Gloop said:
The drive didn't signal. Usually when I see a car signalling a turn I slow doing because I don't trust cars.
In this case I have no time to do anything. I couldn't veer out of the way nor brake any harder. Somehow I protected my head.There are only two things I could have done differently. Wear more lighting on strobe, or go a whole lot slower.
Honestly, in my experience, in situations like that, it's just as likely that they would still have done what they did, either because they don't believe you're going as fast as you are, or because they simply aren't looking *at all* and wouldnt' have seen on oncoming semi truck either.
Sometimes a super-loud horn, or a car or truck horn, can startle someone into hesitating before they do whatever stupid thing they were about to do, and make them look, but I wouldn't bet my life on that either. :/ (I do have a car horn on CrazyBike2, and I've used it a few times with success, but I still don't depend on it as my only "defense" action).
But really, the most important to me, the third thing you could've done...part of the "don't trust cars" for me: If there is a possibility of a car doing a turn in front of me like that, I assume they will and do what I need to to ensure that I won't be able to collide with them if they do.
Sometimes that means coming to a complete stop until they've passed because I just can't tell, and there's nowhere I could go if they did.
Sometimes it means moving leftward in my lane *towards them*, away from the right edge of the road or out of the bike lane, so I have soemwhere to go when they do their thing, even if that is into their lane (if there's no one else but us in that stretch).
FWIW, I'm also lit up like a motorcycle, car, and christmas tree, :lol: but I don't depend on that, either, even though it probably does more for cars/trucks paying attention to me than anything else I've done so far (partly because the bike is so different that they don't know what I am, and probably assume I'm going faster than I am because I look kinda like a motorcycle to them).
I used to try to depend on painting my bikes up in DayGlo colors, reflective stickers and vests, etc. But Iv'e found that doesn't really do enough (it does help a lot), and that's one reason I went for the lighting.
Buuuut: When i have built a pure bicycle-looking bike (the Fusin test bike) but still with all that same lighting on it, the very same drivers that give me full lanes and road respect when i ride CrazyBike2, instead they did what they do to most cyclists and zoom right past me as if I weren't there, or worse, as if I *shouldn't* be there.
Some places aren't so bad as that...but main roads usually are, here.