The rider's brain has to quickly process what he/she thinks the hazard is doing.
Exactly. That's why I posted this one. I want to add to my list of options by seeing what others think or would do in this situation. I'd prefer to not get into an information feedback loop in my mind that would turn a go by into an impact.
If you get a glimpse of the driver's face, is he/she looking at you in horror and obviously trying to avoid you - or is he/she completely oblivious to your presence?
At high velocity, the driver's face isn't going to be usefully visible until about 30-40 feet. QED.
I would hope that my constant surveillance of my surrroundings would instantly tell me what space around me is available for me to use.
I think that's the real solution. Total awareness of your environment while making certain nothing occupies your safety buffer any longer than absolutely necessary and keeping that under control at all times.
In reality, I hope I do anything except panic.
Panic is the absolute worst thing you can do under any circumstances.
Something from a practical psychology class at university many moons ago: Panic is about giving up and allowing the environment to be in control of your survival...environment being defined as the thing that's attempting to kill you. Even using the word panic with it's known definition is enough to cause people to resort to panic as a functional solution to a problem..which it's not. It typically occurs due to a lack of knowledge and allowing emotion to impose unrealistic survival ideals on a situation. The brain switches off and nothing useful happens after that instead of remaining calm. The further away from the unknown, the more that's understood of a subject, the less likely panic will take over even when the individual runs out of knowledge on how to handle the situation. The very edge of a cliff is perfectly safe, falling off is dangerous. Panic can cause someone to step off the edge into empty air for no justifiable reason in order to attempt to survive being near the edge.
Just something to think about. (Never panic brake, always use emergency braking)
Yesterday's situation:
Around 200 feet, time slowed down and the rest of the event took about 5 minutes in my mind. Under 100 feet was inside of one second to impact. The move to the far right side wasn't working. The cage mostly stayed on the right side of my lane. My speed was in the 30mph range and the cage was around 55-60mph. I had a pickup truck about 50 feet behind me to use to my advantage. I recall deliberately putting myself inside the cages reasonable turn radius then dropped the brakes and aggressively went for the far left shoulder to avoid collision. I was on that shoulder aimed off the road surface before the cage passed me. The truck behind me made scary tire skidding noises and started to follow me. The hostile cage casually kept drifting to my right onto the right shoulder. The only glimpse of the driver and his passenger's face was that nothing unusual was going on and they were the only ones on the road. In this situation, anyone who went right onto the shoulder would have taken out with a 55+mph head on impact.
Afterward, I crossed back into my lane and kept going. In the mirror was a lot of dust from someone behind the truck running into the dirt and at least one car sideways in the road. No one was following me and the truck driver behind me saw absolutely everything that happened so they have a witness. I couldn't rationally stop because if I had, I would have gone back to check on the situation and, well, this country's judicial system doesn't believe in completely justifiable homicide as a method to protect society from murderous terrorists.
That was one solution for this one off situation. It could have easily not worked. It worked mostly because I stayed completely calm and didn't default to preprogrammed mindless drone partial training. The self inflicted monthly parking lot slow school training made the motorcycle handling instinctive. And oh yea, I scrubbed the crap out of my brand stinking new tires before getting around other traffic which allowed them to hold onto the pavement when it was absolutely essential. They had a little over 100 miles on them at the time..mostly on dirt roads that would have been better served with offroad tires.
Analyze, think objectively, control yourself. Practice riding skills at the limit of the bike's and your capability until those skills are instinct. Maintain control of your environment at all times. Fly the machine all the way though the situation or into the crash to a full stop. Never ever ever give up. Afterward, get back on the bike and ride again until the aftereffects fear goes away.
