05-27-2017, 01:26 PM
As a rider, I'm very leery of the social trend toward total risk elimination where it means total elimination of the activity. Example: American football and traumatic brain injury.
Motorcycling potentially falls into that category. It can't be made risk-free, therefore to eliminate the risk of motorcycling we must eliminate motorcycling.
I've also been leery of the autonomous car trend. When cars become interconnected robots, all doing a coordinated safety dance that eliminates traffic signals and traffic jams...is there a place for the lone motorcyclist riding outside the connected digital AI cloud?
One optimistic idea occurred to me: perhaps - just maybe - we could carry transponders that would alert all the autonomous robot cars around us to our speed and course. As AI, they would have to yield to us, as humans. Perhaps - just maybe - the robot cars would respect our right-of-way far more than the aggregate of humanity and we could have the best of all worlds: the reduction of risk and the freedom to keep riding.
Truth! Riding rural carries a different set of hazards as riding urban/suburban. Mail trucks, tractors, crops/vegetation on the roadway, animals (wild and domesticated), and so on. Just because a rural road "seems" deserted doesn't mean the guard can be let down.
Motorcycling potentially falls into that category. It can't be made risk-free, therefore to eliminate the risk of motorcycling we must eliminate motorcycling.
I've also been leery of the autonomous car trend. When cars become interconnected robots, all doing a coordinated safety dance that eliminates traffic signals and traffic jams...is there a place for the lone motorcyclist riding outside the connected digital AI cloud?
One optimistic idea occurred to me: perhaps - just maybe - we could carry transponders that would alert all the autonomous robot cars around us to our speed and course. As AI, they would have to yield to us, as humans. Perhaps - just maybe - the robot cars would respect our right-of-way far more than the aggregate of humanity and we could have the best of all worlds: the reduction of risk and the freedom to keep riding.
(05-27-2017, 05:01 AM)Nortoon_imp Wrote:(05-26-2017, 11:00 PM)Rocky_imp Wrote:(05-26-2017, 10:31 PM)CB4ME_imp Wrote: What if he pulls out right in front of you and you have a fraction of a second to react? I'm $20,000 out of pocket and still have $130,000 of unpaid medical bills because this happened to me.....on a near empty rural road. Fortunately my lawyer thinks the majority of the outstanding bills will be covered by insurance. A huge relief!
I now wear a high vis jacket and white helmet and all the other gear all the time. After reading this thread I am seriously considering a modulating headlight. It's a dangerous world out there.
Right on
I'm a big believer in freedom and the option to choose, but as I said in an earlier post, it's bright jackets and white helmets for me too for the past 15+ years.
I've had similar experiences on empty rural roads (but no crash) when farmers on tractors, sometimes pulling machinery, suddenly pull out on the road without looking - or maybe a lone motorcycle doesn't catch their peripheral vision.
They get so used to empty roads that they don't seem to think about oncoming traffic. I've had two pull out and their heads didn't turn to look at all.
Just one of the many lessons I've learned over the years.
So far, so good
When I first started riding a motorcycle my dad warned me about drivers on rural roads. "If they pull over to the right of the lane, they are probably going to turn left, because that's how they drive the tractor and hay wagon." I thought that rather silly advice.
A couple of weeks later I was just about to pass a car on a rural road that had pulled to the right, when I remembered his words. So I slowed down and stayed behind the car. Sure enough the driver turned left into his laneway without signaling. Thanks dad!
Truth! Riding rural carries a different set of hazards as riding urban/suburban. Mail trucks, tractors, crops/vegetation on the roadway, animals (wild and domesticated), and so on. Just because a rural road "seems" deserted doesn't mean the guard can be let down.