How to not die on your bike

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PaddockStand said:
There's a school of thought that it helps to gently weave back and forth, left and right, across your lane as you approch a junction. Its based on the theory that some motorists have difficulty accurately assessing the range to an oncoming motorcycle because of the small frontal area of a bike. To a motorist bikes look small and unthreatening until they're up close and then grow in perceived size rapidly, unlike cars. By weaving you look bigger and the movement helps to distinguished you from the background.
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Yup, done that before.
Though I think the real problem with motorists isn't that they have trouble seeing you or judging distance, closing speed, etc.. It's that they literally don't see you. Not because you're too small. But because you're not a car. Your brain does a nice job of filtering out all the momentarily unimportant/uninteresting stimulus and so when a driver is looking for cars to see if it's okay to turn, the brain literally filters out anything that isn't a car.

As someone else posted "Ride as though you were invisible". I'd add "Because you literally ARE invisible".
 
PaddockStand said:
There's a school of thought that it helps to gently weave back and forth, left and right, across your lane as you approch a junction. Its based on the theory that some motorists have difficulty accurately assessing the range to an oncoming motorcycle because of the small frontal area of a bike. To a motorist bikes look small and unthreatening until they're up close and then grow in perceived size rapidly, unlike cars. By weaving you look bigger and the movement helps to distinguished you from the background.

Failing this the motorist will think "what's wrong with the nutter on that bike" which has much the same effect.

This cheesy video demonstrates the concept: Crash Course - The SMIDSY - YouTube
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Thanks a lot for this, really useful.

I will give it a try when it stops raining here and see what sort of results I get, lets hope its a positive one!
 

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