Superstitions can kill you

[Wossname]

[/quote] Slowsider

Where was it you were riding again? Small winding country roads? And yet a tractor is not reasonable or expected?
If you really 'pulled the speed right back', why didn't you have time to stop, leave alone sound the horn.
[/quote]


I thought I'd explained it better....

It wasn't the PRESENCE of the trailer that nearly caught me out. I was ready for stuff like that - as you rightly point out, I should have been. The problem was that as I was about to pass the back of this stationary trailer, it reversed. Is that clearer?

[Horse]

There comes at point at which you have to either stop or commit to passing.

[Wossname]

Which is what I did, but it wasn't an easy pass!

[The Spin Doctor]

That's exactly the point I was making - there's no point in doing it if you can't change your plan as a result of what you've seen behind/beside you.

On a re-read, that is indeed what you said.

[slowsider]

Where was it you were riding again? Small winding country roads? And yet a tractor is not reasonable or expected?
If you really 'pulled the speed right back', why didn't you have time to stop, leave alone sound the horn.

Unfortunately most of us push the limit on 'stop well within the distance you can see to be clear AND EXPECT TO REMAIN CLEAR' because 'Surprise Horizons' don't rate a mention on IAM / RoSPA courses when the focus is on matching speed to the moving Limit Point.

The catch is that the Surprise Horizon stays fixed and comes back towards us - and we may have to stop as we get there... assuming we spotted it and decided to do something about it.

Im always acutely aware that whatever is behind me may be surprised by my surprise.

[The Spin Doctor]

Im always acutely aware that whatever is behind me may be surprised by my surprise.

That was a feature of a recent mini-series on my Facebook page entitled "Getting rear-ended makes for a bad day" - here's the link to Pt 1https://business.facebook.com/SurvivalS ... 3772026848

But essentially, when it comes to setting speed, the Surprise Horizon still takes priority over the Limit Point.

Things get ever worse if you're the meat in the sandwich - not only do YOU not stop but then you're hit from behind too.

[The Spin Doctor]

There comes at point at which you have to either stop or commit to passing.

Stopping is always an option but we tend to forget that in our hurry to make progress.

And having slowed right down and given yourself that option, the choice to pass is a much more considered one.

It would be a bit of a bummer to swerve away from the reversing tractor and trailer reversing out of the gateway, only to collide head-on with another tractor that's just stopped to turn INTO the field.

[Horse]

There comes at point at which you have to either stop or commit to passing.

Stopping is always an option but we tend to forget that in our hurry to make progress.

Not necessarily in a 'hurry'.

As I typed that, I had horribly in mind my 2001 crash. I have just a few fragments of memories from the 10 - 12 seconds leading up to the impact. The first is "the car is stopped". (The next is "it's moving ... ")

The VFR I had as a loaner afterwards had a digital speedo, so I checked several times. I would have been bo more than 12 - 15 mph.

collide head-on with another tractor that's just stopped to turn INTO the field.

"Where there's one, there's another"

Particularly at harvest time.

I hesitate to say that 'tractors hunt in packs'

[The Spin Doctor]

Not necessarily in a 'hurry'.

As I typed that, I had horribly in mind my 2001 crash. I have just a few fragments of memories from the 10 - 12 seconds leading up to the impact. The first is "the car is stopped". (The next is "it's moving ... ")

The VFR I had as a loaner afterwards had a digital speedo, so I checked several times. I would have been bo more than 12 - 15 mph.

Maybe not you... but so many riders DON'T read junctions as "somewhere I might have to stop very suddenly indeed".

On my training route round Beaconsfield we do one minor road which has just about every kind of blind junction on bends you can imagine.

There's a junction to the left on a right bend - so you can't see oncoming vehicles turning across you...

There's a junction just round a right bend - so you can't see emerging vehicles or oncoming vehicles turning across you...

There's a junction on the right on a left bend - so actually view are pretty good all round...

There's a crossroads on a left bend - now, you can't really see any direction!

Yet the common factor is that nearly everyone rides these stretches of road as corners - they set their speed for the sharpness of the bend, not what they might have to do just round it. And that includes a surprising number of riders with advanced qualifications. And I won't even mention the quarry entrance, the memorial garden, the golf course, the woodland parking... or the private drives!

"Where there's one, there's another"

Particularly at harvest time.

I hesitate to say that 'tractors hunt in packs'

Exactly.

[Wossname]

i must admit, Horse's "jump" story was in my mind when I was rewinding my trailer moment above ^^. I can't think why he didn't use his horn.

Well, I can, actually.

[Wossname]

An instructor I spent some time with in Devon had an expression he used at junctions: "one comes out, another comes out"; and "one goes in, another comes out". i.e. the second driver assumes that the first one's move means it's all clear for him too.

[Horse]

i must admit, Horse's "jump" story was in my mind when I was rewinding my trailer moment above ^^. I can't think why he didn't use his horn.

Well, I can, actually.

As I mentioned earlier, I have just a few memories. Of the second ("it's moving"), that continued with "Can I brake? No. Accelerate? No. Swerve? No. OK, Jump!"

Amazingly, perhaps disappointingly, a firm horning did not feature in that moment.

[The Spin Doctor]

One in one out (2).jpg (128 KiB) Viewed 1191 times

[Horse]

An instructor I spent some time with in Devon

Wait e, let me guess ...

[Wossname]

No, sorry....not him, tho I know the name! It was more than 20 years ago, an ex-police rider. He had some other phrases in my earpiece that have always stayed with me - "lift yer eyes!" being one of the most useful ones - still is!

