7 Ways to AVOID Motorcycle Crashes _ Stay Alive ( #3 saves lives)

What's going on my dudes? Welcome to another episode. And in today's episode, I want to talk to you guys about how to stay alive on your motorcycle. Because the roads aren't as safe as they used to be from a few years ago when I first started. Everyone is on their phones these days. And as a result of that, no one's paying attention anymore. And I think riders themselves are very distracted as well. And they get into all sorts of accidents. And the majority of the time, and I hate to say this, it's the rider's fault. Not necessarily the driver who's behind the wheel. Yes, some drivers, or as some call it, cagers, are responsible for accidents that happen on the road. But a lot of them, quite honestly, could be prevented. So with that said, let's take off. And in case you guys haven't noticed, or probably have by now, that right in front of us is an aircraft carrier. And there are two other aircraft carriers right in front of me. One over there, and one over there. Hopefully my camera can pick it up. I'll try to zoom in if possible. Anyway, time to take off. We're in San Diego's beautiful Seaport Village. It's really nice here. I haven't been here to create a vlog in a long time, but here we are. So the first thing I want to talk to you guys is situational awareness, as well as intersections, and giving yourself a good amount of space cushion in between cars. Because a lot of accidents, I would say probably three quarters of accidents, happen in intersections. Intersections are the most dangerous things for not only motorcyclists, but even if you're walking, they're super dangerous. Because as I mentioned in the beginning of this video, everyone is on their phones. So there's a lot of stuff to think about when you're riding a motorcycle. Because unlike these guys here, who are sitting in their comfortable cars with airbags all around them, a cage, because they're cagers, right? We are completely out in the open elements. So we have to use our situational awareness 99.9% of the time. At all times, you have to watch out what every single car on the road is doing. While I make vlogs for you guys, there's a lot for me to think about, but my situational awareness is never degraded. In fact, I'm more alert when I'm creating vlogs versus when I'm not. I'm always looking at my mirrors, my left-right mirror. I'm always looking to see how far I am away from other cars. I always give cars at least six or seven car lengths in front of me, because for some unknown reason, they're on their phones. All of a sudden, heartbreak. And if I was too close, I could rerun the car and then say it was his fault. Meanwhile, it was all my fault. Maintaining a good space cushion in between you and the car in front of you is something that you have control over. And then the space cushion in between you and the car behind you is something that you have partial control over. And what I mean by partial control is that you have the option of parking yourself on the right or on the left side when you're standing at a stoplight. Like, for instance, I'm giving myself one bike length, but now I'm at the center. So if a car comes behind me, he's going to hit the guy in front of me. He's not necessarily going to hit me. He might hit my mirror. He might hit my handlebar if he comes too close. And the worst thing that can happen to me is that I'm going to drop to the right of me, but I'm not going to end up on his hood with my back broken. So when you're standing at a red light, just like I am, always make sure that you're towards the right. This way, the guy in front of you on your right can see you on his mirror. The guy on your left can see you on his mirror. They both know that you exist right behind them, as opposed to being right behind the guy and he has no idea that you're there. And of course, if a car comes charging behind you, you're not going to get plowed and end up on his hood. So as you can see here, I'm giving the guy in front of me some good space cushion, and this is exactly what you need to do as well. And now that I'm getting closer to him, I'm not going to stay directly behind him, but I'm going to get on my right side over here. At all times, situational awareness is the one thing that will save your life on the road. Know exactly where everyone is surrounding you on a 360 degree parameter. There's a guy behind me right now making a left turn as I am. No one's on my right. Two cars in front of me that are merging into traffic making a left turn. And now I'm going to give these guys a good space cushion of about maybe six or seven cars in front of me. I'm not going to rush ahead, try to merge into the lane, but I'm going to be patient and look at my mirror and also physically turn my head at the same time. The next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to move all the way towards my left because the safest lane on the highway is all the way towards your left. This way, no cars are merging in and out of it and you have the lane all to yourself. But just because now I have the left lane to myself doesn't necessarily mean that I get to relax. If you watch any of my other videos, you probably have seen me either ride on the right side of the lane or the left side of the lane, depending on which side I feel is safer at the moment. But on the highway, what I'd like to do is I like to center myself on the right hand side. This way, the car in front of me, which is the one on my left side and the one on my right side, can see me on their side mirrors. And of course, if I see somebody coming in hot from behind me, because I'm always looking at my left mirror and my right mirror to see who's behind me, as part of my situational awareness, I could always swerve