tragic predictable accident

[T Legg]

I passed by this accident on the way home today ( the photo is from the news) . The spot is an undivided six lane road that is the old highway with a locals casino who's customers regularly pull across the three south bound lanes to reach the north bound lanes which is legal if the road is clear. Witnesses say this motorcycle   was traveling much faster than the 50 mph posted limit when the car pulled out in front of him. A sad incident. Misplaced trust can kill.

[balky1]

Aside the fact that somebody got killed or injured here, I think this is the cleanest traffic accident scene I've ever seen. No fluids leaking, no broken glass....almost like it is staged.

[T Legg]

He died the driver of the car was injured. It seems to me he punched through one side and almost out the other.

[Troyskie]

Far out brussel sprout! I'm amazed the driver survived!

[Sparky84]

I wish the FJ's fairing was that tough and the front fender and also forks..

How did he end up going through the car upside down

[TexasDave]

Unbelievable that the bike hit with enough force to flip the car over. Even though it was the car drivers fault he may have thought he had enough time to complete the turn before the bike arrived not knowing the bike was approaching at a high rate of speed.

My oldest daughter being a young driver was turning left in front of a pickup truck several years ago and was hit by it. Luckily she was not hurt but was ticketed for failure to yield. My wife being a traffic analyst looked at the damage to my daughter's car and where it ended up and realized from the impact that this was not a 30mph crash. Having a traffic engineer analyze it he estimated the truck was traveling about 60mph in a 30-mph zone. Which was what my daughter stated thinking she had enough time to make the turn. This resulted in her not being liable for damages but did not get her out of the ticket.

[Millietant]

How did he end up going through the car upside down

That's what's bothering me about the photo - the bike seems to have hit the car upside down, whilst travelling backwards - or perhaps the car attempted a quick/evasive turn (at speed), flipped and rear-ended the bike, whilst upside down (thinking that the bike might have pulled across the traffic lanes in front of the car !).

Definitely need more info to understand what actually happened there.

[red]

I wish the FJ's fairing was that tough and the front fender and also forks..  How did he end up going through the car upside down

Hard to understand how that started.  Just guessing here, but maybe the bike did a flip-over stoppy before impact, and hit  the car rear-wheel first.  The impact then flipped the car, which was probably turning hard in the first place, and did not need much more force, to do the roll-over.  I can not believe that the front end of the bike went through two sides of the car without bending the forks.

There are times when brakes won't help, but it may still be possible to steer out of trouble.

[balky1]

I wish the FJ's fairing was that tough and the front fender and also forks..  How did he end up going through the car upside down

Hard to understand how that started.  Just guessing here, but maybe the bike did a flip-over stoppy before impact, and hit  the car rear-wheel first.  The impact then flipped the car, which was probably turning hard in the first place, and did not need much more force, to do the roll-over.  I can not believe that the front end of the bike went through two sides of the car without bending the forks.

There are times when brakes won't help, but it may still be possible to steer out of trouble.

Indeed, and this is big difference when riding motorcycle and driving any other vehicle (steering out might also help, but braking works most of the times).

[T Legg]

I don't see any dents in the frame rail of the car on the side the bike is protruding from,and the door is open outward.maybe he used hard rear braking and laid the bike down and slid into the car sideways

[giantkiller]

The fairing is broken. The wheel is pushed back and to the right.  Probably impacted from the left side a little bit down. Maybe slight stoppie with a little washout of the front wheel to the right before impact. Or washed out. And down before impact. Had to be going quite fast.

The one that I died at. Was determined to be less than 40mph.  Guy pulled out in front of me. Trying to beat traffic coming the other direction. And decided to stop in front of me instead of getting hit by the car. They decided I was on both brakes and slid out onto the right side just before impact. Which catapulted me into the side of the roof line of the car.(my body made a nice round push into the roof about 6" deep) bike smash into the side of the car. It looked kinda like this bike. ( Except not upside down in the middle of the car) I was in the hospital for 2 1/2 months. Full leather suit. And helmet. Still have the leathers they cut off of me...
Going to put them in a glass case in my stairs on the wall above the landing.

[T Legg]

The highway patrol released a statement saying the motorcycle was heading south bound at a "high rate of speed" the car crossed in front of him from his right side to get to the north bound lanes on the other side. The impact was to the left side of the car and occurred in the south bound lanes.                  With this set of facts it would seem he may have tried to veer to the right and brake at the same time (I've done that in a panic reaction before) causing him to lay it down and do a J hook with his rear wheel  into the car then the forward motion of the car rotated the bike 90 degrees. It's worth thinking about what went wrong besides excessive speed.       And of course factors out of our control.   STUPID DRIVERS .                                           

[balky1]

A lot of decisions in traffic relies upon the estimation - especially your and other traffic speeds. That is something that you get with experience and some thinking is involved. Yeah, if the other one is stupid enough not to be able to think - there's the problem. That is something seen everywhere, unfortunately.

[Bill_Rockoff]

 I agree it's tragic and unnecessary, but are we, as a community of motorcycle-riding online friends,  really thinking about coming down on the side of "it was not the motorcycle rider's fault even if he was going twice as fast as traffic normally goes there?"

