r/motorcycles • u/LowDirection4104 • 6h ago
Speed and control.
I don't know who needs to hear this, but I write this as a rider who understands that sometimes you just need to open up your street bike and let her stretch her legs a little. And what better time than a Monday evening, when the highways are mostly empty?
But just a PSA: when you're blasting by cars at triple-digit speeds, just be aware that those cars don't see you coming. Even if they're doing everything right checking their mirrors, checking their blind spots, being good citizens if you're passing them at 150 mph, you are effectively invisible until it's too late.
I was driving home last night, probably doing 65, in the middle lane, with a car just behind me in the left lane. Suddenly, like a bullet, a bike came through right between us. I don't know if he actually lane-split or if it was more of a tight pass, but whatever it was, I heard the sound, which did startle me. Then I saw his taillight, and he was gone.
If I had been switching lanes for some reason, or even just drifted in my lane I would have never seen him coming. He didn't pause behind me long enough to assess whether I was about to make a lane change. He just went straight for it like it was a video game.
There is no judgment in this post. I get it. It's a choice you make. In that split second, the risk is part of the adrenaline just as much as the speed. I'm not going to get on a high horse and lecture someone about speeding or riding aggressively. I'd be a hypocrite if I did.
But as his taillight disappeared into the night, I wondered: was he aware of the risk he was taking in that one moment? Or did he feel in control of a situation that he actually maybe wasn't in control of?
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u/WasteBinStuff 5h ago edited 2h ago
Something many people don't seem to realize is despite our best efforts and experience, and despite the best efforts of even well intentioned drivers......
We can actually be literally invisible....
Motion Camouflage: When a motorcycle approaches directly on a constant trajectory, it maintains a fixed point in the driver's field of view without lateral relative motion.
The Looming Effect: Because motorcycles have a narrow vertical profile rather than a wide horizontal one, their apparent size changes slowly at a distance before expanding suddenly, making speed and distance extremely difficult to judge.
Inattentional Blindness: Human brains are lazy and heavily conditioned to scan for the expected visual footprint of larger cars and trucks, actively filtering out smaller profiles during quick glances at intersections.
Saccadic Masking: Rapid eye or head movements by a driver cause brief moments of visual blackout in the brain, meaning a fast-moving bike can cross a driver's line of sight precisely during a blind micro-saccade.
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u/TheBlueFlashh 4h ago
Dont know if you are a bot or just copypasting IA text but theres a thing we almost everyone can check. Of course a very fast vehicle like OPs described can appear out of nowhere, but I also see all other vehicles being a car or a bike. All it takes is just some concentration, just as everyone should do already driving whatever they drive.
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u/WasteBinStuff 3h ago
Not bot. What's your point?
Four important areas of well understood psycho/visual/attention phenomena relating to motorcycle accidents, well known in the motorcycle community, that are helpful both for understanding the OP's point and for any curious riders.
...but I used AI to summarize. So......what?
https://www.evu-online.org/looming-effect-and-motorcycles
https://phys.org/news/2018-01-inattentional-drivers-motorcycles-plain-sight.html
https://motohorn.com/blog/inattentional-blindness-and-how-it-affects-motorcyclists/
Saccadic Masking
https://scienceofbeingseen.org/2021/11/06/invisible-motorcycles-its-magic/Saccadic Masking
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/chapter/bookseries/abs/pii/B9780444818089500093But sure....."all it takes is some concentration."
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u/TheBlueFlashh 2h ago
Im sorry. Do you not see other vehicles while drivinh properly? Almost every country teaches while getting the licence that almost every accident happens stadistically due to lack of cincentration from the drivers.
And btw, usung any study or stadistic without understanding it making pretty weak points or directly against your view is not a good thing. Anyway, closing notifications, already invested to much time. Have a great day mate, doesnt matter we dont think alike. Cheers.1
u/WasteBinStuff 2h ago
Anytime you're ready to make a rational point in readable English, it would be interesting to know what you're trying to say.
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u/shin_malphur13 5h ago
All your downvoters are ego riders smh, hope they never have to learn their lesson the hard way
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u/Dd_8630 NC750X 3h ago
I mean OP is giving us a PSA on how we shouldn't speed.
No shit. Obviously it's extremely dangerous, especially at night around moving traffic.
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u/shin_malphur13 2h ago
No shit it's just a PSA and no shit it's common knowledge but obv there's still going to be speeders among the 1.2 million members here in the sub
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u/Scazitar 3h ago
Not trying to be negative but this is just common sense. I don't really know what point you're trying to get at.
Like yeah traffic doesn't see you when your riding fast on a motorcycle & cars are going to do random shit.
I don't know anybody that rides that doesn't know that especially people that ride fast.
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u/baphostopheles 1h ago
But just a PSA: when you're blasting by cars at triple-digit speeds,
you're an idiot.
There, I fixed it.
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u/Soggy-Bullfrog-9990 5h ago
I always shake my head and hope their families never learn that there’s a difference between skill and luck
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u/NateHatred 4h ago
The guy put YOU in danger and you are not judging him? That's the issue. We've stopped shaming people for endangering others and that's a terrible way to live in a community.
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u/ExpressReveal2480 6h ago
People are just idiots. Vehicles in front of you is never the time to do that. Sure, I used to "stretch the legs", but I was usually trying to do it in a place where no one was going to see me or hear me.
And then there is the issue that even if you can see 1 mile in front of you if you're on the highway you can't really tell if a deer is going to dart out in front of you while you're deciding to go 150mph. Never saw a deer on the race track.
