A motorcycle driving by cars on a city street.Getty Two weeks ago, at 7:30 am, a motorcyclist in Burlington, Ontario suffered life-threatening injuries when a car turned left in front of him. Later that night in the same city, a motorcyclist was killed when an SUV turned left in front of him. The next day, an Oakville driver was charged with making an unsafe left turn, causing a motorcyclist to be violently thrown and severely injured; the rider and bike ended up 40 metres from the point of impact.The same weekend in New Hampshire, seven members of a motorcycle club – the Marine Jarheads, made up of Marines and their spouses – were killed when a pickup towing a flatbed crashed into them on the highway. The 23-year-old driver has been charged with seven counts of negligent homicide, though his driving record was already a disaster. He’d been charged with operating a vehicle under drugs/alcohol in May (cops found a crack pipe on him) and he had a rollover in Texas earlier in June. His licence should have been revoked, and the Registrar of Massachusetts’ motor vehicle division (where the trucking company he drove for operates from) has resigned.Ive taken so many advanced driver training courses over the years, Ive lost count. But the motorcycle training I took remains the most memorable, the most sobering, and the most valuable. You truly understand just how vulnerable you are, no matter how much bike you buy, no matter how much you invest in leathers and safety gear, no matter how much you spend on a helmet. You learn to drive as if everyone around you is going to kill you, because some of them are.As for the idiots who insist on weaving in and out of traffic on their crotch rockets, theres a famed biker adage seemingly lost on the young: There are old motorcyclists. There are bold motorcyclists. But there are no old, bold motorcyclists.Motorcycles have been on our roads about as long as cars have. This is not new. Motorcycles change, vehicles evolve, safety improves everything gets better, it seems, except how we interact with each other.Eight years ago I cut a motorcycle off, and I wrote about it. I didn’t mean to, he was speeding, but it didn’t matter. A life was at stake. I was shaking as I wrote it, and reading it again is still just as visceral as when it happened. I heard from riders around the country, and braced myself for the fallout. Instead, I got thank-yous. Not for nearly hitting one of their own, but for admitting I’d made a mistake and put him in danger. Apparently, riders are not used to drivers owning up to their own mistakes.The first three crashes at the top of this article shook me, too. Any motorcyclist will tell you that someone in the opposite direction making a left turn puts them on even higher alert. Left turns, in general, are one of the most deadly moves we make every day, but they make anything smaller – a pedestrian, a cyclist, a motorcyclist – nearly invisible. A New York City Department of Transportation study sums it up thus: “Left turns are more dangerous than right turns for three main reasons: left turns can be taken at a wider radius, which leads to higher speeds and greater pedestrian exposure; the driver’s visibility is partially obscured by parked cars and the vehicle’s A-pillar; and left turns are more complicated than rights, and require more mental and physical effort (‘driver workload’) than right turns.”Drivers can be so focused on finding their break in a flow of traffic that they fail to see pedestrians in a crosswalk, or other smaller oncoming traffic. I don’t know precisely what happened in those Burlington instances, and the police are asking for witnesses, but the onus to prevent a crash is on the person making the left-hand turn. Unless those bikes were going an excessive speed, one life was needlessly ended and one forever changed. Safe riders will try to maximize their visibility to you. They will ride behind you to the left, so you can see them in your rearview mirror. Multiple riders will ride two abreast.The MTO states, “(a)ll motorcycles must have a white light at the front (headlight) and a red light at the back (rear or tail light) and these must be used at all times of day and night.” You’ll even see some motorcycles with a modulating headlamp – it’s pulsing – in the daytime. It helps makes drivers more aware. Sensors kick in to keep the beam steady at dusk. The slaughter on the New Hampshire highway was just flat-out murder. New Hampshire doesn’t have a helmet law, and their slogan is “Live free or die.” I was there the weekend so many members of that club were wiped out, and it is prime season for motorcycles and RVs. The winding two-lane blacktops throughout that part of the country are spectacular for driving, and we saw countless bikes. The only time I noted a helmet-less head was in town, which was stupid. Those members of that club came from several states, and in every picture posted on the internet of the club (and there
Origin: Lorraine Explains: Deadly motorcycle crashes, and the drivers who cause them