Ex, I know you were scared out of your mind, and you are justifiably angry, but please calm down. Carrying a gun to shoot at oblivious drivers is not the solution. Yes, you were right and she was wrong, but let’s not go overboard.
Sheesss Tank.
Take it off 11. Yeah you’re pissed. You’re also acting nuts.
I used to ride, not so much anymore. I do own guns. This is just ammo for anti-gun folks. I don’t blame them.
There’s no problem with venting. That’s what this place is for.
But. You’re still making steam.
In any case. Did you drop the bike? You said you ‘muscled it upright’. But it doesn’t sound like you completely dropped it. Close though. Shit happens. You should be glad you’re a good rider.
If you ride and drive like everyone else has their head up their ass, you can usually come out un-scathed. Works for me.
No, and I’m not limp.
Tell me more about the lead pipe, please. Is it a greased lead pipe? :dubious:
Is that a legal action (like shooting a home intruder might be in some jurisdictions) in Maryland Heights, MO?
Just curious.
Hey this is the pit, so I can say what I really think. Right then!
Daily motorcycle commuter here.
Cagers being frickin’ idiots is just the status quo. 80% of cagers are oblivious to your existance. Another 19% see you and are dilibratly out to do you harm. That leaves about 1% that will actually notice you and act to avoid killing you.
So, cagers are idiots. You will never be able to change the behavior of the next one who crosses your path before they make an attempt to kill you. Traffic is a zoo. You can either watch it from one of the cages, or accept it, get over it, and think about what could YOU have done differently this time, and apply those lessons in the future… <mounts high horse>
Cars don’t swoop in from out of the blue. They swoop in from your blind spot, or from the mirror which you weren’t checking. They generally don’t get to your blind spots without passing either through your mirror or you passing them first. And there is no way in hell you should ever be decelerating toward an intersection without being mindful of your mirrors.
Unless you opted for super high milage touring tires, (and even then maybe) you should have stickier rubber than 99% of the cars on the road. If you and your trusty steed can’t outbrake suzy homemaker in her michilin shod cavalier, get thee to an MSF course.
Alright, it’s a free country, you can go any damned speed you want. That isn’t the best way to stay alive, however. If you are going slower than traffic, then all the threats are on your 6 where they are hard to see. I slow gently, and anticipate lights when I am driving a cage. On the bikes: No way! Asshats like this lady will pull exactly the stupid shit she did, or just tailgate you. The brain dead will just plow over you “I never saw him”. Also, braking HARD on a regular basis is practice for braking HARD when it will save your ass.
Static friction is higher than dynamic friction, so a still turning tire stopes faster than a locked tire. A locked tire going sideways (on pavement, dirt is different) doesn’t have any more friction than a tire going forward. And the bike doesn’t go sideways unless the rear tire is locked. The shortest stops are made staying staight up, lots of front brake, minimal rear brake (too little or none is better than too much) and almost, but not quite locking the front tire. Which takes either ABS or practice. Which you can choose to do, or choose to keep blaming people who’s behaviour you can’t change.
And suppose you didn’t get stopped: By turning sideways, you’d take the impact on your leg, or slide underneath. By staying straight, you’d have soaked up some of the impact with your forks, probably bent them, and gone over your bars and then the rear of the car. Actually, having known two people (both drunk, both on Harleys…see a pattern there?) who did this, what you most likely would have done is shatter one knee on her bumper, and broken your pelvis into about 4 pieces.
This was an option wether he had slowed or not. You had enough time to lock the wheels and turn the bike sideways, you had enough time to swerve either between the two lanes, or to the left of stupid bitch, depending on how far to the left she was. Even on a beemer. (assuming no hack!) Once you were sideways this was no longer an option…if you had unlocked the wheels to swerve, a highside would have nearly certainly occured. If you’d have been braking straight and level, you might have bailed to the swerve option at some point.
An MSF course (non HD affiliated versions) will teach you stuff that will help keep you alive. Really. After you take one it is STUPID EASY to spot riders who haven’t.
After that I highly recommend David Hough’s book “Proficient Motorcycling”. Every time somebody tells me you can’t learn to ride from a book, I ask “How come I made all those curves without crossing the center line, and you missed every damned left, and we were both going exactly the same speed?”
But I’m pissin in the wind. You’ll tell me I’m full of shit, and I wasn’t there, so fuck off. Reg Pridemore himself doesn’t have squat to teach you about riding.
Learning to moving shoot idiots from a moving motorcycle will probably take a lot more practice than learning better riding skills, so it can’t be that your too lazy to try. Only explaination is the deep denial that you might have anything left to learn.
As a motorcyclist who’s been there too, I think you really need to cool it ExTank. I know how infuriating it can be to share the road with reckless and irresponsible people and I understand how you feel. Having said that, riding always involves risks and you should seriously consider giving it up. No way is what you are proposing self-defense.