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u/Master_of_Disguises 45m ago
At 150mph you're probably going to split that deer clean in half. Might take some skill to not drop the bike considering the impending death wobble, but I digress
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u/KingButters27 '02 CBR 600 F4i 4h ago
I mean I've never seen a deer on the freeway either to be fair
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u/far2common '06 Triumph Tiger, '97 Heritage Springer 3h ago
I've never seen a live deer on a freeway, but I've seen several of the other kind.
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u/ExpressReveal2480 2h ago
Lucky you, I couldn't possibly count the # I've had run in front of me while driving/riding. I have also had 2 close encounters of the Moose kind and one scare with a black bear.
One of the moose encounters I had I was motorcycling in the White Mountain National Forest in NH. It was a bull moose, I swear I could have rode my Honda VFR under it's belly if it stood still it was HUGE.
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u/KingButters27 '02 CBR 600 F4i 2h ago
damn really? idk maybe the freeways near me are just better protected or something but at least on my stretch of i5 I've never seen a deer. Have seen many deer attempt suicide by motorcycle on surface streets though.
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u/ExpressReveal2480 1h ago
Maybe in city areas the large concrete walls that are like 15-20 feet high will keep them off. Otherwise forget about it, a white tail deer can jump a 10 foot high fence no problem, not many places will put up fences higher than that for long enough distances.
I live in the Northeast, in the rural areas most highways have no fencing at all.
I had an absolute "pooh came out" moment on I-89 in VT this year with a White tail deer running out in front of me while I was going ~80mph in the car and then it just stopped dead in front of me and looked right at me.
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u/Fancy_Strawberry7137 6h ago
Anyone doing triple digits on public roads is just a douchebag.
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u/Dragobrath 26' S1000RR 6h ago
Triple digits are fucking nothing on a machine which is built for this.
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u/new_x_who_dis Triumph Thunderbird 1600 - Tenere 660 - Ninja 300 4h ago
Just to be nitpicky - I ride at triple digits every time I ride, they just happen to be km/h
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u/boomercrusher 6h ago
Ok Karen
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u/LowDirection4104 5h ago
I promise I'm not being a "Karen", I have a street bike, I take it out on the highway, I probably sometimes make Karens uncomfortable with the way I choose to ride. There is no judgement here, I totally understand this sort of riding and where it comes from.
If I were to talk to the rider and he (or she) said yeah I knew it was a sketchy move but I went for it, I'd say, fine, fair enough.
I'm simply wondering if at times we assume were in control of the situation that we actually aren't.
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u/WasteBinStuff 4h ago
I'm simply wondering if at times we assume were in control of the situation that we actually aren't.
For everyone, regularly. And for some more than others.
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u/Responsible_Read_542 6h ago
That’s a lot of words to say you’re inattentive and don’t check your mirrors often enough. Highways are straight enough to spot speed demons if you’re paying attention
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u/gogozrx I miss my ZRX 6h ago
you glance in your mirrors about every 5-10 seconds.
Let's say the bike's doing 120. that's a mile every 30 seconds, half a mile in 15 seconds, 1/4 mile in 7.5 seconds.
I glance in my mirror - there's a bike 1/4 mile away. before I look again, he's past me.
You can't tell if he's going 60 or 120 when you glance and see him 1/4 mile away.
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u/Responsible_Read_542 6h ago
Cool except your values are assuming the pov vehicle is travelling 0 mph on the highway.
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u/gogozrx I miss my ZRX 6h ago
touche.
still you can't tell how fast he's going when you see him 1/4 mile away.
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u/Responsible_Read_542 6h ago
At 1/4 mile going 120 you get a second glance. 1/4 mile is also extremely close for a pretty flat straight shot highway so you should be able to spot them long before they’re even that close. Daytime clear day vision is like 1-2 miles and a second glance gives you pacing
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u/gogozrx I miss my ZRX 6h ago
you're also assuming no other cars on the highway and a perfectly unobstructed view.
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u/Responsible_Read_542 6h ago
Op says highway mostly empty. If you’re in a Congo line of cars then ya the front person isn’t going to see anything and if someone is splitting at 120+ they have no one but themselves to blame.
Op says he’s in middle lane one car in the left lane so no one behind either of them. Op is inattentive and doesn’t check his mirrors enough there’s no string of cars here blocking his line of sight
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u/LowDirection4104 5h ago
It's a well documented fact that a driver has trouble assessing how fast a single headlight vehicle is approaching them at night with that much of a speed delta, at the same time not all highways are straight, and the section of highway I was on was in fact curved.
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u/Responsible_Read_542 5h ago
It’s also a well documented fact that most north American drivers have the spatial awareness of a brick so that follows. Doesn’t make it impossible to pace a moving object or that they “came out of nowhere and are invisible”. It’s retarded to split at those speeds but it’s also retarded to be blissfully unaware and inattentive. I ride almost exclusively in the evenings and it’s not hard to visually pace incoming traffic
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u/FourRandomLetters 5h ago
Dude if you're out there doing triple digits on a public highway, you've pretty much voided your right to complain about other people not being safe drivers or how often they look in their mirror. It's not their job to "spot" you doing dumb unexpected shit, it's yours not to do it.
You clearly don't care about your own life, why should I more than you?
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u/Responsible_Read_542 4h ago edited 4h ago
Because you can’t control what everyone does around you and spotting inbound traffic is safe behavior regardless of your delusional belief of it being unnecessary. It’s a bike this time but next time it could be a stolen hellcat doing 200 to kill you and your family
Driver awareness is not and should never be exclusive to what’s in front of you. You willing to bury your kids for something that wasn’t your job?
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u/Plus-Canary-7755 6h ago
Think if your doing 150+ and car pulls out in front of you not sure anyone could control that ! Lap of the gods at that point I’d say !