Conspicuity - some new research

At the risk of stirring the pot again, I was reminded yesterday by an instance of somebody 'looking but not seeing': mid afternoon, so properly light, but dull. I wasn't in Hi-Viz, but nobody except me on my bike had lights on. You'd think a bright headlight would stand out in those circumstances. Proceeding at <20mph on a busy (filled with shoppers on pavement, parked cars both sides) high street, so plenty of background distractions for the woman driver wishing to join from the left. Nobody in front of me and the following car was going slowly 100m back or so. There was no opposing traffic so I was positioned in the very centre of the road. The woman stopped. Looked me straight in the eye (or so it seemed), waited until I was perhaps 30m away and moved out agonisingly slowly, right in my path.

To be clear, this was not an emergency stop - merely very firm braking for me. And I eased off the brakes at the end so I rolled right up to her door hoping to emphasise the point to her that she had just done something very silly and dangerous. Watching the look of complete horror spreading over her features suggested that I'd done just that.

So there is this phenomenon where Carnage's "HANG ON WHAT'S THAT?" response isn't triggered. It's happened to me before (virtually the same place, actually) and I have to remember it for the future.

 

you stated you were very centre of the road and the woman looked you straight in the eye and "waited" till you were 30m awayand then pulled out into your path. now this i only an assumption on my part and forgive me if i am wrong but i am assuming for the distance from making eye contact to her pulling out you, you remained firmly in the centre of the road ? if so then your headlight was just another twinkly thing in a high st full of bristling chrimbo decorations and lights in shop wondows .
Now then my theory and my common practice would have been to move back and forth across the road ( doesnt have to look like your valentino rossi warming his tyres on the outlap just a gentle weave) and see if her gaze remains in contact with you.( ill bet her eyebrows raise as if to say Ooooh thats unusual ...wonder why he is doing that) and bingo youve got your aknowledgement that youve been seen
( unless of course she has a stomach problem and has just shit herself whilst farting in which case you could still be screwed ) Honestly ...try it ....it works for the Met

 

I'll endorse this. A fellow instructor promotes exactly the same technique - you move in towards the kerb from your normal riding position (typically right of centre of the lane) then back out across the lane towards the white line. He calls it the 'Z' line. It enhances your movement against the background as much as possible, disrupting the 'motion camouflage' effect.

Interesting - can you expand how you know that? Genuinely interested btw!

 

Bugger it...

I posted a long reply to PM and it's vanished

I haven't time to post the whole thing again... but in brief...

1) Drivers (and riders) learn by experience to look for gaps, NOT vehicles so she looked behind you at the space
2) Motion Camouflage - approaching in a straight line you don't move much relative to the background
3) If the driver is looking behind you, you're out of focus and effectively invisible
4) Emerging drivers have a complex task monitoring everything that's going on whilst trying to find the gap - imagine a series of slices of swiss cheese sliding past each other - you have to work out where the hole goes all the way through - research shows they typically look in each direction for less than half a second at a time
5) Dipped beam is ineffective as a DRL - it's designed not to shine in drivers' eyes!

It's MUCH easier for the rider approaching the emerging car to see it!

 

Fully agree with a lot of this!

 

sure no secret ....i rode with a couple of Met riders for quite some time and they were always willing to depart techniques for safer, smoother and progressive riding things like.... using all of the oncoming lane if its clear to extend your veiw around a bend and i mean all of it right into the other gutter ...sounds scary and put into practice is scarey at first but youd be amazed at how much time from seeing an oncoming vehicle you have to get back into the right side of the road ....this also allows a later turn in and smoother apex for when one is being progressive ( yes lets call it progressive)

 

Thanks. The Z line has been promoted by a few of us instructors for some years now but that is the first time I've heard of a police rider using it.

I'm not so keen on off-siding tho - and the police don't teach it anymore at police driving schools AFAIK. I had a very near miss early one Sunday morning some years back...

I was offsiding on the run up to a gentle, fast bend when I spotted a car coming the other way, I did indeed have plenty of time to move back to my side of the road. What I hadn't anticipated was the car coming the other way swerving onto my side of the road at the same moment he saw me, even though he was well over 100m away... taken completely by surprise, I swerved right back onto the wrong side... just as he mirrored my movement... so we're still head-on! At this point I took a chance and stayed where I was - and he swerved one more back onto my side of the road. We just missed each other (neither of us had thought to hit the brakes), each on the wrong side of the white line with a closing speed the wrong side of 150mph!!

