It looks like the idiot was too busy watching the cop car and not paying attention to the pesky task of DRIVING!! Hopefully the biker will be OK... I cringe at the thought.
I get extremely defensive when stopped. I always put it in 1st gear with a slight angle-off, keep my head on a swivel, and constantly check the rear views. I've jumped my bike over to the shoulder based on the closure rate of the cager behind me while stopped at a light. It was a teen with a cell phone stuffed in her ear and she had to lock up her tires to stop.
Call me paranoid, but cagers tend to let things inside the vehicle take priority over job 1. Watch out!!!
My God!! Thats scary. Thats why im always watching my mirrors at a stop. I hope the rider was ok. It looked like he saw it coming at the last second and started to react but was too late.
__________________ It does'nt matter where your at, it's where you can get to from there! Rich K. http://www.garageband.com/artist/Kikplate
I always have my eyes on the rear views ready to blast out of there if I see some idiot coming on too fast or if they look like they won't stop...at the end of the day, you can't trust any cars out there. May sound paranoid but I always assume they will hit me and am always prepared to take evasive action.
JB
__________________
[color=Red]3rd Battalion 7th Marines
"The Cutting Edge"
Like most said, I keep a watch on my mirrors. I had a close call similar to that one day. I was stopped behind a line of traffic, staying just to the left of the car in front of me.
I saw a cager coming up fast, too fast. When I figured he couldn't stop. I pulled alongside the car in front of me. The cager finally got stopped, about 2 feet behind the car I WAS behind.
Never completely relax! Keep watchin your mirrors!
Believe it or not, I had almost the exact same thing happen to me when I was in a car stopped at a light and the lane beside me was empty. To make it worse, it was a hit and run. I pulled myself out of the back seat and tried to chase the guy, but a rear fender was digging into the tire and I had to pry it away before I could go after him and by then he was long gone. I was in a Camry and he was in a full sized van.
Now the rest of the story....in that same 12 month period, I was rear ended by a teen age girl whose parents were going throough a divorce and both thought the other paid the insurance and neither had.
End result two accidents, neither one was my fault, but my insurance co. had to pay both times. Guess what? They raised my rates because I had tow events on which they had to pay.
The insurance company I switched didn't have a problem with my having 2 acidents where I was not at fault.
About a year ago, I had less than 500 miles on my car when I'm visiting St. Louis and a woman in a Blazer didn't get stopped in time behind me. Said she was busy looking over at the Target store. This time, my ins. co. didn't even make me go through her company (I knew her co. from having lived in St. Louis and 90% of their business is w/ substandards, so I didn't want to deal with them. My company (Hartford through AARP) waived the deductible, sent a guy down from 50 miles away a day after I reported it and told me to take it wherever I wanted. Think that I'll stay with them for a while. Art
How do you protect against this
