Tank Slap - Motorcycle Forum

This is the video description:-

All at legal speeds to show how random events can still kill you.
Red pickup moves over in front of me and only moves out the way at the last second - just as I open the throttle to overtake him! Video doesn't show how sideways the bike was, and I had to release the brakes twice to stop me highsiding and still make it around the stationary car. Very close!


This is the video:-

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TAHd6MJsww[/video]

I'll let you watch it first before I let you have my views.

Well my view, and I watched it a number of times was the red pick up did nothing wrong. Indicated with plenty of time before his manoeuvre and obviously was paying attention to what was happening ahead of him.

Mean while the bike was only focused on the pick up with no positioning to see further than one vehicle ahead, committed to an overtake before he knew the path was clear.

It was indeed a close call but the bike rider needs to own that imo.

Fwiw I "always" try to have the longest clear line ahead of me, so I would also have been following the pickup exactly the same as NEN.
However,,,,
,,,,When the Pickup changed lanes I would personally have tracked left slightly, to be to the right of the left lane (rather than sat square behind it). Not only do I prefer to have as clear a view of the road ahead rather than just the back of a vehicle, it also allows me a straight line braking zone.
Of course in this instance when the pickup moved back left again, I would have gone right (& if I hadn't noticed the obstruction he was avoiding, perhaps straight into trouble )...

I have watched now a few times I see nothing that would lay the blame anywhere if the biker hit the car except for him/her.
You cannot ride or drive with the assumption that everyone else is making sure you are ok !!!! that is nuts. Look after number one..

The van pulled out for a reason and pulled back in for a reason, the bike obviously did not have a clear view IMO, so he/she should have been more aware, if someone moves that quickly in front of me I also myself why? it becomes a sixth sense, and that just proves it... there was an obstruction.
I am not IAM.

The red pickup looked to be planning on overtaking the car he was following and from the video he seems to have completed a safe enough move since the motorcyclist is passing the speed camera at this point some distance behind and speeds up afterwards.
I can't make out a line of traffic in the distance from the video quality and traffic appears to be flowing at this point. once the pickup has moved out and the danger of the turning traffic manifests, the pickup also has to deal with emerging traffic from the junction on the left before he can safely move back across.
The motorcyclist generally failed, didn't look ahead, gave it the gas as the pickup began moving left (as he did when the pickup first moved out too) and left himself with insufficient stopping distance and went on to praise his bike handling skills whilst trying to push the blame for the situation developing as it had onto the innocent pickup driver.

(Not IAM either)

For what it's worth, I'm of the opinion that had anything gone wrong and the biker not saved it, it would have been his fault.

Ninja knows that road, he rides it most days of the week, so he knows that there's a right turn there. I use that road about twice a month and even I know that right turning traffic tends to queue in the lane.

But even without local knowledge he's too close to the pick up, which is fine if it's a car and you can see over it, but you can't. That means his field of vision is very limited. There's also a junction warning notice as he gets close.

I'm sure we've all made silly mistakes but the crime is not recognising the root cause of the close call and not owning the responsibility. As such the rider hadn't learnt from it and appears to in fact inflated their own sense of riding ability (jeez luckily my immense skills got me out of that situation I had nothing to do with) which will unfortunately likely lead to another close call (or worse) in the future.

I feck up on a regular basis but I'm the first one to put my hand up and say 'yup, I'm a muppet!'. One of my biggest dislikes in life are people that don't take responsibility for their actions and always find someone or something else to blame.

SHIT RIDER

I'll expand now I'm not shoving food in my mouth and typing one handed.

It could very easily just be a lapse in concentration, but I saw no fault with the truck. All fault lies with the rider who went to do an overtake without knowing if the route was clear. He shouldn't be accelerating until you can see where you are going. Of course, its dark, probably after work. Tired. As I say probably just a lapse in concentration, but that's the trouble. It only takes 1 to kill you.

I guess it's easy for us to criticise, especially if you're a regular commuter on a bike.

There are countless times I've had near misses and close calls.

Like Kiwi says, the trick is to accept when you've done wrong.

You make your own luck.

Hey, let's be careful out there (Hill Street Blues)

The thing is we have all no doubt made that mistake, I know I have and by the skin of my teeth I survived. Lesson learnt, here to tell the tale, move on be grateful.

I didn't think it was that big a deal.
BUT...in an urban area you're supposed to be able to stop within your field of vision, or something like that.
He couldn't.

Clearly very late but I agree with others field of vision is key when you're moving at 30 + MPH. You may think it's slow but when was the last time you ran at 30...I suppose it's slow when nothing is happening but when things are happening it is at rocket speed...if you can't see you can't plan! So drop the distance between the pick up and the biker and he would of had more time to realise the obstacle that the pick up was moving away from