FWIW, you never have to lock the wheels riding a motorcycle.
Similar thing happened to a friend of mine many years ago in San Diego. He was exiting the freeway into downtown (4th St. maybe) when someone in the lane to his immediate right pulls out of slow traffic about 4 inches ahead of him, without signaling. His experience was similar to ExTank’s - skidding tires, puckered sphincter muscle, etc. Only, after they had both gotten stopped at the light, my friend got off his bike, walked up and tapped on the driver’s window. When the guy rolled his window down, my friend says he reached inside, snapped off the turn lever and waves it in the guys face while shouting “Motherfucker! You don’t NEED this!” Then got back on his bike, went to a bar, and shook for about the next 30 minutes.
Moral: the average driver is generally well below that mark.
Then don’t take the risks of riding a motorcycle.
From your description, she was certainly at fault, certainly careless, certainly dangerous. If you choose to ride a motorcycle, you are accepting the risk posed by that type of driver.
That’s almost a daily occurrence. In a motorcycle you have to constantly expect the worse from the other drivers and have a plan accordingly. Seriously, when you commute every day that is bound to happen sometime. If you see a spot in traffic ahead, ASSUME the driver in the adjacent lane is going to jump places without signalling and take appropriate action - slow down, cover your brakes, signal with the horn, etc. I’m sure your friend was not at fault but what good is that when you’re laying there seriously injured or dead?
ExTank
I have never driven a motorcycle (but I wanted to when I was younger). However, my father used to drive one (an Indian Pony to be precise) way back when. (long before I was born). He had an accident in which he was driven off the road. He and a car driver were taking a highway turn-off and the shithead driver didn’t notice him. Luckily my father was okay but the motorcycle’s crankcase was deformed enough so that it leaked oil. My father had to buy oil at just about every other gas station so he could make his way back home.
I’m sure you’ve heard that accidents between cars and motorcycles occur (among other reasons) because automobile drivers underestimate the size of a motorcycle. In my father’s incident and yours (and probably a great many others) I’d say it is a matter of the “cager” not really giving a damn about the motorcycle or its rider.
I can understand your anger because I remember my father telling his story (liberally peppered with expletives) even decades after it happened and I could tell he was not very happy about the whole thing. And the driver who ran my father off the road? He just kept on going. Maybe he never even saw my father *or *maybe he underestimated the size of the motorcycle he was passing or (most likely) the driver was just an incredible asshole.
As for your view about law enforcement officers? Well, since I recently fired off an extremely uncomplimentary posting concerning police in another thread I won’t carry it to another. Let’s say I understand your frustration with the law.
I know a person’s got to be pretty ignorant and unobservant to not notice a hand signal, but…why didn’t you use the turn signals?
I’ve never ridden a motorbike, but I have biked and walked a lot, I spent 8 months busing, biking and hiking it before I got my truck and I was VERY careful to be really observant of anyone around me who even looked like they weren’t paying attention.
NOT that this excuses her behaviour, but right or wrong you’re just as dead, or injured if you don’t pay close enough attention when you’re that vulnerable.
Okay, how about this…er, dipshit; you just validated the fear of every gun control advocate who will now listen to the hystronics of Dianne Feinstein and Charles Schumer, accepting verbatim the claim that allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons will result in a Heat-style gunfight at ever fenderbender. Furthermore, in described a policy of premeditated murder, fuckwit, you lay the groundwork for a charge of deliberation and intentional confrontation should you ever be so unfortunate as to have to engage in the use of deadly force in the legitimate defense of your life.
And unless you are going to drive around with your pistola permanently affixed to one hand, there is no way you are going to draw and fire a weapon in time to save yourself or prevent incompetence from resulting in a collision; any claim, therefore, to utilize the weapon comes strictly from vengence and cannot be considered defensive, you excrecatory imbecile.
As for the officer, his entire evidence of the incident comes from one fuming biker and one incoherent babbling bimbo; all hearsay, no physical evidence, witnesses, or damage. It is your word against hers, and if you were so full of flaming invective then as you are now, it is no wonder that he opted to focus on the most comforting sight in view. Were he to issue a citation it would almost certainly be thrown out for lack of corroboration at the slightest challenge. Er, anus-tickler.
Shitty drivers are a part of normal life; unfortunately, their threat is much greater to motorcyclists (of which I can count myself a member, if not in daily commute) than “cagers”. One cannot, as much as it would feed one’s sense of justice, go about shooting them at the head even in the face of legitimate provocation. Threatening to do so, on a public forum, is downright idiotic and irresponsible, dick-midget. Every motorcyclist has these stories; they’re all infuriating, but most of us manage to deal with it sans death threats (at least, not ones in a semi-permanent format, readable by any passing fur-brow.)
Put the bike away, have a beer, glass of wine, or tumbler of your favorite whiskey, and let it hang.