Sorry, but I cannot agree.

If you are doing something very unusual, you don't have the right to expect the rest of the world to accommodate you and yield accordingly. That means "going twice as fast as everyone else," and it means "passing slower traffic in a no-passing zone," and it means "using a literbike's unbelievable acceleration to jump from rest to 60+ mph in a frantic 3-second burst of full throttle."(*) If you are doing any of those things, you don't have a right to expect the right-of-way from normal traffic. It's not their job to be on the lookout for anybody doing that; theire responsibility is to look out for the kinds of things normal traffic normally does.


Our common point of reference here, the FJ1100/FJ1200, is a motorcycle that can approximately double any posted speed limit in the world, within seconds, at any time and in any place. An FJ, like any reasonably capable motorcycle, is capable of doing things that most car drivers can't even imagine would be possible. "Where are you going to go 100 mph?" ANYWHERE, in mere seconds. The capability a sportbike has, ANY sportbike, is simply beyond comprehension for most people. We don't have the right to expect other motorists to be on the lookout for us if we insist on doing things they can't even comprehend might be possible. "How dare you pull out in front of me? Can't you see I was traveling toward you at 100 mph, even though four seconds ago I was going the same 50 mph everyone else always goes?"

(*)I am not against doing any of these things; I have done them all (skill-limited to "a bit more than 3 seconds getting to 60 mph") and I full plan to do them again. However, if we are going to use our vehicle's capabilities to do things that generally are not ever done, we cannot possibly expect normal traffic to make accommodations for us while we do those things. We have to pick a time and place where we will be (relatively) free of risk from normal other people doing normal-other-people things, like "making turns across intersections that appear to be clear" or "pulling out into traffic in normal fashion to drive at normal-traffic speeds." We don't get to land our rotor-copter/cycle in traffic from above and be upset that nobody yielded to our landing cycle-plane. We don't get to ride our ADV/dual-sport dirtbike across a construction zone and pop out into traffic from between the fence posts and expect the rest of the city to make way for us as we try to merge from a place where nobody else has ever tried to merge from. And we don't get to launch to 60 in three seconds and then be upset when a person pulls out in front of what was, barely a second ago, a clear empty space.

Any time you do something normal traffic cannot reasonably predict someone doing, you forfeit your right of way. Nobody can be expected to yield to the mere possibility that there MIGHT be a 100 mph motorcycle coming down the road.

[giantkiller]

I agree it's tragic and unnecessary, but are we, as a community of motorcycle-riding online friends,  really thinking about coming down on the side of "it was not the motorcycle rider's fault even if he was going twice as fast as traffic normally goes there?"

Sorry, but I cannot agree.

If you are doing something very unusual, you don't have the right to expect the rest of the world to accommodate you and yield accordingly. That means "going twice as fast as everyone else," and it means "passing slower traffic in a no-passing zone," and it means "using a literbike's unbelievable acceleration to jump from rest to 60+ mph in a frantic 3-second burst of full throttle."(*) If you are doing any of those things, you don't have a right to expect the right-of-way from normal traffic. It's not their job to be on the lookout for anybody doing that; theire responsibility is to look out for the kinds of things normal traffic normally does.


Our common point of reference here, the FJ1100/FJ1200, is a motorcycle that can approximately double any posted speed limit in the world, within seconds, at any time and in any place. An FJ, like any reasonably capable motorcycle, is capable of doing things that most car drivers can't even imagine would be possible. "Where are you going to go 100 mph?" ANYWHERE, in mere seconds. The capability a sportbike has, ANY sportbike, is simply beyond comprehension for most people. We don't have the right to expect other motorists to be on the lookout for us if we insist on doing things they can't even comprehend might be possible. "How dare you pull out in front of me? Can't you see I was traveling toward you at 100 mph, even though four seconds ago I was going the same 50 mph everyone else always goes?"

(*)I am not against doing any of these things; I have done them all (skill-limited to "a bit more than 3 seconds getting to 60 mph") and I full plan to do them again. However, if we are going to use our vehicle's capabilities to do things that generally are not ever done, we cannot possibly expect normal traffic to make accommodations for us while we do those things. We have to pick a time and place where we will be (relatively) free of risk from normal other people doing normal-other-people things, like "making turns across intersections that appear to be clear" or "pulling out into traffic in normal fashion to drive at normal-traffic speeds." We don't get to land our rotor-copter/cycle in traffic from above and be upset that nobody yielded to our landing cycle-plane. We don't get to ride our ADV/dual-sport dirtbike across a construction zone and pop out into traffic from between the fence posts and expect the rest of the city to make way for us as we try to merge from a place where nobody else has ever tried to merge from. And we don't get to launch to 60 in three seconds and then be upset when a person pulls out in front of what was, barely a second ago, a clear empty space.

Any time you do something normal traffic cannot reasonably predict someone doing, you forfeit your right of way. Nobody can be expected to yield to the mere possibility that there MIGHT be a 100 mph motorcycle coming down the road.

Yep I figured it was bikes fault.from the first look. He was going extremely fast to do all that. My body did the most damage to the car because the bike hit the frame of the car. That one ripped right through and flipped it over