Lessons in the Conservation of Momentum

So, here is the physics lesson of the week: objects in motion tend to stay in motion , unless acted upon by an outside force.

I was on my way to work early Thursday morning and the following story happened.

There is an intersection less than a mile from my front door that I take across a very busy main road which has a gas station on either side of the intersection. As I cross the main road, I observe a Honda Accord pulling up to the exit of the gas station on the far side of the road, far side but also on the right hand side from my direction of travel. So, as is proper when you see a vehicle coming up to a place where it could potentially jump out and bite you, I rolled off the throttle a little. Then I realized that the speed of the car was not slowing enough to allow it to come to a stop before exiting the parking lot.

I hit the brakes.

The car continued into the roadway, making a left turn directly across my lane.

I really hit the brakes.

Then I really hit the car.

The sequence of events directly following the impact is a little faster. I see the surprise on the face of the car's driver. Then feel the impact of my front tire on the car's rear door. This is followed by the sense of being flipped over the trunk of the car and falling to the road on my right shoulder and back.

Thankfully, I can report that my gear (full face helmet, mesh jacket, over-pants, gloves, and boots) all performed the job of keeping me intact admirably. I felt to be in remarkably good shape for having just hit a car. A feeling that an ambulance ride to the ER confirmed after several x-rays, just to be certain. That is the first lesson from this encounter: wear your gear. Even if you don't think you'll need it. Wear it.

The second lesson is one of visibility. Many of you may already know that, in addition to my other protective apparel, I wear Icon's military spec high-visibility orange, reflective vest. Even with that vest and the headlight on (not only a legal requirement, but also an automatic feature of most modern bikes) the second thing I heard the other driver say was, "Did you have your lights on? Because I didn't see you." This statement is precisely why I reduced speed when I saw the car. I didn't trust him to see me.

You may want to know what the first thing I heard him say was. To his credit, the first thing out of his mouth when he got out of the car was, "Are you ok?"

I hope this little lesson in physics is helpful to those who ride, and to those who share the road with us riders. Ride safe.

Just becuase it doesn't need to be registered...

Doesn't mean it shouldn't be ridden properly.

Yesterday, on my ride home from work, I saw a rider with a slightly different interpretation of traffic laws. A man on a tiny red scooter, I'm guessing under 50cc, wearing a bicycle helmet. I suppose I should be happy it was some kind of helmet, but that's not what bothered me about his grasp of proper conduct.

The story here: I was at a light waiting to turn left. When the light turned yellow, rather than rush through, I decided to wait for the next green arrow. As I decided all of this, I watched a little red scooter coming the opposite way down the street. Since he was a decent distance away from the light as it changed I assumed he would be stopping opposite me and I'd get a chance to see what the guy was riding. To my surprise, after the light turned red well before he got to the stop line, he continued on through the intersection, without even looking or slowing down. All of this as cars started turning from the other street.

I can understand the mistake of treating a scooter like a bicycle if you don't have to register it. So I get the bike helmet, but I can't advise it. I definitely can't advise completely disregarding traffic laws, which are there to keep all of us safe and that do apply to all forms of vehicular transit.

Dubious Legality

So as I was driving home from grabbing a sandwich from the Publix deli this evening, I was admiring the two Gixxers in the lane next to me. They had followed me out of the parking lot and looked to be pretty competent at low speeds and hadn't been doing anything stupid as they cruised to the light with me.

As I admired, one of the riders explained to the other that he needed to practice holding his license plate so that traffic cameras couldn't get a picture of it. Then they learned back a bit and flipped the plates down onto the wheel guard. Yes, the plates were on hinges.

Now, I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure there can be no good or legal reason for that particular mod.

The Importance of Paying Attention

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.

Today's story: Tuner cars and driver stereotypes

I've been riding all week, just been busy too. I've got a few little stories from previous days, but today was an interesting lesson in automotive people-watching.

Stereotypes certainly have a lot of bad applications, but on the road there are times when stereotypes about car owners can help you predict something ugly will happen, or at least help you focus on the cars that are more likely to cause trouble. They're usually only helpful if there's a very large set of people with a certain mentality who are drawn to a particular sort of car or have good reasons for owning one. For example, one warning that gets passed around on motorcycle forums is to beware of tuner cars, because they typically belong to young, aggressive drivers.

Well, today I come upon a white Honda Civic Si, one of the "breadvan" 2002-2005 models. It's got a loud exhaust, custom wheels, and it's being driven a bit on the aggressive side. One thing that I really chuckled at was that the owner had replaced the Civic badges with Odyssey emblems. I keep an eye on it, but figure that anyone who'd joke about his car that way may not feel too much like he has something to prove. That wasn't a particularly well loved Civic, and he wouldn't be the first to think it looks like a minivan with the center two doors removed.

He does drive a bit aggressively, but the real trouble starts when someone in a shiny new Nissan 350Z with sparkly blue paint pulls up behind him. As it turns out, this Civic / Odyssey has attracted a tuner car driver who evidently sees it as a challenge, passes the Civic and cuts it off. I stay back a little ways in the other lane, a couple car lengths behind the Civic. I don't see a real need to drop back too far, but I want to give myself a little distance in case the Nissan driver does anything crazy (and I definitely don't want to do anything that puts me alongside him).

Suddenly a different sort of stereotypical bad driver appears, and I didn't see him coming: A red Hyundai, its front fenders clearly painted with a rattle can, whips past me, does a "thread the needle" swerve between me and the Civic, and takes off at maybe 70 in a 45 zone.

The lessons you can draw from this about car stereotypes are a bit ambiguous. After all, the Hyundai is a perfect example of another sort of stereotypical bad driver's car, a cheap car with visible body damage. The perfect sort of car to own if you were prone to wrecking cars and were trying to keep the habbit from putting you in the poorhouse.

But the real lesson is to stay aware of all the cars in your area. The one you think may be the biggest threat often isn't.

5'10" and Invisible?

At the outset of today's ride, I filled the tank with 3.3 gallons at 218 miles. 66 miles per gallon, not bad for wringing out the engine on Sunday.


Anyway, I found out today that some people are willing to do pretty much anything to save a few seconds in their commute, even with very light traffic this morning. I was the first in line in a left turn lane to get onto I-85, with a few vehicles behind me. Directly behind me was a large SUV with a Xterra behind it. I watched the Xterra pull out of the turn lane and try to whip around the SUV behind me. She realized I was there as her front tire entered the turn lane right next to me and then she rolled down the window and motioned that she wanted in front of me. In my childish act of the day, I looked at her and then deliberately ignored her. The final act of, umm, interesting driving was for her to pull all the way into the middle of the intersection (on a red light) just to be sure she would get ahead of all two people in front of her.


After that bit of fun, the rest of the day was downright tame. Also, with the temperature on the return ride reaching a mere 76, I noticed my gear gets a little warm. It becomes rather uncomfortably warm when I'm not moving. The vents help a lot, but I think I will need a mesh jacket by the time the ambient temp reach the mid-80's.