Another Crash – follow up…

Thanks for the comments on the previous post… my friend is OK but has had a few flashbacks over the last couple of days. She was involved in nasty accident when riding pillion many years ago, and it brought it all back.

I was in two minds as to whether to post it up, bearing in mind I’m speculating somewhat about the causes of the accident.

But having been to the site and seen the evidence, heard what she had to say (which is essentially what she told the police who attended the scene), and drawn my own conclusions I don’t think anything I’ve said is unfair to the riders concerned.

Target fixation is a real problem, and a difficult one to deal with, along with the frozen steering and ineffectual braking.

The only real solution is to know how to get out of trouble when you find yourself in it, and to mentally prepare and rehearse how you will deploy your solution in an emergency, so you go into what some sportsmen call a “shot routine” when the situation develops for real.

There’s a fairly amazing coincidence here as the last post but one of mine challenged the view held by a UK expert that the emphasis on training should be on “collision avoidance” rather than “collision evasion” strategies.

The idea of “zero risk” by avoiding getting into situations that require a rapid escape might seem a wonderful idea; in practice no matter how good your avoidance tactics are, the reality is that the slightest error can lead to a very real and very immediate emergency you need to get out of – and if you don’t have evasion techniques off pat, you’ll end up looking at the front of a car from far too close, just as this rider did.

Collision avoidance techniques are only half of what you need on the street.

Sadly, though I am an eternal optimist and hope to be proved wrong, I expect Ken is right about lessons to be learned. Most of us are good about rationalising a bad decision after the event, and motorcyclists are no better and no worse at it than anyone else.