And as a reminder, I very nearly took out a Kent police bike a couple of winters ago just as dawn was breaking. He was offsiding and obviously wasn't expecting a car doing 80-odd coming round the bend the other way. He made it back to his side of the road with only 10m or so to spare!

I am VERY cautious about doing it now.

 

bloomin t'interweb delayed postings

 

absolutley 100% agree had a few moments when ive seen the surprised look on the oncoming drivers face so tend to restrict it to easy bends and slow rides to get a heads up on the road to come.
it may or may not be on the police corriculum but afaik its still widely preached and used.
incidently one of the guys did his first track day and got slaughtered by the instructor for his lines and was told to forget everything he had learnt as it had no place on the track.....also he is now a bikesafe instructor.
just another heads up ...track days are great for learning your bikes limitations just remember once back on the road the other half of the track contains traffic coming the other way

 

I think I may need to see the 'Z' line demonstrated so it's clear in my head. I agree that when on the weave to the right, I would be moving faster relative to the background; but it seems to me that when on the leftwards weave, the opposite would be true: I might even appear stationery for the vital second or so.

I am also running a short film through my head: it began with the very startled woman swearing to a Policeman that this mad biker must have zoomed down the road at a speed well in excess of the 30mph limit only because one moment I wasn't there and the very next moment my headlight was shining right in her face; (I was intentionally well below 20mph). And the next scene is me explaining earnestly to the lay judge that the Officer was mistaken when he claims I was driving in a careless manner - actually, Your Honour, I was following the 'Z' line, a little-known advanced riding technique which improves my visibility to others.

The third scene starts with a shout of, "Mind your fingers"; there is a loud 'Clang' and the other occupants of the cell agree that it is indeed 'dark in 'ere'.

My own thoughts about 'offsiding' date back to being an Observer for the SE Group of the IAM (cars, I'm afraid) in the 1970s. It's a great idea to gain extra visibility, but there are a surprising number of times when it actually hampers visibility: farm tracks emerging on the RHS, for example. And once out there, you may enjoy the view so much, it is genuinely hard to remember that you must leave yourself time and space to return to the left. Someone much older and wiser than me managed to put a Great Big Thought in my head when I was 21 - what happens if you meet yourself coming the other way? Especially if they too are 'pressing on'?

 

yup yup yup many have said "always" ride as if your about meet yourself coming the other way.
as to any officer saying you were riding in a careless manner ...remember i quoted it doesnt have to be a dating Z more a gentle S i suppose is a better description and i am certain any court of law would most certainly take the word of a trained motorcycle instructor that this is a valid manouvre designed to improve motorcyclist road safety.
also remeber your not just an object moving to the left then the right your an object with a light on the front and even possibly a hi viz ....those items whether moving left or right are out of the norm moving "laterely across the road , they are looking at the road not the shops ( or should be ) lets remeber its never an exact science but im going to call it the tesco theory cos every little helps

 

there is a point he approaches a junction and clealry states he is repositioning not only the driver to see him better but for him to get a btter veiw of at it, in it and under it ...its not exactly the manouvre we are talking about but does enphasise the need to move to highlight yourself to others.

 

That Z riding technique and above mentioned maneuvering is mandatory to pass your licensing in Australia. You can fail easily for not doing it at intersections, driveways, pedestrian crossings etc....





On a side note, that is why I won't ride with certain people or certain riding/motorcycle groups as that whole width of my lane is MINE. Do not ride beside me or near my rear tyre as you will find I may run into you. But I'm sure they'd learn then! LOL

Am now off my soap box!!

 

I'll try to draw a word picture.

You're following another vehicle at a safe distance - say 2 seconds or thereabouts. As you see a junction ahead of the car, you move smooth left so that you open up a clear line of sight up the inside of the car, then as the car gets closer you move smoothly back in a diagonal to the right, making sure that the bike is upright in a straight line at the point you might have to hit the brakes to perform an emergency stop.

By moving left initially, though you give up a moment of movement relative to the background as you say, you ensure that when you move right again, you maximise the distance you can travel.

(Just remember whilst focussing on the car on the left not to ignore any vehicle waiting to turn right - you're more likely to be killed by THAT car than the one that pulls out from the left.)

It's the very fact that bikes "appear from nowhere" that fuels both the popular 'lunatic biker' view AND the research into the accidents where reconstruction simply fails to show the rider was doing anything out of the ordinary.

The thing is, done well, the entire manoeuvre doesn't look extreme or uncontrolled. Saying that, I had a moderately heated discussion with a trainee who had taken the Z line idea and turned it into a straight line "wriggle". His argument was that by twitching the bars left and right in double quick time, his light would appear to flicker, attract attention and by doing it at the very last moment, he would also gain the added benefit of not looking fully in control of the bike thus deterring a "chancer" relying on the rider to avoid the collision from lunging into the gap. He was also destabilising the bike just at the point he MIGHT need to brake hard. I couldn't really get a handle on any of that thinking!

