5 motorcyclists killed in San Diego

[backinthesaddleagain]

awful mass death of riders and a passenger

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/nov...crash-20101115

[blade]

i hate stupid drivers

[CThunder-blue]

that's really sad news . I hope they find that civic owner and throw him into a cell for life.

[backinthesaddleagain]

^yep

[Flashmonkey]

That's some serious carnage. I've driven on 2 lane roads similar to that and passing a group that big is just stupid. That civic driver is a goddamn idiot.

[bob706]

What a sad story. Thoughts and prayers for the victims and their families.

[tjkamper]

That sucks! My question is what happened to the in the Honda Civic?

[FrugalNinja250]

Probably in Mexico by now, unreachable.

AP reports that the driver of the Dodge, whose female passenger was killed when one of the bike impacted her door, was arrested five hours after the wreck when officers noticed the smell of alcohol on his breath. Blood alcohol tests are pending, AP reports that police told them it would be two weeks for results. Hopefully he was in custody for those 5 hours, otherwise he can claim that he drank after the wreck and get a skate on the DUI part of the mess. It's important to note that it has *not* been determined that alcohol played a part in the Dodge's part of this tragedy.

Other notes: There were twelve bikes altogether, all were wearing helmets and, according to the CHP at the scene, were not speeding. The Honda was reported to have California plates, though nobody was able to get any of the plate info. The Dodge plowed into the riding group mid-pack, the lead riders were not hit. Another story reports the Honda was doing as much as 100mph when he was passing the riders.

The AMA is pushing equal justice, I hope there is some in this case.

[Azhyen]

Yeah I watched this last night. I thought the driver of the white car was at the scene with alcohol on his breath? Regardless, it's real sad. Stay safe everyone.

[Sailariel]

Our thoughts and prayers go out to those poor people. What a tragedy.

[menikmati]

Terrible, and I lived in Lakeside, too.

[FrugalNinja250]

Nothing new on the driver of the gold Honda that triggered this massacre. The driver of the Dodge, Carlos Bobadilla of Mexicali, Mexico was released on Sunday. If tests come back positive for alcohol he may be charged for drunken driving. Hopefully there's some way to keep him in the states, because extraditing someone from Mexico is very difficult.

FWIW, the car was actually owned by the female passenger (also a Mexican citizen) killed in the crash.

A local HD dealership is holding a blood drive to help the hospitalized riders, many of whom have pretty serious injuries.

[Havok]

Originally Posted by FrugalNinja250

Nothing new on the driver of the gold Honda that triggered this massacre. The driver of the Dodge, Carlos Bobadilla of Mexicali, Mexico was released on Sunday. If tests come back positive for alcohol he may be charged for drunken driving. Hopefully there's some way to keep him in the states, because extraditing someone from Mexico is very difficult.

FWIW, the car was actually owned by the female passenger (also a Mexican citizen) killed in the crash.

A local HD dealership is holding a blood drive to help the hospitalized riders, many of whom have pretty serious injuries.

Which dealership and when?

[HKr1]

Pretty sad thing

Originally Posted by FrugalNinja250

Nothing new on the driver of the gold Honda that triggered this massacre..

Wasnt it the long line of slow moving hd's that started the whole thing

[Havok]

Originally Posted by HKr1

Pretty sad thing




Wasnt it the long line of slow moving hd's that started the whole thing

They were doing everything right. Just out for a ride on the clubs 10th anniversary. Slow or not the civic caused it. It is not fair to imply the riders were at fault at all for any reason. The guy in the civic needs to be charged with murder IMHO at the very least 5 counts of manslaughter are in order.

[Blackwidow]

very sad. hope the a-hole gets caught.

[CZroe]

Originally Posted by HKr1

Pretty sad thing




Wasnt it the long line of slow moving hd's that started the whole thing

Absolutely not. The Civic got impatient and made the first inappropriate action and that is all that matters for the origin as long as the bikes were obeying the law.

[Alex]

Originally Posted by Havok

They were doing everything right. Just out for a ride on the clubs 10th anniversary. Slow or not the civic caused it. It is not fair to imply the riders were at fault at all for any reason.

