Have
you ever been confronted with the need to drive in the fog? I can remember many
many days of riding between L.A. and San Francisco where I found myself suddenly
closed in by a fog bank. Those were scary times, for several reasons.
If
you cannot see two seconds ahead of you, of course, you should get off your
bike. That’s not an issue many would argue. What is, however, is the nature of
accidents that you can expect if you ride in reduced visibility environments.
Besides
what we all understand as risks (that you will ride into something you didn’t
see, or that somebody will ride into you, for the same reason), I suggest that
the most serious problem likely to happen is that you will drop your motorcycle
- for apparently no good reason.
It
makes sense, actually. With limited visibility you are unable to see the
horizon. Passing trees give you some hint of vertical, but not always reliably.
Anyway, if you are in a curve and must stop quickly, you have no way of knowing
if the bike is vertical when you get stopped! Before you know it you find the
bike falling over and you are unable to stop it. All because you could not see
the horizon, (even though you do not consciously look at it in order to gauge
vertical.)
Who’da
thunk such a thing?
Another
interesting phenomena that a reader pointed out to me recently is that studies
have shown that people tend to gradually increase speed while driving in the
fog. I didn’t know that and cannot recall that I have had that happen to me,
but I certainly understand how it could happen. With any experience at all we
tend to look at our speedometers rarely as we can judge pretty well what our
speed is using the passing scenery for cues. In the fog those cues are
unreliable.