[The Spin Doctor]

No, sorry....not him, tho I know the name! It was more than 20 years ago, an ex-police rider. He had some other phrases in my earpiece that have always stayed with me - "lift yer eyes!" being one of the most useful ones - still is!

Personally, I always found that to be another of the useless bits of information that litters the 'advanced techniques' canon.

WHAT are you looking at?

Simply gazing into the far distance isn't any use.

WHERE are you searching?

We need to move our viewpoint back and forth, as well as laterally, because fine detail points only resolve themselves as we get closer up, and our lines-of-sight to the sides change dramatically.

WHY are you looking?

The earlier we detect and assess a hazard the better, because that gives us longer to respond to it. But we don't achieve that by simply 'lifting our eyes'. And that's another topic I've written about on my FB page recently. https://business.facebook.com/SurvivalS ... 1777152715

[The Spin Doctor]

From my article:

------------------------
Chloe Robbins and Peter Chapman of the University of Nottingham investigated whether novice drivers and experienced drivers have different search patterns. And here's the REALLY interesting thing.

No reliable differences were found in:

:: fixation durations (ie, how long we look at specific parts of the visual field whilst we process that information)

:: vertical spread of search (ie, how we look back and forth along the road)

:: number of fixations (ie, the number of points in the visual field that grab our attention)

What the authors DID find was that:

"Novice drivers have a narrower spread of horizontal search compared to experienced drivers".

In other words, less experienced drivers don't scan left and right of their path as effectively as more experienced drivers.

Now, think about it. Where do most of the really nasty SURPRISES! come from?

Is it a long way ahead?

Nope, not very often. It's far more likely that we'll be caught out by something that we COULD NOT SEE popping out from a blind area.

What's the most common bike crash?

Robbins and Chapman make a very important point:

"These findings have important primary implications for the development of novice training interventions, with novice drivers needing to develop a broader horizontal spread of visual search, but not to necessarily learn to fixate further down the road."

[Horse]

Nakayama (sp?) was interesting on this, comparing the view riders and car drivers took of the road ahead (IIRC the same people ie drivers who rode, or vice versa).

Car drivers looked further ahead, riders spent more time looking down and closer.

He suggested that difference might be due to two things:
- the lower driving position means that the view ofthe road is compressed Vs the higher bike seating position
- the riding position tended to leant forward, so 'encouraging the look downwards

Stephen Prower suggested a third:
Riders are very aware of the effects poor surfaces can have and training which emphasises that.

I think there's a full pdf on the web.

[Horse]

Motorcyclists' visual scanning pattern in comparison with automobile drivers'
Yasuhisa Nagayama, Takanobu Morita, Toshiaki Miura, Junichi Watanabem, Nobuo Murakami
SAE Transactions, 934-945, 1979
Motorcyclists' visual behavior was examined and compared with that of drivers' by an eyemarker method. The background of this research is as follows. From the accident statistics of Osaka prefecture, characteristics of motorcycle accidents and those of ordinary passenger cars were analysed and compared and it was revealed that collisions on turning right (in the United States, collisions on turning left) are most remarkable. In this case, collisions between motorcycles running straight ahead and automobiles turning right are most typical. The automobile drivers expected that the motorcyclists would give way. But, almost without braking, the motorcycles crashed into the automobiles turning right. Here, one of the problems is motorcyclists unawareness of existence of automobiles turning right. We focused upon this. Three males participated as subjects in these experiments with an eye-marker. Independent variables were type of vehicel arid speed. The results are as follows. (1) The proportion of the road surface which was recorded on film through an eye-marker is much larger in riding motorcycles than in driving an automobile. Motorcyclists 1 head is tilted forward. It follows that they are apt to be looking at the closer road surface more frequently. (2) From the result of distribution of fixation points, it is suggested that motorcyclists are mainly acquiring information from the closer road surface, whereas, automobile drivers are mainly acquiring information from distant foreground. (3) In riding motorcycles, the vertical variance of visual field and fixation points is larger. This suggests that motorcyclists are trying to acquire information from both the closer road surface and the distant foreground. (4) Mean fixation duration of motorcyclists is shorter than that of automobile drivers. This suggests that they are acquiring and identifying information relatively superficially. These findings would throw light on motorcyclists' failure to detect vehicles turning right, oncoming vehicles, crossing vehicles and pedestrians. We stress that education for road users should involve these findings and that more appropriate road conditions for stable riding should be realized.

SP copied the paper to several of the usual subjects.

[The Spin Doctor]

Nakayama (sp?) was interesting on this, comparing the view riders and car drivers took of the road ahead (IIRC the same people ie drivers who rode, or vice versa).

Car drivers looked further ahead, riders spent more time looking down and closer.

He suggested that difference might be due to two things:
- the lower driving position means that the view ofthe road is compressed Vs the higher bike seating position
- the riding position tended to leant forward, so 'encouraging the look downwards

Stephen Prower suggested a third:
Riders are very aware of the effects poor surfaces can have and training which emphasises that.

I think there's a full pdf on the web.

There was a Swedish paper that confirmed that riders spend 1/3rd more time looking at the road surface. Mind you, that's probably all changed now, with all the speed bumps and potholes around. Driving a London street is an exercise in navigating around them. Between my partner and I, we've had to replace no less than FOUR car tyres with damage in five years including one tyre taken clean off the rim by a huge hole.