5Nov18, 6556 miles, 76.916 mpg ave.
Beautiful week for riding. The lowest temp that I saw was about 52 degrees in the morning. Wearing jeans, winter jacket and my winter motorcycle gloves it wasn't too bad. Just a little chilly for the first few miles. Unfortunately, three out of the five days that I rode home, it was dark because I got off late. Every one of those days was a fantastic afternoon in the 80s.
I installed the Evotech radiator guard yesterday. It went on very easy and fit was perfect. I had not even thought about how it might rattle around on the radiator but it came with many little foam stickies but the short, tiny instructions were pretty explicit about placement. I think that it looks pretty good.
Top 7 bad passing maneuvers that I see often:
Today's top 7 list is the weird passing maneuvers that people do around my semi. Very rarely do they do these around my motorcycle. I have listed them in order of how much they scare me.
7) The “oh noes! A Truck!” pass Many, many people in Arizona are absolutely incapable of merging onto a freeway. I see it all the time. One of the worst of these is the 'driver' that is coming down the on ramp in front of me, already going faster and still accelerating, no signal and then they see me and slam on their brakes. I can do nothing but go by as they often find themselves driving in the emergency lane. They will then swerve behind me into the next lane, pass me and swerve back over in front of me thereby showing that they ARE the biggest idiot. While this is scary to me it's number 7 because I can see what they are doing and probably are not going to hurt me, they may scratch my truck but the dash cam footage will show that they purposely put themselves in harms way.
6) The “Where did that truck come from?” pass
Some people are clearly not paying attention when they drive. This one is an example of someone that should not be driving in the first place. This driver will come up behind me, with no one else around for miles and slam on their brakes before running in the back of my truck. I just wish I had a camera back there so that I could see how many of these drivers get the 'oh crap' look on their faces. After a few seconds (sometimes minutes) the car then swerves around me and begins to accelerate away again, sometimes swerving back in front of me too early to find out that the next truck is also going slower than them. This person is not going to hurt me at all but if I'm not paying enough attention myself, I may never see the car that runs into me, I may not even realize it and end up getting pulled over for a hit and run later. The dash cam is no help with this one.
5) The “isn't it illegal to pass on the left?” pass
This driver is probably the most perplexing. It is also the one most likely to occur when I am driving a car or motorcycle as well. This driver will come up behind me and refuse to pass on the left no matter how clear it is or how far to the next exit. They will only pass when an opportunity arises to pass on the right, like another lane opening, an exit ramp, right turn lane, or gravel landscaping (seriously). One driver actually followed me closely for over 75 miles only to pass me when I got to Winslow and a short lane opened on the right. This driver scares me because I have no idea what the malfunction in the brain is or what kind of crazy is in their head. The dash cam does no good here.
4) The Non-Pass pass
If you come up behind a semi that is going just a little slower than you, slow down or speed up and pass. Don't drive like this driver and pass the semi doing just a little faster. This driver will come by often trailing a train of cars. This is pretty dangerous because frustrated idiots do the unpredictable. Once they are just barely by they often swerve over in front of me. I don't know if they expect me to slow down whenever I get passed and they think they are 'teaching me a lesson' or if they are suicidal.
3) The “Squeeze Play” pass
This driver often is found tailgating the Non-Pass passer. When this driver sees a hole they think is big enough to fit through, there they go. This move gets even more dangerous when the non-pass passer chooses to try and get out of their way quickly as both often end up in front of me with their brake lights lit up. I have to watch very closely when I see this coming up. There is even a motorcycle rider out there that owes me his life because he couldn't wait .01 more seconds. Playing a “Squeeze Play” around trucks is a sure way to get killed and block up the freeway for hours.
2) The “I sped up, what more do you want?” pass
This driver does speed up to pass but then, just beyond the front of my truck, this driver slows down to the speed they were going before then swerves over in front of me far too close . This one is incredibly scary for me because I don't know what this driver is actually doing. This maneuver is rarely accompanied by a signal. (But then a signal before the event is so rare that it confuses me anyway.) I don't know if they are resetting the cruise before they come over or checking if they have cleared the front of the truck but it is unsettling when they do it.
1) The “You Shall Not Pass” pass
This driver is beyond in a hurry. They are clearly afraid that ANY time stuck behind another vehicle is going to be the end of the world. They are especially afraid that a truck will get in front of them so when passing trucks they snuggle up to the car in front of them to make sure that the 70 foot truck cannot get between them and the car in front of them. If the truck's signal comes on and they are too far behind they will floor it to get up next to the trailer to try and keep the truck from moving over even if the three cars in front of them did the exact same thing. Since they are often in a position where they cannot see a hazard up ahead the truck may be forced to move over and will anyway. After all, if a driver forces me to choose between running over an emergency responder and pushing an idiot off the road, the idiot is going off. Clearly this can be a very dangerous move, but not so much for me. This move does scare me though because it is very clear how insane the driver is. The only collision that I have been involved with while driving a semi was a situation similar to this except that driver wasn't trying to keep me from moving over, he was trying to keep the construction zone from moving over. He ended up running into my trailer instead of the construction barrel and then getting arrested for hit and run.
When riding a motorcycle I am very cognizant how I pass trucks. The last thing that I want to happen is to have 18 wheels rolling over me. I just cannot understand bike riders that take those kinds of risks around semis. In fact, probably the most dangerous pass I have ever seen was a rider screaming between a line of trucks going up a hill and another, lighter truck passing them. I know that in California they allow lane splitting but screaming between two trucks at over 100 mph with less than three feet between them is completely insane. I didn't include that idiot on my list because I have never seen that done again. In fact, he was part of a group that waited their turn. Wouldn't it be nice if every driver could remember the lesson they learned in kindergarten about waiting their turn?