Originally Posted by CZroe

Absolutely not. The Civic got impatient and made the first inappropriate action and that is all that matters for the origin as long as the bikes were obeying the law.

Both of these comments have merit, but I'm not sure it's the whole story. Riding in long groups like that, side by side or closely staggered, does quite often cause situations like this to occur. Any group that prioritizes riding together at the top of the list rather than riding safely as an individual rider, is putting themselves more at risk for something like this. It pisses cars off. It pisses faster motorcycle riders off. None of this means that they are doing anything illegal. But obeying the law doesn't guarantee that an activity isn't increasing the risk factor.

The civic driver misjudged the passing time required. Drunk driver in other direction lost control after avoiding civic and running off the road, coming back on and running down a pile of bikes. This could have been avoided a number of different ways, and any of those ways could have minimized the chances of this happening;

- Civic driver better judged passing time required
- Oncoming driver not drunk, and maintained better control of their car

but the controversial, yet nonetheless still factual one

- if the bikes rode in such a manner to allow for safer passing.

[FrugalNinja250]

There were twelve bikes, if riding in a group like I've seen before they would've taken up about as much room as an 18-wheeler. The Honda was reported as doing 80+ when it passed. I don't know if the Honda accelerated to that speed during the pass (improbable) or was already going way too fast when it came up on the riders and just swerved out into oncoming traffic to avoid rear-ending them.

One man's "slow" riding is another man's "obeying the law". It is improper for a lawbreaker to shift the responsibility for the results of breaking the law to those who suffer because of it. It is possible to speed responsibly and safely, but all priority goes to the safety of those who don't.

Looking at the accident scene, the shoulders appear paved and wide enough for a car. I think the Dodge swerved too hard to the shoulder and overshot the pavement into the sand because of possible alcohol use or because the Honda's swerve into oncoming traffic didn't give enough time to make a more controlled shift onto the shoulder. I've been in situations where oncoming passers f*cked up this way, it's scary but I've been able to get safely onto the shoulder without losing control of my car. But then again, I don't drive drunk.

If I'd been one of the riders who'd witnessed this in my mirror I'd have gone after the Honda, at least to get plates and better driver description. I don't fault their decision to not pursue, just wish it had been different.

[Taurfox82]

It'd be really nice for the driver to turn him/herself in, but who am I fooling, today's world outlook is grim, especially for those who cause harm to others and don't really care.

[Alex]

/unrelated posts moved to Items Wanted area

[j98sprint]

Even when the pack is doing everything right (legal), disaster looms. I was a patch holder in a club here in south Florida for several years in the 90s.

Been on lots of runs, long and short, with our club and many other local clubs. All Harley clubs, some were family clubs, some support clubs and some 1% clubs.

Almost all were dangerous. Almost every run was an accident waiting to happen.

A pack (it's individual riders) can be obeying the law but, in my opinion, without military or police style constant training, which nobody does, the members are not prepared for incidents like the one in this thread.

In a situation like this one, the rear riders (assist. road captains) should have right off noticed that a car wanted to pass and took pre-discussed and trained for (never done) action.

Options would be to signal the pack into a single line and hug the right side of the lane to allow the car to pass or maybe pull off somewhere... every situation is different and calls for the Road Captain and assistants judgment AND the members being trained to respond to signals and commands.

Do you think most Harley clubs train and review and prepare for such situations or have the attitude like, "F**k 'em, they can wait!" ?

I know the answer to that question. I was there, I was a Road Captain and an assistant RC. And by the way, a strung out pack is a whole lot longer than a semi truck.

I've seen a few bad wrecks and a million near misses while riding in packs. Lots of fun and many great memories while doing the club scene as a young and wild biker but..........never again!

