For those of us who already understand that ‘Shiny Side UP’ is the first rule, this is still a relevant topic of conversation.

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First, never ride after consuming alcohol. In 2008, of those dead Minnesota motorcyclists who were tested for blood-alcohol content after dying in a crash, 47% tested positive for alcohol. No, it wasn’t “just one beer,” 42% tested over 0.08.

Second, never ride above your skills. In 2008, only 40% of the injuries and 45% of the deaths were in collisions with other vehicles. Over half of the wrecks were single vehicle incidents; running off the road, hitting some non-moving object, striking a deer, etc. Please, do not try to tell me that they were all driven into the ditch by cars.

Obviously there is some overlap between the two statistics, but I figure that about three quarters of all our “accidents” were not accidental, we did it to ourselves.

One last statistic. In 2008, 38 of the total 72 Minnesota motorcyclist fatalities occurred in a location where the city or township had a population of less than 1,000. That is, over half of the deaths happened in an area where it is pretty unlikely that other traffic was a contributing factor.

I’ll say it again, we are killing ourselves.

Now you can resume discussion about eye contact.

Ref.: http://www.dps.state.mn.us/ots/crashdata/2008CFacts/CF08-4-Motorcycle.pdf

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if you’re going slow enough that you have time for eyegazing, you should be fine no matter what they do. unless you’re on a 600 pound bike with a single-piston front brake system (not to name any names)

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However, NOISE DOES HELP! But I think ANY motorcycle is loud enough that its reasonable and that loud pipes aren’t necessary. I live in Ireland and filtering is legal here, and sometimes when I’m slowly passing a car in their blind spot and I’m not sure they know I’m there I give a blip on the throttle to alert them to my presence.
My bike, a Ducati Multistrada does have a full Termi exhaust system (put on by prev owner) and while I do love the sound I hate the attention it gets me when I’m trying to make progress on the road and frankly it probably annoys other people more than my already loud bike (dry clutch) needs to.

I used to wear hi-viz gear but I started mentally putting the burden on other drivers to see me and I’d ride somewhat unsafely as a result. Now I don’t wear that stupid flapping vest but I assume that all drivers will turn in front of me, will turn into my lane from a parking space, and that i’m invisible and I think im a bit safer as a result.

In Europe at least, EVERYONE even pedestrians wear HV gear so I think sometimes drivers get a case of “Hi viz blindness”.

there are other tricks too like weaving in your lane because bikes are so narrow ppl don’t see them so “widening” one’s lane presence can help.

lastly, I speed chronically and frankly I just don’t care about limits anymore, but if I’m doing 60mph in town, i’ll generally slow to 40 as I pass a green light if a car is in the opposing lane waiting to turn, and cover the brake and such.

Its sad that none of this stuff was taught to me in my bike course in Canada. When I go back there, I definitely plan to become a motorcycle instructor as for whatevr reason, most instructors dont bother to pass down their knowledge.

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The acronym is SIPDE and represents a good mental discipline to follow whilst riding in the real world. I find that actively thinking this way makes it easier to predict more than two seconds in advance of what is going to happen to me. I learned this in my MSF training in 1988. Old stuff like that is no longer in anyone’s curriculum, probably because it’s old stuff. Too bad.

One other thought: You’ll do better in the bike if you’re emotionally centered and physically alert. I suppose it would be politically incorrect to say any more about that one.

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