Keep Yourself Alive
Jun 03 '00
My first reaction when I saw this new category was "Thank You Jesus." But now that I have to write something about it I feel like the old man who's asked on his hundredth birthday what's his secret for a long life? Do anything long enough and it becomes so engrained it's hard to nail it down to a few soundbites. If you succeed you will also know some of the credit has to go to pure dumb luck.
In the last ten years I've rolled up somewhere around 200,000 miles of riding, most of it in the not-so-friendly confines of Phoenix, Arizona. Why am I still here? It's not an idle question. Friends who were much better riders than I am somehow got killed doing this. Even the best-trained riders I know, motorcycle cops, get taken down by the same idiotic car drivers who could have gotten me. And might yet. The one absolute truth I know is this: The moment you think you've got this down, the moment you rationalize why it will happen to someone else, you are writing your name on the bullet. After that it's only a question of time before it finds you.
I like to think putting a lot of thought into riding and safety has helped me. It's made me understand that wearing a helmet might help you survive a crash-might. (I always do.) But a helmet can't stop every hit from being fatal and even if your noggin comes through fine, other kinds of trauma can leave you just as dead. Since you won't know until the crash is over preventing it is a real good idea.
One of the key parts of that is not riding your motorcycle like you're driving a car. Everyone knows about the disadvantages of bikes compared to cars. You have to know the advantages you have and be able to use them instinctively. You can safely put your bike through spaces no car could go, you can maneuver into them quicker, you can accellerate into them faster. Except for overall braking distance your motorcycle has performance advantages over any car on the road. Formal training is a great start but you need experience. Get out and ride.
Don't do anything that does not improve your margin of safety, that's been helpful. The biggest help, I think, is that it encourages me to look at where I am and if someplace else might be better. When I started looking at riding this way I started seeing things I hadn't been consciously aware of before. True Fact: People drive even more idiotically around entrances to grocery stores and malls. I think it's because their heads are already in the produce section, but whatever the reason it's true. Construction zones also put the intelligence budget they've set aside for driving into deficit spending. Both are worse than high schools.
Don't react. Plan. Look ahead always. The sooner you identify a potential hazard the more time you'll have to make it a non-event. There is a saying in flying that the dead pilot is so because he ran out of airspeed, altitude and ideas all at the same time. It applies to motorcycling, too. Manage the time you are on the bike and don't waste a second of it.
At intersections look for cross-street traffic turning right into your direction of travel and oncoming traffic turning left across your lane. If they both go at the same time and aren't looking for you, you'll have no where to go. It's like the suicide squeeze in baseball and that name stuck in my head.
Know how hard you can turn and stop your bike, and what happens when you feel out the limits. Occasional practice of the MSF maneuvers will not hurt anything.
If you want to race, get on the track. Don't tell me it's too expensive. If you could afford eight large for a new 600 you can swing a set of real leathers and some safety wire.
Wear a helmet everywhere for the first two years you ride. Most of the riders killed are inexperienced and die in crashes they could have walked away from, or avoided if they had given themselves more time to learn.
Buy expensive protective gear. It might not offer more protection but the fit and comfort will be better, and it's a constant reminder of the investment you've made in yourself.
Always, always, be the toughest critic of your riding. Eliminate the word accident from your vocabulary, in all but the rarest of circumstances there was something the rider could have done to prevent the crash. He didn't see you. Great. Were you in a spot where you couldn't be seen? Did you do anything to raise your profile? Did you see him and still put yourself in a position for him to hit you? "He didn't see me" is a really lousy epitath. You have to take responsibility for your life, you can't trust a total stranger to be preoccupied with if you live or die.
Don't differentiate between city, rural, freeway or backroad riding. They each have unique challenges but none worse than the other. (It's close but I'd rather take my chances with a drunk driver than a deer.)
Accept luck when it comes your way but fear that your life may have depended on it.
Make the nearly-forgotten Queen song I used for the title of my blatherings the soundtrack for your life as a motorcyclist. And always enjoy the ride-we will not come this way again.
-Brian Igo
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