MOTORCYCLE HAZARD ALERT: CELL PHONE INTOXICATED DRIVERS

You can ride around all day in a car with the windows down and the sunroof open on the best roads with the best scenery and it still doesn’t compare, doesn’t even come close, to being out there on a bike, in the wind, feeling the curves, throttle in hand. I’ve been reading articles on motorcycle safety saying to get a bike with anti-lock brakes and never speed but I like my bike as it is and when conditions are right and traffic is light or non-existent, I don’t always keep strictly to the speed limit. But I watch for road hazards and the world has changed, not because of improved equipment or riding techniques but by the nature of the hazards. The main hazards used to be left-turning drivers, sand, and gravel on the road, deer, and drivers coming out of side streets and driveways. Now we’ve got a whole new breed of road hazard — the 4-wheel drivers on cell phones.

Nearly every week you can read a new report, study, or article that says a driver talking on a cell-phone is as distracted or impaired as a driver who is legally intoxicated. In Virginia, it is now illegal to text while driving, but the driving and cell phone talking goes on. At some point legislators may take action when there are enough car drivers, car passengers, and pedestrians who die or suffer brain injury or paralysis due to cell-phone impaired drivers. Until that day comes, the hazard of cell-phone impaired drivers is upon us. On a motorcycle, you need to have mental radar to spot these drivers. It would be nice if they had a light mounted on the top of their cars that flashed when they were talking on their phones, but that’s not happening.

With these drivers you can set your spacing between cars, take the most visible position in your lane, wear brightly colored gear, have a headlight that flickers, weave a bit, and still be invisible. The reason we have this failure to communicate is because a cell phone conversation takes the driver’s mind someplace other than the road in front, to the sides, and behind them. With these drivers, our job is evasion and survival. We are back to looking for the clues that tipped us off to drivers intoxicated by alcohol who drove under the threat of being ticketed and locked up. Now your mental radar needs to be alert for the car that is slow to take off when a light changes from red to green, the van driving slower than everyone else, the SUV that drifts onto the lines between lanes or changes lanes slowly with no signal, the van driving at you on your side of the road, or the car that speeds up and zooms ahead only to slow back down and drop back to a slower speed. Spot a car with open road ahead and six to ten vehicles bunched up behind and you probably have a winner. Any sign of erratic driving and an alarm should go off in your head to put space between you and that car or van.

I know my bike, my gear, and my limits and I ride accordingly but when it comes to being safe out there, we are up against drivers who are driving to distraction, impaired by their cell phones. Cell phones have such an appeal that the number of impaired drivers on the road these days is far beyond what it was in the days when alcohol was the intoxicant of choice. When you are fastening the strap on your helmet, remember to turn on your mental radar. And have an alert summer.

BUCKFIRE & BUCKFIRE, P.C. is a Michigan personal injury law firm and is not representing any of the parties mentioned in this article at the time of the posting of the article. The information contained in this article is from online news sources and any perceived misstatements should be attributed to those sources as we did not complete any investigation of the accident. If you believe that the information is inaccurate and would like it changed or would like this post completely removed from the site, please let us know and we will do our best to promptly accommodate your request. We are very sensitive to these requests.

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