What a drunk nurse taught me about road-craft
In 56 years of riding motorcycles I have had two altercations with cars.
In 1974, as mentioned in OBA 94, while riding a Honda XL250, a tradie in a ute who was doubleparked outside a pub did a U-turn right in front of me without looking or indicating, and ten years later while riding a new 1984 Yamaha XV1000 RH with my wife Annie as pillion. A Nurse whose breath smelt strongly of alcohol was exceeding the speed limit in a built-up area and by doing a righthand turn at an intersection without indicating, failed to give way to oncoming traffic with right of way. After giving me her personal details she left the scene of the accident before police and ambulance arrived. You will note that in both these incidents alcohol was involved. The 1974 incident was on a Friday afternoon and I had been to the pub after work so I must take some responsibility, but the court found in my favour. The bike was a write-off, I had a massive haematoma on my left hip where I slammed into the ute but luckily I had no broken bones.
But in the 1984 incident I was stone-cold sober and convinced that I did absolutely nothing wrong and yet my wife and I could easily have been killed or seriously injured through no fault of our own. For the first time in my life, the 1984 crash led me to seriously consider giving up motorcycling. In both cases the other party didn’t use their indicators, and they failed to see me. This is an issue I will return to when apportioning responsibility. But first I want to describe the incident as seen through the eyes of the two key participants: the motorcycle rider and the car driver (we can only imagine what the car driver was thinking about: a day at the beach; drinking wine; meeting a bloke; what this might lead to?).
Car Driver
“Geez I feel drowsy, I must have drunk too much wine at the beach today – made a bit of a fool of myself coming onto this bloke I’m driving home now, he’s cute…what was the street he lives in again? … Oh, that must be it on the right that he’s pointing at… damn, it’s too late to indicate so I’ll just swing into it to beat the oncoming traffic. Bloody hell! Where did that motorcycle come from? Oh God he’s run into us! I saw two people go flying, I hope they’ll be OK because being a casualty nurse I see motorcyclists with bad crash injuries all the time (her exact words to me after the crash). Oops, I’d be over 0.05%, I better get out of here before the cops arrive.”
Motorcycle Rider
“There is no one else in my space protection buffer zone and checking my mirrors, there’s a car behind me but at a safe distance, good because approaching a red light. Speed check…well below the 60 km/h local limit. I’ll just tap the rear brake a couple of times to show the guy behind that I’m stopping. Oh, now we got a green light so moving off ahead. Hello, that car approaching from the opposite direction is going fast; must be going straight through the intersection as approach speed too high to turn safely and there is no turn indicator on. Bloody hell he is turning right and is going to hit us. Please, this isn’t happening… try to turn left and use the front brake! Why does everything seem to be happening so slowly? Impact point will be on the front passenger-side mudguard, here we go….phew, I cleared the bonnet….ouch that landing hurt …oh God, where’s Annie?”
I’m not saying that I planned this, but on collision, turning with the car and hitting the front brake pitched the rear of the bike up enough to propel us both over the car and not into its side which almost certainly would have killed or seriously injured us. As it was, I slid along the road on my back requiring some stitches to my neck, while Annie performed a full somersault over the bonnet (difficulty 2.5!) and landed on her hands, knees and feet with severe bruising and contusions. Considering the nature of the collision we were both extremely lucky as the bike was a write-off. Here I was, applying the principles of Road-Craft, being defensive, identifying hazards, etc. and we still got hit. But what really got to me was what could have happened to Annie, and though I thought I had done nothing wrong, I would never forgive myself for exposing her to danger and would give up riding motorcycles.
But I did do something wrong. Did you spot it? I only came to recognise this later when, to become a motorcycle instructor, I did an advanced rider training program. I had assumed that the car was going to go straight on through the intersection and not do a right-hand turn. But the driver didn’t indicate this intention so how could I have predicted this action? I asked the Instructor this question and without hesitation he asked me “Did you look to see where the driver was looking?” I acknowledged that I hadn’t and suddenly felt a great sense of relief. Rather than relying on an anonymous road user to behave predictably, I should have watched driver behaviour more rigorously to predict what was likely to happen next.
In learner-rider training, Instructors sum up Road-Craft in the acronym COASC: Concentration; Observation; Anticipation; Seeing; and Communication. But I had not observed rigorously enough to anticipate what was happening. The passenger possibly did something like point and call out “Turn right here” and because she had been drinking, that’s exactly what she did, and by not communicating her intent she wasn’t thinking of the consequences for herself, her passenger, or other road users.
The reason she didn’t see me was because she was too busy looking elsewhere. But if I had been looking ‘forensically’, to see where she was looking, I would have had a fair chance of correctly predicting what was likely to happen next, and to have acted accordingly, say by hovering over the brakes to reduce my reaction time and stopping as quickly as possible without losing traction or straight line stability. But you can’t anticipate if you don’t observe in a way that identifies when a situation represents a clear and present danger.
Clairvoyance is what that Nurse taught me about Road-Craft i.e. a ‘sneak preview’ into the future that enables a motorcyclist to foresee traffic hazards and to evade them.
As a footnote to this story, I must now report what happened to the participants after the 1984 incident: Annie and Rob were taken to hospital where he was breathalysed before their injuries were treated and they were sent home; The Nurse left the scene of the accident before police and ambulance arrived and was not charged. The XV1000 that had done less than 2,000 km was a write-off. But the Nurse’s nervous father paid the price of a new one (AUD $2,400) less the salvage price I got for the wreck from a motorcycle wrecker. ■