Crash Avoidance?

Ouch. I'm watchin on a remote desk top choppy and not good resolution.
Looks like car just turned without looking and looks like the bike was moving pretty good. Again tuff to tell at work I'll have to watch at home.
 
Bike going too fast. Driver not paying attention - s/he didn't stop, signal, look, and then make the left turn. Instead the car driver meandered across the lanes to enter the gas station.

Still, IMO car driver at fault for not yielding right of way.
 
Judging by the speed the rider 'left' the bike, he was moving a lot faster than may have been prudent in the traffic situation. Any swerving/braking would have still ended up in a crash, but could have lessened the degree of impact. It doesn't look like he ever hit his brakes at all, but I wasn't there so I don't know. It is obviously the car's fault, but the answer will be 'Officer I didn't see him'. Having been hit from the side by a drunk while riding, I now never assume that a driver is going to do the right thing and ride accordingly. Cars have the 'right of weight' and we'll never win in a collision. A perfect example is that there is an apartment complex drive right on top of a hill I ride over every day to work. And at least once a week a car comes out of the drive and never stops. So I approach it very slowly with my brakes covered, not depending on them to 'see' me.
 
Stupid passenger behind the steering wheel (I hesitate to call them a driver), but what bugs me is the half dozen cars that evidently just drove past the injured rider??? Wonder if they would have stopped if it was a pedestrian?

I am not sure the rider was speeding, only about 50' of pavement from the edge of the frame to the car and bike was visible about a second, so 40mph ish is my estimate. And looks like he was on the brakes.
 
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It looks to me like the bike rider never got on the brakes. I think the car is at fault for turning left in front of the bike, but it looks to me like the rider wasn't paying attention at all. The car is already crossing the centerline before the bike is even in the frame. The bike looks like he is going way too fast for conditions. I hope the guy is OK and didn't hit anything before his body stopped flying through the air.
 
Looks to me like that bike was going way too fast. The car slowed down, and that's a red flag to any rider that the car might turn. Looks like there were about three seconds from the time that car slowed to make the turn until the collision. That's plenty of time to slow down.

Bad driving, but worse riding.
 
Car ... wrong move.

Bike ... too fast for surface streets.

Biker did not appear to pre-screen the movement and wasn't on the brakes. Once you see a car moving in your path you should already be pulling hard. I would have hit that car too I'm sure but not at that speed.
 
Bike was going too fast. Car driver could have misjudged bike's speed. Or another stupid "I didn't see him, officer" crash. Hope the rider is OK.

Also bothered me that no one seemed to be in any hurry to help the rider...cars just stopped and then moved on... folks in the gas station initially carried on at a leisurely pace ...driver of the car stayed put (maybe injured or shocked though).
 
Long Tom said:
Looks to me like that bike was going way too fast. The car slowed down, and that's a red flag to any rider that the car might turn. Looks like there were about three seconds from the time that car slowed to make the turn until the collision. That's plenty of time to slow down.

Bad driving, but worse riding.
Click to expand...

After your post I went back and viewed the video again. You are right. 3 seconds or close to 4 from when the car edged over the centerline until the crash. If the bike was going the speed we saw he could have stopped. At least nearly stopped. If he was hard on the brakes before he got into the frame he must have been going at a pretty good clip before hand. It didn't look like he was slowing at all to me from what I saw. Not being able to see the bike approach makes it hard to call.
Fact is the motorcycle guy hit someone/ something. Usually not a good outcome weather his fault or not. I'm quessing it hurt him more that the cage driver.
 
How do you know he was going too fast? I didn't see any speed limit signs and I've seen lots of roads that look similar to that with a 50 mph speed limit. Of course, it could have been a 30 mph residential area too, but you simply can't tell from that view. It did take that car an awful long time to cross the lane of traffic and the bike doesn't look like he ever saw the car.
 
Originally Posted by Long Tom:
Looks to me like that bike was going way too fast. The car slowed down, and that's a red flag to any rider that the car might turn. Looks like there were about three seconds from the time that car slowed to make the turn until the collision. That's plenty of time to slow down.

Bad driving, but worse riding.

leveredge said:
After your post I went back and viewed the video again. You are right. 3 seconds or close to 4 from when the car edged over the centerline until the crash. If the bike was going the speed we saw he could have stopped. At least nearly stopped. If he was hard on the brakes before he got into the frame he must have been going at a pretty good clip before hand. It didn't look like he was slowing at all to me from what I saw. Not being able to see the bike approach makes it hard to call.
Fact is the motorcycle guy hit someone/ something. Usually not a good outcome weather his fault or not. I'm quessing it hurt him more that the cage driver.
Click to expand...

+1 on these 2 posts!
Several responses here seem quick to conclude that the car's driver was at fault, but I'm not so sure. Based on what little we could see in the video, it appears that the driver should have had more than enough time to complete the turn, if the motorcycle hadn't been going way too fast. It is obvious the m/c was going much too fast, regardless of what the posted speed limit is. The most significant consideration in any accident, as all st-owners know, is not "who was at fault?", but "was the accident preventable?" This accident was definitely preventable.
 
The clock on the camera is in seconds. It looks line about 1.5 seconds from when the car crossed the center line to when the bike hit it. I counted about 5 car lengths (based on the white car that was struck). From when the motorcycle entered the picture to where car was struck. Assuming 15 feet for the car length that means about 75 feet. The total time to move that far was probably less than 1 second. Even at 1 second 75 * 3600 /5280 = ~51 mph. My estimate is the motorcycle was moving at 50 mph or more.

Happened to me once when I was young. My 250 was probably closer to 40. The driver turned in front of me then continued into the gas station and got gas. No reason to bother checking the crazy motorcyclist. :)
 
Nasty looking, I too was bothered by the reactions of the other drivers and the pedestrians. However, there's too much not evident in the video to really answer "why".

Many gas stations are at intersections. This road looks to be a simple two lane without center turn lanes. If there's an intersection off the left side of the video, then its quite possible that another vehicle had been turning in the motorcycle's (i.e. "rightbound") lane and masked the visibility of both the car and the bike. The car figures he has plenty of time to clear because he can't see anything behind the XVan turning ahead of him. The motorcycle can't see far past the van, just knows he's got a green light and there's nobody turning in the intersection.

Mind you, this is simply speculation, and could be way off base. Or it could be dead on. Either way, it's certainly plausible. Which takes us to the next question: assuming for a moment that my scenario is accurate, what should the rider have done differently?

Before we get into it though, I want to remind everybody that yes, all motorcyle "accidents" / collisions are avoidable. Just take your motorcycle down to the scrap yard and have it crushed, voila, you'll never have another motorcycle collision. Now that the SafetyTrolls of La La Land have been fed, real world solutions that real world motorcyclists can implement.
 
A bit off topic but check out this red light runner. I don't know how he made it through the intersection w/o killing someone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuH-oZZBBjU
 
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