to the right and get to my right lane. Making a left turn, this is an intersection, I always look left and right, even if I have the green light. Don't just assume that when you have the green light, that means it's okay and you're completely safe. As I mentioned at the beginning of this video, people are on their phones. Give it like a full second, look left and right, not just with your peripheral vision, but physically move your head. The green light shouldn't give you the green light. You should give yourself the green light after you've checked that it's absolutely safe to go. Let this guy go first, and after this, we'll go. Always give cars the right of way, because once again, they might be on their phones while they're making the left turn. If you don't believe me, the next time you're outside, just take a look at the cars that are standing by a red light, and notice where people's heads are drawn. Most of the time, it's downwards, looking at their phones. It's ridiculous what I see when I'm outside, because 9 out of 10 times, I'm not walking around with a phone in front of my face. But these days, everyone is on their phones while they're walking. When they're walking their dogs in the morning, I see them on their phones. When they're getting out of the bus, when they're getting out of the train station, regardless of what people are doing these days, no one is walking around without a device on their hands anymore. No one talks to each other, no one does anything anymore without a phone blocking their face. That translates to people driving and doing the exact same thing, because they've built up this habit and this conditioning, and it's become a habit that they just don't know, or maybe they're not aware of, to stop doing. But anyway, now we're inside of the parking lot that I typically come to to do a lot of instructional videos. The next thing I want to show you guys is how to swerve an emergency brake with your motorcycle. I don't have any cones with me or anything like that, but we're going to have to make do with what we have here. We'll see if we can make it happen. The reason why emergency braking is so important and so critical to learn is that in situations where a car is stopping really quickly, and you're going too close to the car, and you can't stop fast enough, this is the car in front of you, you're going to have to emergency brake and swerve in order to miss that guy. So in this situation, I'm going to pick one of these things here, and I'm going to emergency brake and try to swerve it. And if you have something similar to this in your parking lot, I want you to practice the same exact thing. I'm going to carry about 20-30 miles an hour of speed. Emergency brake, swerve. Emergency brake, swerve. Now, I know these are not the best examples because typically you would do this with a bunch of cones. This way, you don't have to have anxiety that you're going to crash into this if you make a mistake. Plus, it would give you more confidence to do it considering that if you go through the cones, you're not exactly hitting a wall. So I definitely, definitely suggest that you use cones, but I got to do what I got to do. Okay, so those are some good examples for you. Emergency braking and swerving, very, very important things to learn. So this way, if you need to do it, now you know how. So without having to swerve, let's just do some emergency braking. But I'm going to do it from like 40 miles an hour, and I'm going to do it before I hit the wall. There we go. Let's try that once again. There you go. My ABS kicked in at that time. So if your ABS is kicking in while you're emergency braking, that means you're pushing it really hard. And I want you to give yourself a pat on the back. So I'm going to continue doing this one or two more times just to give you guys a good example. There you go. I have no idea how fast I was going, but I'm braking really hard. Hard enough that my ABS is kicking in. All right, so we already talked about giving cars in front of you a good space cushion, watching out at intersections because that's where most car accidents happen. And now we just practiced swerving and emergency braking, which all of these combined can save you from crashing into cars and getting into serious accidents. But now I want to turn your attention to something even more important because it's something that we all want, and that's to be social. Being social is pretty natural, my friends. I get it because riding alone, depending on the kind of person you are, can be pretty lonely. We all want to ride with other people, but it can be extremely dangerous as well. So if you're a beginner rider or someone who has a lot of experience under their belt, ride only with people that you trust. Meaning that this is your brother, this is your cousin, it's your uncle, it's somebody that you know, or maybe it's your neighbor. He lives right next door to you. And you know the guy, you've talked to him many times in the past before, and this is somebody that you can trust. You trust this guy enough to leave him your little brother or your sister, so this way they can babysit him. That's how much you trust this guy or girl for that matter. In those type of situations, it's okay to go on group rides. But I've never seen anything positive in group rides. And if you're a fan of my channel, you probably haven't seen me do any group rides whatsoever. And there's a reason for that. I'll be honest with you guys, I don't trust anyone. Because when you're going on group rides, everyone shares the same brain. And by that I mean, if they're going fast, you're going to have to go fast. If they're going slow, you're going to want to go faster than they are. It's full of ego, it's full of testosterone, and it's full