Yes, the alter ego on the reverse course is always a good wake up call

 

I'll watch that later!

 

Interesting.

I've got a video called "Ride On" made I think by the Victoria Office of Road Safety about ten years ago... it's rather good, and definitely very much more proactive in terms of taking responsibility at intersections than UK training which tends to be a bit "keep an eye open and be ready to swerve or brake", even at advanced level. I've transplanted this Aussie approach to my own training courses.

A staggered riding position should still allow plenty of movement laterally for either rider - but yes, would agree that riders on group riders are often consistently too close - no idea why, with a good marker system no-one should get lost.

 

I agree with the majority of what's been said. What I totally disagree with, and find insulting, is the theory that anyone wearing HiViz thinks "I must be seen because I'm using hi-vis / DRLs". I don't know anyone who thinks this way, and I am really p*ssed off with it being repeated over and again. Comments like that do more harm than good. Let's discuss riding techniques by all means, but insulting peoples intelligence by claiming they ride more or less dangerously depending on which jacket they put on is daft.

 

Mmmm.....swiss cheese.

 

"Visibility
The clothes you wear when riding can serve to make you more visible in traffic. Choose brightly colored clothing when possible. Only two riders of the 900 accident cases studied by researchers were wearing brightly colored clothing. If you wear dark clothing, inexpensive retroreflective vests can be worn over the jacket. Also, it is a good idea to affix reflectorized tape striping to garments you wear regularly when riding. This applies to bright clothing worn during the day. Unless they are reflectorized, they will not offer the same good visibility at night. Jackets made with retroreflective material also will help make you more visible at night."

From the "Begin Motorcycling" website...

"
Arrive Alive Campaign



Pop in to see us to collect your FREE Arrive Alive Hi-Vis Vest.
During the darker winter months it is essential us bikers do whatever we can to get ourselves noticed on the roads. Simply wearing a Hi-Vis vest over your existing motorcycle jacket makes you noticeably more visible to other drivers.
Pop in and have a chat with us for other High Visibility ideas, from reflective stickers for your bike to fully Hi-Vis helmets, gloves & armoured motorcycle jackets. There really is no excuse not to protect yourself!
Vests are available whilst stocks last"

Arrive Alive campaign

Police to issue thousands more riders with hi-vis vests

By Steve Farrell -
General news
12 February 2010 11:39

Thousands of motorcyclists could be stopped by police for not wearing high-visibility clothing as more forces adopt the policy.
Riders will be stopped and given lectures on “being seen” as well reflective vests to put on over their jackets or leathers.
Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire are the latest areas to join Sussex in issuing the kit.
Nottinghamshire Police plans to hand out 3000 packs containing hi-vis vests. Riders are invited to collect them from police stations but will also be stopped and given them at the roadside.
In Lincolnshire, motorcyclists can collect the kit but are not being stopped at the roadside, according to the force.
A spokesman for Nottinghamshire Police said: “We’re putting together high-visibility packs at the moment and will start to hand them out in March. They contain a high-visibility jacket or bib and rucksack, as well as leaflets which are designed for all road users but contain messages relevant to motorcyclists in respect of speed.”

From MCN

Try to wear something that makes you more visible, a jacket with reflective trim perhaps, or get a hi-vis over-jacket you can slip on and then stow when you arrive.

From the Get On website

That's just a few found on the very first page of a Google search. And a few clothing manufacturers:

The Weise Hornet Jacket
This jacket stormed into the Weise range at the beginning of 2009 and has been a massive hit with motorcyclists ever since. On todays roads, getting seen by car drivers is paramount - and as motorcyclists this isn't easy to forget. The neon yellow shell of the Hornet Jacket ensures you the best possible chance of being noticed.

PROOF Thermal Rainsuit Neon


Ultimate Weather Protection: Thermal waterproof rainsuit for extra warmth in teeth chattering conditions. Neon panels as well as reflective panels ensure you are seen,
With winter just around the corner make sure you're seen with a Richa Sleeveless Motorcycle Safety Jacket

And then of course there are the riders themselves who pick themselves up and say "I had my lights on and was wearing a dayglo vest and they STILL didn't see me."

Risk compensation theory doesn't agree. Would you ride the same way in tee shirt, shorts and flip flops.

 

Doesn't Hi Viz just look a bit naff though?

Just me then.......

.