Project 100 Down

Project 100 down

UP FRONT

David Edwards

SADLY, I AM NOW AN EXPERT IN REARend collisions. Most of my newly acquired knowledge comes from the Internet, but the impetus for all this fact-gathering was painfully anecdotal-I got creamed at a crosswalk.

My incident aside, passenger-vehicle rear-end collisions are a big problem. Department of Transportation statistics show approximately 1.5 million such crashes per year, about 23 percent of all accidents. The result is 2000 fatalities (4.5 percent of all traffic-related deaths) and some 950,000 injuries. The economic impact of rear-end collisions is $18.3 billion per year.

Good news is that motorcycles are under-represented. Of the 3751 streetbike fatalities recorded by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in 2003, just 128, or 3.4 percent, were attributable to rear-end collisions. That ratio has remained steady since the late 1970s when the seminal Hurt Report (proper name: Motorcycle Accident Cause Factors and Identification of Countermeasures) was being compiled.

“We only had 3.2 percent rear-enders in the Hurt Report, which is why we told everyone to concentrate on where you’re going, because that’s where threefourths of all accidents are,” says Dave Thom, a former Hurt researcher, now a principle partner in Collision and Injury Dynamics, Inc.

I know that, of course, and in 35 years and a half-million collision-free miles of street riding have developed a "con trol zone" to the sides and in front where short of an act of God, I'm reasonably sure I can avoid accidents, or at the

very worst mitigate the damage caused by an errant automobile. It’s a combination of acute scanning, bike placement, speed regulation and the anticipation/belief that all car drivers are mouth-breathing, absent-minded idiots with homicidal tendencies and a cell phone. By now, it’s become a sixth sense. Yet, despite the statistics, I’m always concerned about being hit from behind. Regular scanning of rearview mirrors is the first line of defense (and why we harp so much about the useless elbowcheckers fitted to many sportbikes), and speeding up. or moving over gets rid of tailgaters, but the simple fact is that you don’t have as much control or awareness of what’s happening behind you as you do with what,’s up front.

It’s another reason I’m happy to live in California where lane-splitting is legal—as it is in virtually all of Europe and should be in our other 49 states. What appears to be daredevilry to non-practitioners is actually the safest place to be. On packed'freeways, besides saving gas and time, sensible lane-splitting (10 mph faster than the flow of traffic up to 45 mph), gives the best line of sight, allowing riders to see debris or brake lights many cars ahead. In hot weather, the continued movement is good for both bike and rider, encouraging the latter to keep his/her protective gear in place rather than bungeed to the rear seat. More importantly, in traffic jams, where the speed differential between those stopped and the SUV soccer mom blithely bearing down on the scene can be as much as 80 mph, lane-splitting gets a motorcyclist quickly away from the danger at the back of the pack.

Likewise on surface streets at stop-

lights. By threading my way to the front of the line, I put as much metal and plastic and rubber between myself and trouble as possible. The queue of cars becomes in effect my “crumple zone” and I never have to become the meat in a bumper sandwich.

The morning of my crash, I decided to ride “Project 100”-the bike CW built to commemorate Harley’s 2003 centenary-into work, taking the scenic route through Laguna Beach and then the 15 miles up the Pacific Coast Highway. The bike’s (kick-start-only) Twin Cam 88 burst into life at the first prod, always a relief. Approaching Laguna, traveling at the posted 35 mph and coming up on a marked pedestrian crossing, I noticed the car immediately ahead and in the right lane apply his brakes. I looked diagonally beyond the car and sure enough there was a man just stepping off the curb, previously unsighted through the BMW’s heavily tinted windows. (What are these yuppies doing behind all the dark glass?)

No problem, a firm squeeze on the lever brought Project 100’s twin PMs into play and we stopped with room to spare. Unfortunately, the guy behind in a Nissan 4x4 needed another couple of feet.

But he did me two favors; first, swerving to the left just before impact so he hit me at an angle. That sent me sideways over his hood, not into it, where I dropped like the proverbial sack o’ spuds to the asphalt, the first time my tush had tasted tarmac in about 25 years. The second favor? He had insurance.

It would be needed. My nylon Hein Gericke jacket with back and elbow padding helped, but my hip hurt and exiting sideways off the bike had tweaked my back and neck. A trip to the emergency room later in the day for X-rays ($450) showed no broken bones, but I wouldn’t sleep comfortably for a month and the back still isn’t 100 percent. The poor bike fared worse. After impact it shot out from under me, ending up on its right side 20 feet away, sustaining $7500 in damages. Even the personalized license plate ($41) will have to be replaced. Bless the bike’s heart, it restarted on the first kick-good ’cause at the time, I didn’t have a second one in me.

Lessons learned? Several, not the least of which is that any pedestrian is going to have to be several steps farther into the paint next time before I nail the brakes. A $150 ticket beats an $8000 rear-ender (or worse) any day.