A 24 year old motorcycle rider was killed on the weekend at an intersection outside of the city that we know very well.
Whenever something like this occurs, we tend to talk about it in hopes – at least from my end – of learning from what went wrong and doing my best to avoid the same fate. This young man’s sport bike broke in half from the impact when it struck a car that crossed its path. (Photo from London Free Press)
The car’s rear passenger door was destroyed and the dog riding in the back seat was killed. The car’s human occupants are okay. The bike was heading south on highway #4 and the car was crossing the highway heading west.
It’s obvious that the bike was traveling at a high rate of speed and the car’s driver didn’t see it. A motorcycle rider can never, ever take for granted that other motorists know they’re there. In fact, it’s best to assume they don’t. I’m finding a visible difference in how car drivers give me eye contact and quite obviously see me since I started wearing my “summer” riding jacket which is bright red. When I go back to my black leather coat I’m going to add my red-and-white bandana around my neck, just for a little extra visibility. Driving too fast? Yup, I’ve done that but only for short stretches and usually when passing someone which is rare, indeed. I see riders fly past our house in a blur and, not to be a bike snob but 9 times out of 10 they’re on sport bikes.
The death of this young man breaks my heart but if we don’t look closely at what happened we might be doomed to repeat it.
Many years ago I rode a large black Honda GoldWing with full fairing and a large ‘TripTrunk’. I crossed the US from Buffalo to Sturgis & came back through Kansas, etc. The first item on my list for that winter was to change the color of my bike and its equipment to WHITE! Although the bike was about the size of a car, it still was nearly invisible to car drivers, headlights on and everything else. The following year, on the same bike I noticed a definite difference, drivers SAW me and my machine! Having talked to several other bikers about this ‘blindness’ on the part of car drivers, none of them were surprised but still felt that Black was more of a traditional bike color for Real motorcycles than white.
Speed might definitely be part of the problem, but visibility could make a life-saving difference!