Riders, in a pack or alone, should never have the "I'm a victim" outlook. Everything that happens on the road comes with the territory.

j98

[Sailariel]

In the summer our bicyle club has two rides a week consisting of two to three pacelines--that is where you are "on the wheel" of the rider in front of you. The lead bike goes flat out for 15 min and then goes to the back of the line. It is a beautifully choreographed formation. On bicycles, you can hear a car coming. The last person in the line yells "Car Back" and that gets shouted up the line. The line is already to the far right. Car back is called so that the lead bike does nor go to the left to move into the last position. It is still dangerous. If I ride the MC with others--two or three riders, we allow about ten car lengths between the bikes. We also only ride single file.

[FrugalNinja250]

I suck at semantics, and will not play that game...

[revstriker]

Awful story. My best wishes are with the family of the bikers hurt or killed, and with the other bikers.

As for the other comments, lets not forget that riding a motorcycle is dangerous no matter how you do it, and no matter what precautions you take. There are steps one can take to minimize the danger, but not to eliminate it. Could these riders have done some things differently in order to avoid this tragedy? Maybe, and maybe not. None of us were there, and none of us know the answer to this question.

What we do know is the driver of the Honda mis-judged the room he needed to pass, which was the key event in this tragedy.

[GeneJunkie]

Originally Posted by FrugalNinja250

Saying the riders brought this upon themselves by their manner of riding (safe and legal from all appearances) is ludicrous.

We'll see what the accident investigation actually shows, but until then I hold the Honda and Dodge drivers fully accountable for the deaths of these riders, and nobody else.

This such an awful tragedy. I wish people would stop and think of the impact that their actions have on others.

[Alex]

Originally Posted by FrugalNinja250

Saying the riders brought this upon themselves by their manner of riding (safe and legal from all appearances) is ludicrous.

I'm sorry, but this isn't accurate. Everything that is legal isn't safe, and everything that is safe isn't legal. They are two completely different concepts, that while related, need to be judged separately to analyze just about any situation.

[FrugalNinja250]

I suck at semantics, and will not play that game...

[Alex]

EDIT: my reply no longer applies directly, and the thread can likely go on as it was... Carry on, all.....

Originally Posted by Alex

You're posting up strawman argument after strawman argument that nobody but you is making. Of course it's not OK for the Honda to endanger riders. Of course it's not OK for the drunk driver to completely lose control of their car when encountering the honda and plow down a pile of motorcyclists. Of course this is a tragedy for all concerned.

But saying that there is absolutely nothing that the motorcyclists (or any motorcyclists) can do to affect their risks while on the road is patently false. And describing the incident in any way after the fact to try and understand how and why it came to be, so those of us who are still around afterwards can take these lessons into account when we make our own choices going forward, isn't blaming the riders at the expense of those who primarily caused this incident to happen. It's the same thing we do every time someone crashes with no gear. We tell them they should have been wearing gear. It's the same thing we do every time a newbie stands their bike up in a corner and runs straight into what they were trying to avoid. We tell them they need training and experience to better handle their machines.

A post just a few up from this one (link) very clearly articulates exactly why long trains of coupled bikes can be risky, all points completely spot-on in my viewpoint, and we are attacking them for blaming the riders in any way. It's not about blame. It's not about legal fault. It's not about changing the circumstances; they happened already and there's nothing anyone here on the internet or anywhere else can do to materially change the situation. In fact, the only thing that we can do, is try and understand how to manage our own risks so we have the highest likelihood of going home to our own families at the end of each ride. Shouting at the top of our lungs that riders have no stake or ability to affect their own safety is the antithesis of rider training, riding experience, and counter to everything that we as experienced motorcyclists should be sharing with our fellow riders.

[revstriker]

Originally Posted by Alex

I'm sorry, but this isn't accurate. Everything that is legal isn't safe, and everything that is safe isn't legal. They are two completely different concepts, that while related, need to be judged separately to analyze just about any situation.

I don't disagree, but this could be the basis of criticism for every rider who gets into an accident. Riding a motorcycle is not safe. You could argue when a car makes a left turn in front of a bike, causing an accident, that the rider should have seen the car coming, should have anticipated it was going to turn, and should have been prepared to take evasive action. After all, there is no such thing as a truly unavoidable accident.

