skin separated from the fascia underneath), badly sprained ankle, and laceration on my forehead where my visor popped off.

Thanks to top shelf riding gear and lots of physical therapy, I made a 95% recovery after a year. At the beginning, the docs said the best case would be 70% with a permanent limp. Then it took another year to convince the wife to give me a permission slip for another bike.

Lessons learned:

- Brake early, brake often. I should have gotten on the brakes as soon as things got weird.

- ATGATT. I'm positive I would have lost my leg if I was not wearing armored pants. Every doc I saw, including a few that ride, confirmed this. I had zero road rash.

- Never let following distance diminish to the point where an emergency stop or swerve/stop cannot be made. I now include every physically possible movement in my worse case scenario, not just the current or anticipated direction of movement.

- I now only pass on the right as a last resort, to avoid more imminent threats.

- Speed delta applies to all situations, not just lane sharing.

The driver did stop to help, and stated that he saw me from the beginning, and didn't feel he was being tailgated/pushed, but thought I was going to pass him on his left. Still can't wrap my brain around that one. He said he freaked when he lost sight of me and that's why he swerved.

Neither of us were cited. I was found 70% at fault under the basic speed law. He was 30% at fault for "unsafe movement." Fortunately I had good insurance and didn't take a financial hit, but being physically useless for 6 months is something I never want to repeat. Not to mention the trauma it caused my wife.

I'm sure there may be things that I am overlooking, and welcome any input.

 

[parainbow]

And my poor baby:

In the big garage in the sky.

 

[NeilInPacifica]

Your conclusion about following distance seems to be the clincher. Based upon his comments, had you maintained following distance he would have continued to see you, so wouldn't have reacted. And even if he did brake and pull right, you wouldn't have run into him.

Thanks for sharing...this stuff is so useful and really appreciated by new riders like myself!

 

[FXCLM5]

wow ty for sharing,

this driving behavior is seen to be erratic, but now i understand their perspective of doing it, and their logic makes sense for this incident, glad you recovered and are back on 2 wheels.

 

[parainbow]

Putting this in writing did remind me:

That is an area similar to the area surrounding Alice's, and is a motorcycle Mecca on the weekends. If he always drove 10 under the limit and didn't use the turnouts, I wouldn't be surprised if he had motorcycles pass him on a double yellow many times. That may explain his thinking that I would pass on the left, even though I don't feel that I gave any indication that I would do so.

 

[danate]

This is a tough habit to break as I started doing it while driving cars. Especially when you are in a hurry you tend to want to just rip around the person and get past.

Thankfully I learned my lesson in a close call early in my riding career. Had a guy put on his left signal and start slowing on a rural two lane road. I went to blow by him on the right and he swerved all the way onto the shoulder to make a big radius u-turn. Pushed me onto the dirt (which thankfully was there) and I was able to recover. Had it happen a second time with a car that I thought was parking: it pulled all the way off the road onto the shoulder (to the sidewalk) and as I approached, made a big uturn right in front of me with no signal or anything. Thankfully the second time I had slowed down enough to be able to stop.

Now whenever I see a vehicle slowing in front of me for any reason, I am always on high alert and will only pass them at a crawling pace once they are actually stopped.

Sorry you had to learn the hard way, but you survived and it's nice to see you're still on a bike.

 

[DucatiHoney]

Bummer...Been in that situation more than a few times, and it always wigs me out because of too many close calls. My personal take on turn signals is that they only mean that the driver knows that s/he is going to do something crazy. They're not indicators of actual direction.

Glad you're still with us!

 

[redruM]

Thanks for sharing this. The fact that you exercised what many of us would consider tremendous patience leading up to the incident tells me you're a generally safe, smart & conservative rider - very sorry that day ended the way it did for you.

Welcome back to riding, welcome to NorCal and

 

[ALANRIDER7]

but still maintaining a 3-4 second following distance in a spot where I knew he could see me in all of his mirrors.

I wasn't there. I didn't see him or you or the incident. All I can do is glean the nuggets from what you wrote.

