Researchers are beginning to study the impact of various distractions on car drivers. But whatever danger is inherent in these situations only amplifies the risks of the road for motorcyclists.
“When there are crashes that involve a motor vehicle and a motorcycle, the motorcyclists will come out on the short end of it,” said Rae Tyson, a spokesman for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Tyson said that in collisions involving a motorcycle and a four-wheel vehicle, the driver of the four-wheeler is at fault two-thirds of the time. Among those crashes, the most common type is a driver turning left into the path of an oncoming bike.
“Some motorists have a hard time judging the speed of an oncoming motorcycle,” Tyson said.
He and other experts cited another factor: Some drivers simply do not notice motorcycles in traffic. Tom Lindsay, public relations director for the American Motorcyclist Association, called the phenomenon “inattentional blindness,” meaning that people do not register what they do not expect to see.
The AMA in 2001 embarked on a program called Motorcyclists Matter, which in part lobbies states to impose penalties on motorists who violate anothers’ right of way, typically by turning left into the path of an oncoming motorcycle or car. Last year Virginia passed such a law, and legislation is pending in Florida, Maryland, Missouri, New Jersey, Pennslyvania, South Carolina and Texas, with a bill waiting for the governor’s signature in West Virginia, Lindsay said.
The effort is also aimed at making motorists aware of the issue to prevent accidents before they happen, rather than punish afterward.
“The remedy is to educate motorists that driving is a serious business and other motorists’ lives are at stake,” Lindsay said.
But Brian O’Neill, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, eschewed the notion that drivers could be retrained.
“That’s absurd. We rarely in our everyday driving encounter motorcycles,” he said.
And for better or worse, motorcycle riding strategies are mostly predicated on the notion that riders will not be seen.
“From a practical level of riding a motorcycle in the street, you have to assume that nobody ever sees you. Eye contact or not, no one ever sees you. You’re a ghost, except you’re still susceptible to the laws of physics,” said Keith Code, founder of the Superbike Racing School in California, which offers classes on riding techniques in 10 states.
The Motorcycle Safety Foundation conducts RiderCourses in 40 states, including Illinois, that focus primarily on rider protection. The RiderCourse textbook, for example, instructs riders to identify left-turning vehicles and act as if the driver does not see the bike. (The course of action advocated is to gently apply brakes and move to the right portion of your lane.)
Those instructions are included in a lengthy section on the RiderCourse mantra of SIPDE–Scan traffic, Identify conflicts, Predict what other vehicles might do, Decide what you must do and Execute your decision.
The lane placement maneuver echoes another strategy outlined in the book, which is to determine lane position based on such factors as increasing visibility, avoiding drivers’ blind spots, avoiding wind and providing an escape route.
“There is no one best lane position,” the book states. “You must constantly adjust and readjust your position depending on changing traffic conditions.”
The textbook also advocates wearing a helmet and other protective gear, wearing bright colors, riding with the headlight on, signaling to other drivers and leaving ample space between the motorcycle and other vehicles.
“The best thing a motorcyclist can do, whether they’ve been riding 50 years or just started out riding, is to take a motorcycle safety course,” added Lindsay, who has been riding for more than 20 years and still “regularly” takes refresher courses.
Code, the Superbike founder and a riding instructor for more than 25 years, argued that riding defensively can make motorcyclists even more invisible.
“That means you’re going to have to have 360-degree vision, and have to know everything that’s going on around you,” said Code, who also said to assume cars never see bikes because “it’s not their job.”
He advocated aggressive maneuvers–speeding up and slowing down, moving back and forth within a lane–to attract attention.
“I don’t mean [ride] illegally, I mean aggressively,” he said.
Code also cautioned riders not to rely too heavily on wearing bright colors–or installing loud muffler pipes, the solution of choice among a faction of motorcyclists.
“There are too many things in the environment that compete with brightly colored vests, including brightly colored cars,” he said. But “a guy with a brightly colored vest and loud pipes who’s moving around in his lane, he’s going to get noticed.”
O’Neill of the Insurance Institute, an agency funded by insurance companies to research traffic safety, was more pointed: “Add two wheels and put on a helmet and seat belts. It’s an inherently dangerous activity, and I think motorcyclists understand and assume the risks.”
But O’Neill and others had few numbers on how much distracted drivers raise the stakes for motorcyclists.
“It can’t make it better. The extent to which it makes it worse, we cannot say,” O’Neill said.
Research institutions such as NHTSA and the University of Illinois have undertaken studies on distraction, which can include talking on a cellphone or to other passengers, being hit with an object or even tuning the radio. Tim Hurd of NHTSA says the organization knows of 131 fatal crashes across the country in 2001, and 101 in 2000, in which police officers noted that a cellphone played a role in the crash. But he cautioned that there is often no way for police to know if a cellphone is in use, so the actual number of fatal crashes related to cellphones might be much higher.
To frame the general risk from cellphones, O’Neill cited a Canadian study published in 1997, which found that drivers are 4.3 times more likely to crash when on the phone. The study, conducted over several years, began with more than 5,000 drivers in a crash, of whom 1,064 used cellphones while driving. The subjects were whittled down to 699 who consented to the study and for whom cellphone records could be found.
Those drivers, not all of whom were on the phone when they crashed, were questioned on their cellphone habits. Each driver’s phone use on the day of the collision was compared with his or her phone use when driving at the same time and under similar traffic conditions on other days.
O’Neill said similar studies cannot be conducted in the U.S. because phone companies won’t release users’ records. Kimberly Kuo of the trade organization Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association, agreed, saying phone companies typically release such records only under subpoena to protect clients’ privacy.
CTIA, which represents cellular companies, publishes a list of tips on how to responsibly use a phone in a car. The list advocates dialing while pulled over or at a stoplight and discourages drivers from stressful or emotionally charged conversations while under way.
Kuo also noted that any distracted driver who poses a danger to others is liable under reckless-driving and similar laws.
“Right now, if you’re talking on your cellphone and you’re maybe weaving … or doing anything hazardous, you can already be stopped and ticketed,” she said.
Lindsay said the likely reason cellphones are a popular target for safety advocates, even in the absence of hard statistics, is that use of the relatively new technology seems to be rising rapidly. (CTIA estimates that cellular service subscribers more than doubled from about 60 million in June 1998 to 140 million at the end of 2002.)
The AMA two years ago teamed with Tom and Ray Magliozzi of National Public Radio’s Car Talk program to publish bumper stickers that say “Drive Now, Talk Later.”
But “someone who hangs up the cellphone but continues to make sure their pickles are still oriented correctly on their burger is not really getting out of the distraction mode,” Lindsay said.