I don't find that a group, riding in formation as this club was doing, to be overly dangerous compared to other ways of riding. For this accident to happen, it took someone to make a bad judgment. While you could argue all day, and point out that the bikers should have pulled over, or rode single file, or rode with a greater space between them etc., in the end, the judgment of the car driver was a far greater cause of this accident than anything the bikers did, and any and all of these other riding techniques may not have prevented the accident.

[Cab305]

When I ride with a large pack, (soflasportbikes.com) we always have a safety meeting first, everyone is told the route, there are control riders who will coral any cagers that get in the way. Whenever the pack exceeds 30-40 bikes we try to arrange for police escort (some members are po pos) but in a case like this.

There is little they could have done. I feel terrible for guys that saw car coming, and had nowhere to go. RIP

P.S. j98sprint are you still in South Florida, would love to ride with some other 250's, my riding group tends to be made up of "big" bikes.

[Alex]

Originally Posted by revstriker

in the end, the judgment of the car driver was a far greater cause of this accident than anything the bikers did, and any and all of these other riding techniques may not have prevented the accident.

Scott -

From my perspective, I agree with you 100%. Heck, if we all made the decision to stop riding motorcycles completely, the chances of us being hurt on a motorcycle drop to a verifiable 0%. Everything we do on a bike starting with getting on it increases the risk over baseline, and the choices we make after that continue to affect it in one direction or another.

I guess the difference in my mind between a motorcyclist getting pegged by a left-turner, and a motorcyclist getting mowed down in a large pack, is that many motorcyclists see the first case as a known risk and the second case as an unknown risk, that is still up for debate if it exists or not. J98's post lays out exactly why it shouldn't be considered an unknown risk, and we'd be more informed motorcyclists if we at least took it into account and used it to make our own judgments, whatever they are, about our own risk tolerance going forward.

[Alex]

Originally Posted by Cab305

there are control riders who will coral any cagers that get in the way.

What does this mean?

[Cab305]

Sweep riders. They box the car, so that the driver becomes aware of the other bikes. Sometimes they'll ride ahead of main group and look for potential trouble. They'll block so everyone can change lanes.

I guess you could call it aggressive sweep riding. It probably won't win any courtesy points from cagers! But then again, it keeps the group safe.

Link to original page on YouTube.

Not the most organized example, but you can see a couple of guys out of formation on the far left.

[Alex]

Originally Posted by Cab305

Sweep riders. They box the car, so that the driver becomes aware of the other bikes. Sometimes they'll ride ahead of main group and look for potential trouble. They'll block so everyone can change lanes.

I guess you could call it aggressive sweep riding. It probably won't win any courtesy points from cagers! But then again, it keeps the group safe.

Cab - this just does not work long-term. It is not keeping anybody ultimately safe, all it is doing is pissing off the "cagers". All it takes is for that aggressive riding to push one cager over their breaking point. No private vehicle in traffic should be trying to actively control the actions of another. Without lights and sirens flashing, it's just an invitation for eventual mayhem, when the vehicle being boxed in decides they've had enough. Or decides they *really* need to get over right now to make a last-minute exit. And even with lights and sirens flashing, plenty of LEO motorcycles still find themselves on the losing end of car/bike collisions when the car doesn't react as expected to the encouragement by the bike. I just don't get why large groups of bikes believe that this behavior is appropriate.

[revstriker]

Originally Posted by Alex

Cab - this just does not work long-term. It is not keeping anybody ultimately safe, all it is doing is pissing off the "cagers". All it takes is for that aggressive riding to push one cager over their breaking point. No private vehicle in traffic should be trying to actively control the actions of another. Without lights and sirens flashing, it's just an invitation for eventual mayhem, when the vehicle being boxed in decides they've had enough. Or decides they *really* need to get over right now to make a last-minute exit. And even with lights and sirens flashing, plenty of LEO motorcycles still find themselves on the losing end of car/bike collisions when the car doesn't react as expected to the encouragement by the bike. I just don't get why large groups of bikes believe that this behavior is appropriate.

+1. I would NOT consider that an example of safe riding.

[Cab305]

I think I might have given a wrong impression.