Or, go shove a red-hot poker up your ass until it glows through your bellybutton, jizz-inhaler. Whatever floats your sadistic homoerotic fantasies.
Stranger
Band name!
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
How does one bat one’s tits?
Oh yes, and death threats are not a good way to retain the moral high ground against cranky motorists. I had plenty of abuse leveled at me in a recent bicyclist thread, though of course I was accused of “projected aggression”. Uh huh. This is not much different.
The two-wheelers need a new PR guy I think.
I agree with Kevbo, except for couple things:
I resent this, not all Harley owners are drunken outlaws.
Kevbo, please explain what’s wrong with “HD affiliated versions” of an MRC? Am I missing anything that will help keep me alive because I attended an ABATE rider course which several H-D dealership’s sponsored?
Seriously, I have two Harley’s, my brother rides a (fast) V-65, his boss rides a (very fast) RR-1000. Different strokes, different folks. We all take the same risks, why discriminate?
Keeping the shiny-side up
Haz
Point conceded.
ExTank, I don’t drive a motorbike (but I do give motorbikes lots of room and respect, in spite of the hot-doggers out there giving you all a bad name), but I do drive a small car, and your frustration with other drivers is not limited to cyclists. I get cut off in traffic all the time too. I realize that my getting cut off is not the same as your getting cut off, as in I’m not as likely to die from it, but I get your frustration - people drive like complete dicks, and there’s NOT A DAMNED THING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT. Take a deep breath, be glad that you have your family and your health, and let it go.
Now, that’s a horrible accident.
If a mod wanted to clean up that incredible botch I made of my coding, I would give them a big, wet smooch.
Are you as dumb as you sound? The road I was on is heavily trafficked in the P.M., seven days a week. There’s constantly cars, trucks and bikes all around; ahead, behind, left, and right. I was in a dedicated left-turn lane, there were cars all around; ahead, behind, left, right, and oncoming in the lane directly to my left.
Every fucking mirror I look in, every direction I turn my head, there are vehicles; one of them swerving in front of me, with no signal, and jamming on their brakes is not a lack of attention on my part to the traffic around me, fucktard, it’s an asswipe driver who doesn’t give a shit about anyone else.
Get thee to a brain transplant hospital. Machine and equipment are only as good as perception time, reaction time, and available stopping distance, which, if you’d actually been to an MSF course, you would know. One of the three factors of that equation was taken from me, and the good graces of the other two barely saved my ass.
I drive as traffic and road conditions allow, no faster, no slower. I also don’t “practice” in traffic, but in a deserted section of a local mini-mall’s parking lot. I was in a dedicated left-turn lane approaching two cars already stopped at the red light; the rest of the intersection had greens, so traffic was still flowing around me, left and right.
I was in the dedicated left-turn lane, stopping at a reasonable rate of deceleration for road and traffic conditions; ass-hat drivers do not have the right to take that away from other drivers, two, four, or sixteen wheeled.
Well, there wasn’t a fuckload of time to think about it; it happened, but in any case, she had no right to put me in that position in the first place; no one has. While accidents do happen, normal, conscientious people feel bad about them and at least apologize; she didn’t. She acted as if she had every right to put my health and well-being in jeopardy, and I’m quite frankly sick of your apologist attitude that I somehow have the onus to avoid and otherwise get out of the way of other people on the road just because they outweigh me.
The piece of pavement I occupy is mine, and a reasonably safe distance around it. No one has the right through neglect, inattention, or outright asshole behavior to take it from me, or otherwise endanger me.
Well, I don’t drink and ride, I wasn’t under the influence, and turning sideways wasn’t exactly the plan, but it did have one beneficial effect, even if I didn’t realize it at the moment: since BDH stopped, I now had another lane to swerve to.
Again, the swerve wasn’t planned; it happened. I didn’t have a hundred feet, I didn’t have fifty. I was lucky if I had 20, and much less than a second to decide. Even if I’d high-sided, odds were I’d end up in an empty lane since BDH stopped, too.
Been there. done that, and I too can highly recommend it. What made you think I hadn’t?
You’re right 2 out of 3; you’re full of shit, you weren’t there. I never said I was the ultimate Evel Knevel bad-ass motorcycle rider; I never even implied it, so don’t fucking put words in my mouths asswipe.
You’re a fucking apologist douchebag who wants to try to flagellate whatever scrap of self-esteem you have by attempting to post-construct an incident you weren’t even present for, and undercut another rider.
So, can I have my rant and vent in peace now, you pedantic piss-ant? Or do you feel the need to hold-forth some more to try to convince the rest of the Straight Dope that you are the illegitimate love-child of Evel Knevel and Paris Hilton?
I’m happy to let a jury decide. Self-defense typically requires at least two components: a life-threatening behavior on the part of the “assailant,” and a reasonable fear of life and limb on the part of the “victim.”