Powell: Motorcyclists, ride like you’re driving a car

Given recent motorcycle-vs.-car accidents, my friends ask me if I’m concerned about getting hit by a car, and my answer is “Yes.” I will then go on to explain my theory of why most motorcycle-vs.-car accidents happen, and what we can do to prevent future accidents.

Typical rider advice is, “Ride like everybody is actively trying to kill you. Always have an escape route!” That’s good advice, but it’s difficult for me to maintain that level of paranoia long term – always planning an escape route for any given moment and looking at every car as an immediate threat. I just can’t keep that up.

Rather than trying to be ready for an accident, I want to proactively understand what I can do differently to avoid the situation all together. I came up with the following:

From the moment we become aware of cars and certainly from the moment we start learning to drive, we are building rules of how cars move based on our observations. As we go to pull out of a side street onto the road, we see a car, our brain checks its rules and says, “It’s OK; that car can’t get from there to here in the time it will take us to merge into traffic. We’re safe.” With cars, this assumption is generally correct; our “performance envelope” of cars helps us make reasonably good assumptions about where a car will be at a given point in time.

The problem is, motorcycles can operate well outside the performance envelope of cars. Motorcycles can get from where they are to where you are much faster than a car. Since we observe motorcycles less frequently than cars, we don’t have rules built into our brain for them. I think we just classify them as cars and make judgments based on inaccurate data. A person sees a motorcycle and says, “Looks safe, that vehicle [the motorcycle] is too far away to be a concern.” And they proceed. However, the motorcycle rider may be accelerating faster than expected and that situation will end poorly for everybody.

Acceleration, turning, overtaking, splitting lanes, these are all things a motorcycle can do much differently than a car, and when motorcyclists operate outside of the car envelope, they’re essentially making themselves invisible to other drivers.

“I didn’t think you could be there, so I didn’t plan for you to be there, and I didn’t look or expect for you to be there” are some things car drivers might be saying after an accident.

What’s the fix? I’ve found when I’m operating my motorcycle in roughly the same manner as I drive my car, I’ve had very few problems. I accelerate at roughly the same speed as I would in my car. I signal my lane changes, and I don’t squeeze into gaps that wouldn’t accommodate a car. And while there is evidence to suggest it’s safer for motorcycles to split lanes vs. staying put in stop-and-go traffic, I’ll take my chances acting like a car.

We buy motorcycles partially because they operate differently than cars. I’m not suggesting to never accelerate as fast as you safely can on the motorcycle, or to never go through turns faster than you would in a car, but I’m suggesting that you recognize you are effectively invisible when you’re making your motorcycle perform outside the envelope of cars.

What can drivers do? Keep your eyes open for motorcycles (we hear that all the time), but also start to notice how motorcycles move. Tell yourself, “Hey, this thing doesn’t move like other cars; recalculate!”

Even though I am a rider, when driving, I still catch myself lumping motorcycles in with other cars. It takes an effort to avoid that; however, I feel like I’m slowly building up a new set of rules for motorcycles. I’m hopeful those rules will help me make better decisions and to be a better partner on the road.

That’s my theory. It has been working for me now for over 15 years. If reading this helps prevent even one car-vs.-motorcycle accident, then it was worth the time to share!

Drive safe, ride safe and keep the dirty-side down!