of showing off. And of course there's a lot of FOMO involved in it. You just don't want to miss out. So you want to be in front of the pack, or you want to catch up to everybody. And in situations like that, what's going to happen is that everyone has different skill sets. The guy in front of you might be riding for a lot longer than you are. Yes, I have my fun. The guy in front of you might have taken 15 courses. Meanwhile, you're a brand new rider and have absolutely no idea what you're doing. He knows how to emergency brake. He knows how to swerve. He knows how to use his brakes to their absolute limit. Meanwhile, you don't. And the guy has absolutely no idea what he's doing. And so he might make a mistake, wipe out right in front of you and take you out along with him. There's a lot of things that you just can't predict when it comes to group rides. Because if there's three people in front of you and three people behind you, you're sandwiched in between them. And of course, as I mentioned before, groupthink mentality kicks in. And at that point, you're no longer using your brain. You are doing what the herd is doing. And if they're going fast, you're probably going fast. But your experience level is not commensurate to the speeds that you're going and the maneuvers that you're taking. And so therefore, group rides is a terrible idea for people that are new to riding a motorcycle. If you're a beginner, please avoid riding in big groups, large groups going on canyon runs and things like that. And riders of all different skill levels, or perhaps these are all squids. They're not wearing any gear and popping wheelies and doing crazy stuff on the road. These guys especially are the type that you need to watch out for. So take my suggestion, skip group rides altogether. Don't do them at least for the full year until you get your bearings. Go to a few courses, learn the ropes, go to a few track days, because if you go to a couple of track days, you won't want to do canyons. Because do you see canyon videos on my channel? No, because I just don't enjoy them. Honestly, I don't. I'm not going as fast as I want to go. I could go really fast, but I prefer not to because I do track day events and I get the most out of my motorcycles and push myself to the limit on track day events. And I do it in a safer environment where there's no incoming cars and everybody is there to do one thing and one thing only. And that is to go as fast as possible in the safest way possible, with track rules and limits set in place. But when it comes to canyon riding and group rides and things of that nature, it's a free-for-all, there are no rules, and quite honestly, it's difficult to trust people. So that about does it for group rides. Don't do it. Not a good idea. Ride with someone you trust if you're going to do a group ride, but don't ride with strangers. Terrible idea. So the next thing that will save your life is not riding at night. There's a statistic, and I forgot where that statistic is from, but they say that after 8.30 or 9 o'clock is when most of the accidents happen. And I think this is primarily because most of the time people can't see you on the road and because there are a lot of drunk drivers coming from bars and things of that nature. And quite honestly, guys, it's just not fun to ride at night. I ride during the day because it's beautiful during the day. I ride through the coast. It's nice and scenic. There's a lot to look at. If you use your motorcycle to commute back and forth to work, I completely understand it's something that you have to do, but if you ride your motorcycle purely for pleasure, then there's no reason to ride at night, ride during the day, and when it gets dark, just come back home to avoid other cars doing stupid things, and of course to be safer. And guys, the last thing I want to talk to you about is something that's really difficult, even for me, because I have a hard time with it sometimes, but I pick and choose when I want to do this. And so what I'm talking about is be picky and choosy about riding fast. Of course, if you're a fan of my channel, you've seen me ride fast. I'm not saying don't do it, okay? All I'm saying is be picky and choosy on when to go fast. It's really, really difficult to ride a motorcycle and not go fast. There's so much power underneath you. What I typically like to do is I like to go fast in places where there's no traffic on my left side or on my right side, and that's what I suggest you do as well. If there's a straight enough road and there's no curves coming or anything like that, those are the perfect places to go fast, because obviously, you're not going to get caught. There's nobody on your left and right, so the cops can't see you. Once again, even though I mentioned this three or four times, no one's on their phone because there's no oncoming traffic. This makes it less likely that you're going to get sideswiped because there's an intersection coming up. Anyway guys, it's my goal for you to be safe on the road and ride your bike and be alive. There's a lot of crazy stuff going on these days, and I was just thinking to myself that today's episode is probably very, very important, considering I've made other videos that are similar to this about how to ride a bike, how to shift, and all that stuff, but this episode is probably the most important one. So while you're out there, use your situational awareness, learn how to emergency brake, learn how to swerve, don't ride at night, be careful with group rides, and all the other stuff we talked about. This can help you and save your life on the road and allow you to ride and enjoy this hobby for as long as possible. So with that said, I will see you guys on the next episode. Thank you so much for watching. Peace!