February 14, 2006

• I ride on the back of a big scooter a lot - and there have been many times my heart as been up in my throat simply from doors being flung open, cars changing lanes without looking or indicating, or trying to beat you into small spaces. Taxi drivers (at least in Tokyo) are the worst offenders - I'm sure some of them even try to "own" you. When you ride you have to be twice as aware as a car driver.
• Although that comment reminds me of the time I was on a bicycle and a truck ran into me. The truck drivers first words to the police were "She rammed into me!"
• Good thing s/he had hir leathers on.
• That idiot e-braked! <-- he pulled the parking brake deliberately spin the car, probably thinking he would stop more quickly than simply threshold braking. Too bad he didn't check the adjacent lane first. Dunno how any cop could take him at his word, seeing as how he's facing backwards and she hit the driver's side front, but they probably would. Good for her for having a camera. (As an honest fellow, I really hate how the justice systems rewards liars...) (E-braking is fun and useful for rotating a car in rally and autocross, but don't try it in, like, traffic...)
• I have no idea how that could have happened, clear day, straight dry road, steady traffic conditions. The driver guy must have just woken up or something. It was nice to see how fast a cloud of well meaning by-drivers descended on her, with their ever more insistent requirement that she 'Lay the fuck down!' I see a time in the not too distant future when motor vehicles will be fitted with a 'black box' data recorder possibly including video footage. Where it will be difficult to get insurance without one, where they may become mandatory; that video makes me a little less worried by the prospect.
• They're already in most cars since 1996. They record airbag condition, seat belt use, speed, brakes, things like that. There's a list of them around, but I don't feel like googling it up.
• That's kind of scary for me to see, since I do 90% of my commuting on a small motorcycle. Most MC accidents are avoidable if the rider follows safe riding practices. (For example, you throw the whole concept of right-of-way right out the window when trying to anticipate other drivers. It doesn't matter that you had the right-of-way and the other driver is at fault when you're the one laying on the pavement.) This one, however... she was keeping a safe following distance, and staying out of blind spots, and she'd already started rolling off the gas well before that car spun out. There was really no time for her to pick an escape route either; she tried to aim for that gap on the right but it closed up on her. That's the perfect argument for good gear, though - imagine if that had been some "I don't like helmets" rider who was in jeans, a t-shirt, and tennis shoes. Instead of what seem to be fairly minor injuries (from reading the thread), that easily could have been a fatality.
• Is nobody going to comment on the rack of the first woman to help? I'm disappointed in you people.
• I have no idea how that could have happened, clear day, straight dry road, steady traffic conditions. Dunno if you read my post before typing this, but again, I really think the driver pulled his emergency brake to intentionally spin the car -- the rear brake lockup is a dead give-away. The driver was probably thinking, "sweet I just pulled off a l33t move to avoid a.. *BAM* aw, dammit!!" (Or maybe the fool thought that pulling the "emergency" brake would help him stop *even faster* than hitting the brake pedal alone -- after all, squealing rear tires must be good, and this is certainly an "emergency", right??) So, yeah, "she hit him", as he was in fact (mostly) stopped, but it was unavoidable. He should have been paying better attention to avoid the evasive maneuver, and she *might* have been more aware as well, as in "this guy next to me doesn't see that he's approaching stopped traffic; he's liable to do something stupid..." Hindsight, 20/20, still his fault. Thinking about this a bit further, though, I dunno that it would have mattered much had he braked and swerved more conventionally. I mean, the e-brake spin was dramatic and left the biker nowhere to go, but even if he'd kept the car fairly straight and simply swerved/stopped in the bike's lane, I dunno that she could have stopped. Maybe she could have squeaked to the right of him, I dunno; she *almost* made it. Right on WRT safety gear. I want a bike bad, but I'd likely be dead within a year. The temptation to jump for a quick trip, unprotected, is just too great.
• Also, nice rack!
• Man, I could totally see down that gal's top! Best Valentine's Day ever! (Who was the driver of the car?)
• Is nobody going to comment on the rack of the first woman to help? I'm disappointed in you people. I was trying to take the high road! Mmmmmm boobies.
• Mhh, odd. I get the audio on the file OK. I was surprised at her complete lack of expletives... I'd be swearing like a raging pirate. Of course, the kind of pain she must have been in would surely made her difficult to breathe, let alone swear. Mea culpa. I dowloaded the vid only after the promise of boobies was mentioned. Bad me.
• Yeah, it is bad to be in her position. The thing that puts the biggest feeling of fear into me is slowing down on the highway due to traffic and hearing the loud screeching of brakes from behind.
• I was once in such a situation. Heavy traffic stopping in an overpass, then hearing a distant [i]bam bam bam [/i]and looking back on the mirror to see the wave-like motion of cars bumped towards ours. We climbed out from it and got up the curb. Luckily, the 'wave' lost its' impact and our car just got bumped against the one in front, no harm done. But behind, at least a couple cars had been turned around. The car right behind us lost its' rear bumper.
• Wait, some dude got hit by a car in that video?
• Could be the black car experienced some kind of brake failure the just engaged the right hand side when the driver pressed on the brake. It looks like both front and rear on the passenger side locked up at the same instant but not the driver's side rear. With a FWD car you shouldn't see only one rear side lock up if you were to pull the ebrake. The chick in the black top sounded like she had First Aid training. At least she was doing all the things they told us to do.
• The chick in the black top sounded like she had First Aid training. At least she was doing all the things they told us to do. Reading further in the thread I see that she is an RN.
