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 His licence should have been revoked, and the Registrar of Massachusetts’ motor vehicle division (where the trucking company he drove for operates from) has resigned.Ive taken so many advanced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
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Lorraine Explains: What’s cooking in your car today?
June 2019. Officially the hottest June ever. In the world. In Northern California, thousands of mussels cooked in their shells — on the beach. Roads buckled in North Dakota. Europe is bracing for temperatures expected to hit 38 C in coming days.But it doesn’t have to be anywhere near that hot for you to risk many things that are in your car. Even on a non-record-setting day, there are dangerous and costly mistakes you can make by leaving things in your parked vehicles.You would never leave your child, your pet or your grandma in a parked car in summer. We don’t need to go there in this piece. Don’t leave any living creature for even ten minutes — don’t. But what about other things, especially things we haul around with us the rest of the year? You might be surprised to know there isn’t much that high heat can’t wreck. About the hottest your car can get is 82 C (180 F). It doesn’t take long, however, and in just the first hour, temps can soar. I locked myself in a hot car to test it. Outside was a lovely, breezy 26-C (79-F) day, but within an hour, it was 52 C (126 F) inside that car. You’ve probably noticed there are times you can’t even touch your steering wheel when your car has been sitting in the summer. Hard plastic dashboards, centre consoles and seats also store heat and radiate it back into the cabin, where it can’t escape. So many surfaces absorbing heat, so many contributing to the escalating temperature inside. So here’s what you shouldn’t leave in your car. Basically, preheat your oven to 170 degrees, and then decide what would be OK in there for several
Origin: Lorraine Explains: What’s cooking in your car today?
Lorraine Explains: Why do people hit and run?
If you live in the Toronto area, you were no doubt aware of, and angered by, the thought that a 4-year-old little boy lies in hospital in critical condition after being hit by a motorcyclist, who then fled the scene. Thanks to the tattle-y goodness of cameras, cameras everywhere, the police were able to post a photo of the bike, along with the driver and passenger, almost immediately. Anyone spying the newish, large, orange Harley Davidson Road Glide must have chuckled just a little. That’s like trying to hide an elephant under a Smartie: not a ton of those bikes in the wild, and that colour will stand out and be memorable. Surely those committing this most cowardly of acts, to cause bodily injury or death, or even just material damage, and then flee, must know in a situation especially like this one, there are witnesses. His passenger hopped off and ran; if it was a first date, hopefully it’s the last. Dr. J. Thomas Dalby is an adjunct professor of Psychology at the University of Calgary. He’s also a forensics expert in the area of hit and run. With a colleague, Dr. Marc Nesca of Athabasca University, he authored the 2008 paper The Psychology of Hit and Run. He’s used to getting a call when anyone has questions, because before their paper, most previous studies date back to the 1940s. I asked him if the lack of studies indicates that the problem is going away. I’d called because the headlines of late seem to be littered with incidents of hit and run, from the viral video from Highway 410 where a car is clipped and spun by a vehicle that then speeds away; a 14 -year -old cyclist dead near Quebec City; a 21-year-old Brampton man left with critical injuries back in March; a Mom of five in Central Alberta; the list is endless. “No, it’s getting worse!” said Dalby. U.S. statistics are better than Canadian ones, he explains, and our countries share the same cars and similar cultures. National Highway Traffic Safety Association numbers generally reflect Canadian behaviours if you adjust for population – we’re about a tenth of theirs. “In the U.S., they’re at 750,000 hit-and-run incidents annually. Two thousand of those result in fatalities,” says Dolby. Why do people run? I posed the question to Dolby, anticipated some deep seated psychological tick. “They don’t have licences, they’re in a stolen car, or they’re drunk,” he stated, flatly. “Overwhelmingly, those who flee the scene of a hit and run have made an instant decision – within seconds – about the cost of staying versus taking off.” If they are driving with no licence or are impaired, the choice must seem easy. Self preservation overtakes everything else, including the basic humanity of not leaving a person to die on the road. I ask him about a panic response. Surely some people have a stress-induced response that allows them to act in ways that are contrary to both their normal selves and a lawful society. “There is a small, legitimate subsection where we see an adrenaline rush kick in, which can lead to confusion and panic.” He cites one such case where a woman had been driving home at 2 am, having had nothing stronger to drink than tea. On the road, someone stepped out in front of her car, she hit him and killed him. She drove home, and her husband – a first responder – instantly knew something was wrong. Police were called and she was charged, though a judge later tossed the case. The man she’d hit had been carrying out his suicide, and the shock she was in meant she didn’t recall the scene, not that she was a trying to flee it. Dalby stresses that drivers make a call instantly. They consider their surroundings. In a rural area where there might be few, if any, witnesses, they might be more tempted to run. “Police face an uphill battle solving many of these,” he says. We all think it could be a neighbour suddenly parking in a garage that’s never held a car, or a car sporting a new paint job, but the hit and run remains a stubborn crime to solve. I ask if television has helped or hindered the ways the public views hit and runs. “It’s the CSI effect,” Dalby says with a sigh. “You mean that Dead to Me show, right?” It’s a new show on Netflix featuring a dead husband and a damaged Mustang. And yes, I do mean that show. “Paint analysis is an extraordinary science, and we know that every car has unique paint characteristics. That part is true, but believing that it can be tested in an hour is misleading.” Resources in real life are not meted out as they are in the movies. If you want a paint chip analyzed in half an hour, you better be the president. Dalby admits that the increasing use of dashcams and better quality CCTV means the public is getting more information to help find those who flee, but he also stresses while that will help police find more criminals, it will do little to deter the actual event. “They make this decision, they weigh their odds in a fraction of a second, and if they’re impaired, or have no insurance, or the car is
Origin: Lorraine Explains: Why do people hit and run?
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