First thing I saw was that he pulled into the lane right in front of a big truck – traffic behind the truck would not see what was going on – just that the truck suddenly changed lanes. I was also curious as to why the lead bike seemed to be so much ahead of the emergency vehicle? And there were two more escort bikes. It seems that the three bikes together could have cleared the lane for the emergency vehicle to merge safely.

I was thinking the same as Canjun – why not park the bike in the yellow area and direct from the side of the road where it’s safer?

I’ve been on group rides where the sweeps block traffic like this (albeit on side roads, not highways) for the group to stay together and I always worried about the kind of situation in this video.

That , or even point the bike back towards the direction he came, 1st gear clutch held in.. he could have zipped off into the grass to avoid

As far as the death rate .. it really is something almost beyond our control. Why? In my opinion, it has to do with our growing population, the growing traffic on the road, and especially the fact a lot of new motorcyclists out there don’t care about proper protective clothing nor truly defensive riding. THAT is what kills them .. the perspective/view point … changing social and ethical values. Some riders are happily oblivious and apathetic to the data and advice. They are the % that are not doing well…. and they are growing as a population in the motorcycling hobby/sport.

A rider organisation in the UK has just done a study on near-misses

http://www.writetoride.co.uk/near_miss_survey.html

Can’t say I agree with all the methodology or conclusions but the idea was to try to understand why riders had near-misses rather than crashes, and to see if they could pull up any behavioural differences, or highlight any value in day running lights or other conspicuity aids.

@Kathy – good theory re lethal crashes, but 30 years of research over several different continents shows that the lethal crashes are nearly always single vehicle incidents where the bike runs off the road and the rider hits something hard, or misjudges an overtake.

Few junction accidents, the so-called Right of Way Voilations or SMIDSY (sorry mate, I didn’t see you) accidents, are fatal because they are usually urban and so low speed, and the brief warning the rider does get is enough to shed a bit more speed.

Whilst the overall figures for junction accidents are no excuse for not educating drivers to look for bikes, these accidents have been happening for 100 years, so the motorcyclist isn’t learning from the pattern either.