• Who was the driver of the car? From the thread: "no no...it was the tall hispanic guy to my right that hit me. The one that said - 'I swerve and swerve and almost hit another car...'" As for the cause, if you watch the start, he isn't paying attention to what is going on in front of him, they all brake, and he has to brake hard when he finally sees it. His wheels lock up and he then tries to streer a skidding car, which rarely ends well. Someone somewhere else (in the linked thread?) mentioned that you see him getting out of his car talking on his cell phone. Which possibly explains why he didn't notice the cars in front of him stopping. (Although in fairness, perhaps he called someone after the accident to tell them about it, still lame though.)
• markr: As for the cause, if you watch the start, he isn't paying attention to what is going on in front of him, they all brake, and he has to brake hard when he finally sees it. I noticed that too which makes me wonder why the biker couldn't see the potential for a bad situation. Anytime I see brake lights ahead, I will start to give extra room to everyone and slow down myself. She didn't. Which led to her getting boffed. If she would have been paying complete attention to all lanes like a good biker should, she would have been slowed to a crawl before Chico did his GTA maneouver.
• She didn't. Actually... she did. And had she not, she might've made it around him.
• flaterik, extra room as in "slowing the fuck down", not just keep driving like a bat out of hell and swerving when it is obvious from the video that traffic is slowing to a crawl. Sorry I didn't make that clear. Maybe I'm more paranoid on my bike with no ABS and tires that seem to always skid. So I always look ahead pretty far and give myself more than a little extra braking room for anything that might happen in front of me.
• It looks like she had plenty of room before that car swerved. And you can hear the accelerator cut and slow toward braking before the civic swerves, at the instant of which she cuts completely, braking. Her reaction is on key for her lane until the civic shortens her lane dramatically. That's what I see in the video (I had to watch it a few more times after you mentioned that).
• Three lanes of traffic to her right were slowed to a crawl. Yet she was passing them at a good clip even though it was painfully obvious that her lane was going to be stopping very soon. She was heading toward a collision one way or another. I don't like to see a fellow biker go down but if she was paying attention to everything going on, she would have only had a funny story about some guy pulling a stupid move on the highway. It was a clear day and she had a perfect view of things happening half a mile in front of her! Live fast, die young.
• I don't know, JJ86: I used to do that all the time in my car. The traffic to the right is presumably taking an off-ramp and it's usually a fairly safe bet that no one is going to pull out in front of you from backed-up lanes like that because they're *all* trying to get off. That's what the 101, 280 and 80 in the Bay Area look like all the time. She reckons she was doing 40-50. I'd consider 40 to be a safe enough speed in a car, provided your full attention is on the cars around and in front of you. Hers may have been; his definitely wasn't. All I know is that if I ever get back on a motorbike, I'm getting one of those cameras.
• Maybe you do the same in your car, but there is a difference between cars and bikes. As has previously been pointed out, what would be a minor accident in a car, would in many cases result in a biker getting killed.
• Still, her reaction to the car was instantaneous, and I'm inclined to agree with tracicle and flaterik. Nyah!
• On the road of life, you would most definitely meet the car of death.
• A biker speaks: I felt the motorboike was going a bit fast at the beginning given the vehicles on the rh side were stopped ... she was creeping up on the civic, until she noticed the cars ahead of her and to the left were braking, then she came off the throttle. You actually see the civic moving ahead of her before it begins the rally manoevre ...
• mercurious - Thank you so much for posting this. It probably kept me out of a head-on collision last night. I must have watched that video 8 times while showing it to various people that day. And I read the cyclist's blog postings about how she wished she had tried to avoid the car to the left instead of the right because she probably wouldn't have gotten hit. For some reason, I thought a lot about what I would have done in the same situation, and I think it worked as mental training for last night. I was driving on 580 through Hayward, and a car two lanes over spun out in the rain, and did a 540 degree spin into my lane. After the first full-circle turn, it looked exactly like the video you posted, except coming from the opposite direction. I was almost exactly the same distance back as the motorcycle, but was in my civic on a wet road, so I couldn't slow down as fast. At this point, I was headed straight at the driver's side door, going about 30 miles an hour, and was maybe 3 or 4 car-lengths away. I instinctively wanted to change lanes to the left because the car was sliding towards me from the right, but I waited a split second longer and ended up deciding to go right. I moved over one lane (if I'd had time to think more, I'd have moved more than one lane, but it is automatic for me to move one lane at a time), and by the time my car passed the spinning car, we were exactly parallel. As soon as we had passed, my eyes were glued to the rearview mirror, and luckily there was nobody in front of me to hit. The car behind me in the lane I had moved into had to swerve to avoid the spinning car as it moved just past 540 degrees, but he had room to maneuver and the driver of the spinning car was able to correct the spin somewhat, so they didn't hit. The car that spun ended up stopping facing the wrong direction in the lane I had originally been in, but everyone was able to stop in time to avoid hitting him. So, in reasonably heavy traffic, a car made one-and-a-half turns across 3 lanes, and there was no accident. It was amazing. And I partially credit the post, and my reading of it natch, to the current intactness of me and my car. So thanks again, muchos bananas )))))))
• Yai! Good for you, yentruoc!
• Glad you're okay (and those other people too, but they don't matter as much)!
• Monkeyfilter: those other people... they don't matter as much
• Wow, yentruoc, so glad to hear that you made it through unscathed!
• Wow - Monkeyfilter IS educational! Now I can tell my boss I'm doing research! Glad everything turned out OK, yent.
• Cheatin' death, yentruoc = ☽☽☽
• Aw, thanks guys :)
• Yikes! yentruoc, glad you came through that unscathed!