I didn't mean so much aggressive as pre-emptive. They don't ness. try to make the cagers change lanes, they will just make sure the cager sees that there are bikes around.

It's common for the sweep riders in groups to hold traffic so everyone can change lanes. Thats pretty routine. It helps if the group can stick together in one large mass. Stragglers I believe are the worst off, cause all the cars will try to move around the group. There is a Sweep rider that always trails so he can see what's going on and talk to the front, but he can't be falling too far back if someone gets caught up in cage traffic.

Besides like I've mentioned before South Florida has the absolutely worst traffic in the U.S.

Everyone sends their old people here!

[j98sprint]

From many years of riding motorcycles (almost every single day since the late '70s) and being trained by my father in "The Smith System of Driving" I have found that obeying the rules of the road and employing the 5 points of the Smith System are the best way to stay alive.

Two of those points are, (1) Leave yourself an out, and (2) Expect the unexpected. Your "out" is gone in a pack and on a 2 lane road passing usually is dangerous and that danger should be expected.

I'm sorry gang, I feel terrible for those riders and I agree that those car drivers were dead wrong but riding a motorcycle is dangerous and can be unforgiving. Riding in a pack is 10 times more so.

I'm not blaming the riders in that pack, just saying they could have been better prepared for the inherently dangerous act of pack riding.

If you've never heard of the Smith System of Driving check it out.

j98

[revstriker]

Originally Posted by j98sprint

From many years of riding motorcycles (almost every single day since the late '70s) and being trained by my father in "The Smith System of Driving" I have found that obeying the rules of the road and employing the 5 points of the Smith System are the best way to stay alive.

Two of those points are, (1) Leave yourself an out, and (2) Expect the unexpected. Your "out" is gone in a pack and on a 2 lane road passing usually is dangerous and that danger should be expected.

I'm sorry gang, I feel terrible for those riders and I agree that those car drivers were dead wrong but riding a motorcycle is dangerous and can be unforgiving. Riding in a pack is 10 times more so.

I'm not blaming the riders in that pack, just saying they could have been better prepared for the inherently dangerous act of pack riding.

If you've never heard of the Smith System of Driving check it out.

j98

I've never heard of the Smith System, but I would bet that I was taught to drive using a lot of the same rules. Very good advice. When I get some time, I will definitely check that out!

Now this is my opinion, so take it for what it's worth: The biggest threat I see to bikers riding in traffic is that the other vehicles will not see them. I hear of more accidents involving bikes, where a car either pulls out in front of them, or cuts them off somehow. The response from the driver is always "I didn't see him". Riding in a group dramatically decreases this risk. A group of 4 bikes riding together is much more visible than a single bike. But of course, riding in a group does pose some different risks and challenges as this tragedy demonstrates. Just not sure if I agree that it is more dangerous.

We can second guess the actions of any rider, post accident. As I said before, every accident is preventable. But I think this kind of talk does not help in a situation where it does appear the group was riding responsibly, and there was a loss of life and injury. Lets all just wish for a speedy recovery for those who were injured.

[revstriker]

Originally Posted by Cab305

I think I might have given a wrong impression.

I didn't mean so much aggressive as pre-emptive. They don't ness. try to make the cagers change lanes, they will just make sure the cager sees that there are bikes around.

It's common for the sweep riders in groups to hold traffic so everyone can change lanes. Thats pretty routine. It helps if the group can stick together in one large mass. Stragglers I believe are the worst off, cause all the cars will try to move around the group. There is a Sweep rider that always trails so he can see what's going on and talk to the front, but he can't be falling too far back if someone gets caught up in cage traffic.

Besides like I've mentioned before South Florida has the absolutely worst traffic in the U.S.

Everyone sends their old people here!

It's great to have sweepers who stay with the stragglers, and help them stay more visible to other traffic. Also good to use them to help the group change lanes where neccessary. I completely agree with these things. But I don't agree with riders just swinging out to the left to block cars from passing the group as it appears some in the video you posted were doing.

LOL at the comment about the worst traffic. I've lived in many different parts of the country, and in Europe, and everyone complains that they have the worst traffic. But truly, some places are much worse than others.