Comment by lancewiggs
4 hours ago
Yeas ago I motorcycled a lot, all over the world. I escalated to an air horn and hi-viz. But I pretty quickly realized that these made no tangible difference to the behavior of larger vehicle drivers. So I ended up for later vehicles with a stock horn and hi-viz only for heavy rain.
These days our family cycles a lot for commuting. It’s really easy to observe that people in vehicles treat us far better if we look like humans, wearing normal street clothes, rather than wearing high-viz or, far worse, cycling gear.
The bike bell is for polite notice, not alarming. The best alarm system you have is your voice, which is variable volume and tone. For ultimate effect slap the panels of cars, as it is very loud inside the vehicle.
Slapping panels in the US will occasionally get people trying to fight you, as I've had happen. Not really sure what a good solution to that looks like short of cultural changes.
Sadly I had to kick a few cars that thought they could run me off my motorcycle. Worked every time. All of them didn't look out the window or they would have looked right into my face. Yelling and horn did absolutely nothing.
Most of them were extremely apologetic or even shocked (as if I appeared from thin air). None of them were angry for scratching their door. Some people are just lost in thought it seems...
> or even shocked (as if I appeared from thin air)
Motorcyclists are invisible. Never rely on others seeing you, ride as if they're an obstacle you have to navigate.
You can hide a whole truck behind the A-pillar of modern cars, let alone a motorcycle. At certain angles, human eyes have complete blind spots that we're not aware of because our brain filters them out. Motorcycles fit perfectly into those.
Never hover in people's blind spots. Pass quickly or stay back. Do not drive parallel with another vehicle. Goes for cars too.
When approaching another car perpendicularly (like an intersection), remember that humans lose depth perception because their nose covers one of the eyes. A driver literally cannot tell how far you are. Our usual proxy is the distance between headlights. Motorcyles have 1 headlight so this heuristic doesn't work, but we don't realize that it doesn't.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x94PGgYKHQ0
Oh I know. They look at me while turning left cutting me off.
Maybe I need a bigger bike, the 2cyl 400cc is particularly invisible. ;)
Best one was a woman who cut me off doing her left turn. I high-beamed her and honked. She put her hands in front of her face and came to a dead stop in my lane directly in front of me. I was already braking before I honked. Nothing happened. I stopped wondering and just assume everyone is out to kill me.
It's a rule that also applies to bicycles.