It’s not that I don’t agree with your post. I basically do.
But as a rider myself I fully understand the full meaning of the line in that defensive driving commercial that aired around 1970:
“Yes. He was right. Dead right.”
If I’m driving or riding slow, I watch my mirrors almost more than what is in front of me. Sure, if someone hits me it’s their fault, but I ride a motorcycle. It means my goal is not so much accident survival is it is accident avoidance. And I’ve done it many, MANY times.
An illegal alien crashed into me at about 25 mph while I sat at a red light in Seattle behind a large commercial van. It launched the 800 pound softail and I into that van and up in the air about ten feet coming to a crashing rest on top the cadillac in the next lane.
Of course the illegal had no drivers license/no insurance! The incident took me out of my career (climbing power poles as a distribution lineman) from a snapped thoracic vertebrae and crushed l/s spine...
The point being: ALWAYS WATCH FOR THE EVIL IN THE MIRRORS!
Thanks for the reply. This is a good point about the mirrors. Still, this particular accident was a worst case as far as overtaking traffic from behind goes.
Even if this rider had been attending to the mirrors constantly, he would have had very little time to get off of the road after recognizing that the overtaking car was not slowing and was not going to change lanes. Some drivers don't change lanes until the last minute, and some don't slow until they're uncomfortably close, after all.
It's hard to protect yourself, on a bike or in a car, from someone who is speeding down the highway and not paying any attention to where he is going. This trooper would have driven right into the back of a car carrier had one happened to be there in front of him.
It's an uncomfortable accident to view, to be sure.