It's extremely easy to make assumptions while riding. You placed yourself in a spot that you assumed he could see you. There was no way for you to confirm that he did actually see you. When you make this kind of assumption, you drop your guard a little. It's human nature. You say to yourself "I know the guy sees me" when it's entirely possible he hasn't seen you or noticed you at all because of any number of reasons. Maybe his investment portfolio just took a shit, maybe he hasn't slept in 2 days, maybe he just found out his wife is fucking his best friend, maybe he's getting a blowjob, maybe he's drunk, maybe his brother just died, maybe he's diabetic, maybe he is bipolar, maybe he just got fired, maybe he just got hired, maybe his son just went into detox.... the list is endless. Whatever. How the fuck do you know where he's coming from? You don't. You can't. Even if he does see you, there is no way to guarantee that he is such a good driver that he continuously monitors your position in relation to his as he goes. If you assume anything, you're begging to get hammered.

The next problem I see is you taking his turn signal at face value. A very dangerous assumption. Your guard drops a little more. Just because a driver signals something does not mean they will actually do it. I've seen it countless times. You think they'll do something based upon their signals and they do the exact opposite or nothing at all or something else completely.

I had a great learning opportunity once when I was following a driver who put his turn signal on way before I knew any turns were coming up while going down a rather long hill. He was also pumping his brakes at the same time. He also had a burned out brake light on one side. The problem was I couldn't tell what was what because nothing computed in this circumstance. I couldn't tell what was a turn signal or what was a brake light or what the fuck this idiot was planning to do next. Everything was flashing at a different rate for some time. His taillight lenses had no amber in them. All of the plastic was red so it gave me no indication of what was what. I reacted by backing off while simultaneously checking my 6 to see if there was anybody that could asspack me when I slowed down. He ended up turning off in a spot I could not have predicted correctly.

The point I'm trying to make is you've formulated your course of action based upon combining multiple false assumptions as you went and then continued based upon that false information. This placed you in the most dangerous position possible and the outcome proves it.

Even if you think you know exactly what will unfold and when, you must constantly be thinking about escape routes and planning for the unexpected... which can actually happen more frequently when you believe you know how things are going to go.

You have to ride like you're invisible and that drivers are actually going out of their way to invade your space. That's what they do. If you ever ride in Boston or Manhattan, you have to pretend they are actually trying to crash into you. It's like open tryouts for NASCAR there.

I always, always, always ask myself "If I guess wrong, what is this guy going to do?" and then watch what happens. Take notes and save those notes in your survival file in the back of your brain. It can and will save your bacon.

 

[DataDan]

I don't think it was that complicated.

After a posted 45mph section, the limit defaults to 55mph 2.5mi east of the crash, down a hill that has two curves posted with 35mph warning signs. Driver is doing 45, probably within the normal range of traffic until the road straightens out to the west. OP did the right thing, following conservatively since there's a legal passing opportunity just .25mi past the crash.

Most likely the driver really was turning into the gas station on the left; there's nowhere to go on the right except a driveway to an SDG&E substation. But showing uncommon caution, he checked for the motorcycle as he began to turn. Not seeing it in his mirror, he jumped to the conclusion that it was passing on the left and in a panic swerved right.

The only thing I would add to the OP's lessons is to be patient. Let traffic events transpire in their natural time and don't hurry them along.

That location, Santa Ysabel at the junction of SR-78 and SR-79, was one of my excuses for a San Diego County ride when I lived in Orange County. Before that corner was built up, Dudley's Bakery was the only thing there. Great pastries.

 

[Yal]

Several of these got hammered into me recently and I wish I had read your post before it happened.

A young woman pulled out into my lane of traffic from a driveway. I think I started to swerve into the #1 lane assuming she was going to go in the same direction I was. I started braking when she continued across in front of me and I slammed into the side of her car as I continued to attempt to brake and evade. I then fell down and am now without my bike for the last 4 weeks and the next 3-10 weeks while it is repaired.

Lesson learned, don't try to go around, start braking hard, ride in a different lane for better visibility and keep my head up and not up my butt. I was wearing all gear and will continue to do so.

 

[kongjie]

Pretty scary that, not seeing where you went, the driver's reaction was to swerve. If anything, he should have kept going straight until he figured out where you were.

I guess one lesson is that once your "WTF flag" goes up, you need to consider that the vehicle in question is completely unpredictable and not make any assumptions about its future movements.