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Comment by themattress | Hacker News Reader

The best thing that learning to ride a motorcycle taught me is “always ride like everyone is actively trying to kill you”.

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Which (for me) translates to making eye contact with drivers whenever at an intersection, stop sign, or looking to see if people’s heads are up on the road (or down in their lap) when passing on a freeway.

Riding a motorcycle is the fastest way to realize how little attention people have on the road / surroundings when they drive.

Exactly. And daydreaming is death when you don’t have a steel cage around you.

> making eye contact with drivers whenever at an intersection, stop sign

The number of vehicles with very dark tinting on front windows has, in my experience, increased dramatically. I do this, too, but it's getting to where I can make eye contact less than half the time.

Maybe I need to bring a very bright flashlight so I can make sure I can see the driver...

And this is illegal in many places, but seems to be enforced even less than the phone rules.

Heh very true, and that’s a big part of the reason I don’t ride anymore.

> Which (for me) translates to making eye contact with drivers whenever at an intersection, stop sign,

This works both ways. As a car driver, I try to give motorcyclists a nod to let them know I see them.

As a cyclist I don't find that eye contact is enough. There have been quite a few times where I made eye contact with someone who was turning and was required by law to yield to me, yet they still pulled directly in front of me, almost causing a collision. The few times I have been able to talk to these drivers at a nearby intersection I've heard "I thought you had to stop for me." No, I'm oncoming traffic, you're supposed to stop for me! There are even signs reiterating this. Don't know how common this is for (pedal)cyclists vs. motorcyclists but it just indicates to me that mutual eye contact alone is not enough.

At intersections its the people behind you. I have lots of friends who have been rear ended on their bikes. People tend to reach for the phone when approaching a red light.

Same for me being a full-time pedestrian. I bought a very reflective safety jacket from a nearby aviation supply store. It's cut down dramatically on the number of "near misses" from regular vehicles.

People driving "rideshare" taxis still try to run me over in marked crosswalks an average of once per day. Nothing will come between them and their fares.

My next step is to buy a pocket-sized air horn. If drivers of cars can have horns, so can I.

Where do you live? I’m pedestrian most of the time in Seattle, and I’ve never experienced such a degree of danger that it could be cut down dramatically and still be having near misses. Not anywhere else either, NY, Istanbul, etc.

It doesn't get mentioned a lot, but there are significant differences in pedestrian behavior and its affect on their likelihood of encountering this issue.

It's difficult to talk about because there's an angle of blaming the victim to it, and I understand and even applaud peoples' gut resistance to that. When I'm with friends who cross without looking my reply to them is usually "There are plenty of dead people out there who had the right-of-way."

My pet theory is that the bad actors are bad actors across all forms of transportation. A crappy driver makes a crappy pedestrian/cyclist. I think this is because being a "good" driver/cyclist/pedestrian requires you to anticipate what the other class of traffic wants to do (e.g. read body language to see when a car will choose to pull into traffic or a pedestrian cross the street) and if you can't do that in the car->pedestrian direction you probably can't do it in the other.

I live inside Seattle with no car. North of the ship canal or south of I90, no problem. But in and around Amazonia, Capitol Hill, or the downtown core? Rideshare cab drivers are the worst. Regular drivers at least usually drive slow enough to see my wide yellow-coated self walking through a crosswalk now that I have a very bright jacket.

Then again, I'm pretty sure rideshare cabbies don't give a shit about traffic laws anyway. They see "bus only" and think "ah, the perfect loading zone" so it's not too surprising that crosswalks are viewed as impediments to their next fare.

(Yes, I am very annoyed by this.)

I live right in that area. I also do not drive. While I’ve no serious complaints about the drivers, the pervasive construction blocking sidewalks citywide, forcing pedestrians to zigzag along potentially dangerous routes, frustrate me endlessly.

Living in San Antonio, I ride almost every day. It is funny when I ride and have no phone or music I am much more aware of my surroundings. I also notice people texting more and when a car is driving funny can almost predict if they are on their phone.

The few times i have almost been hit is by someone who has a device in their hands and most are merging into my lane and not paying attention.

Even when driving a passenger vehicle I assume this. I've got dashcams recently and I honestly get YouTube-worthy footage on pretty much _every single drive_. It's absolutely ridiculous.

I am very tempted to do that...

I had people cut me off ilegally, pass another vehicles by going in the wrong way (risking a frontal collision with my car), turn while texting, miss the radius and climb on the sidewalk (that one was scary, I genuinely believed the guy would hit a nearby trash truck)...

I saw several crashes, including cars literally flipped over in a straight avenue, dunno how that one happened.

Yet... I started driving only one year ago, in one year I saw much, much, MUCH shenanigans on the road, it is just ridiculous, I don't like using my horn yet there were days I had to use it more than once to avoid collisions (ie: people not paying attention were about to crash on me, 4 DIFFERENT people mind you... and it was a 10 minute drive!)

Definitely get one. You can get one for under $100 these days, some even under $50. The quality starts to drop at that price point, but they'll be good enough to establish fault in a crash.

They're super easy to use. They constantly write in a loop, deleting old footage to make room for new footage as the memory card fills up, so you don't have to maintain them. And they'll usually have a button to press that will move the last couple minutes of video to a location where it won't automatically get deleted when full.

Ride like you are invisible. Assume you don’t exist and drivers do not know you are there. Even if you’re directly in front of them.

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