For a long time, ever since I first became interested in motorcycling, I've been told that motorcycles are invisible. Having grown up around bikes, friends and family's, I never really understood that. The fact is bikes are small and fit very well into blind spots. Why do I point out the obvious? No matter how often it gets repeated, it can always be said again: drivers need to look for bikers.
You know I wouldn't have this on my mind for no good reason, so here comes one more commute write up.
Friday's ride in to work was the usual, mostly harmless with one tailgater as I stayed pretty close to the speed of traffic. But it was the ride home that got interesting for a moment. Part of my evening commute is a stretch of interstate with a long, convoluted entrance ramp with multiple entrances/exits in the same access road. As I rode down the roadway, I watched a man in a sedan in the lane to my right, which was both an entrance and an exit only a few blocks down. He wasn't signaling and stayed in the lane so I began to pull past him. When I was even with his door, he started into my lane, still not signaling. Fortunately, I was watching for such an action and had my finger on the horn. When I pressed the noise making button, he jumped in his seat and pulled back into his lane.
That was an instance of driver inattention, not due to any major error, merely because he didn't expect a motorcycle right next to him. Even checking your mirrors is no substitute for looking. Also, as a motorcyclist it was my task to SEE everything that was going on around me. Had I really been being careful, I would never had pulled into his blind spot, no matter that it seemed like he was going to exit.
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