[ST] between cars

[Bare <barenekd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

In California, if it's got a traffic light in it, it's called a "Surface Street." Some are called "Super Streets" because the lights are synchronized so a steady 50 mph will get you all the way down the road for many miles. Sounds like a great plan, but doesn't work that well sometimes. Don't know where the surface street thing came from, because freeways are on the surface, too. There are no expressways in California that I know of. 
At any rate, most bike riders in California ride up to the intersection limit line between the cars, so they are at the front of the pack between the cars. I have seen some, on occasion, stop behind the line of cars, but I figure they're from somewhere else! If you are at the front of the pack with 5 or 10 cars behind you, you have pretty good protection from the clown that wants to do the tail end trick!
Bare

<In 1980 or so I was sitting at a stoplight on Palatine Road, which is 2 lanes in each direction with a center median, 50 mph limit and very occasional lights for major intersections.  What I think they call in California an expressway.

Anyway, I was driving, two up on a 1975 Norton Commando Interstate, stopped in first gear at a light one full car length back from the guy in front of me, with a pickup truck and several other cars behind me.  Suddenly, I heard the squeal of brakes behind me, very loud, very high, and approaching quickly.  I shot out of there like a bar of soap, shooting forward and to the right alongside the car in front of me as the impacts began.  The pickup pulled forward into the car length and a half I had emptied.  The car behind him was impacted and shot more than a car length ahead, stopping short of the pickup by three feet or so.  All told, there were six impacts.

The fellow in the last car was probably doing 60 or more, and came over the rise to see nothing but stopped cars, threw out the hooks, and bought his insurance company a junkyard.

Without the extra space and me shooting forward and out, the pickup would have been shoved forward, pinning me and my passenger between the pickup truck and the car ahead.  I am always astounded when bikers crawl right up behind the cars in front of them at traffic lights.  Stupid.

So, yeah, it does work.

BTW, I prefer going to the shoulder side rather than between lanes.  Cars do not always stay straight in such an impact, and you can get pinned between.  Going to the shoulder side, if you get hit by one of the cars, you are more likely just to get pushed further into the shoulder or the ditch than pinned against another car.


Rich Weyand
1999 Sprint ST "NOT RED">




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