The instructor told us to search, evaluate, and execute using Rider Radar timings of twelve, four, and two seconds. Everybody remembers that two seconds is the following distance behind another vehicle; do you remember the other two numbers? The amount of time typically required to execute a swerve or brake to avoid an obstacle is four seconds. Most people don’t think about the four-second time and it’s a commonly missed question on the knowledge test. Two and four are important numbers but this essay is about the third timing of Rider Radar: twelve seconds.
We should observe twelve seconds ahead and behind. At sixty miles per hour, twelve seconds is a fifth of a mile, more than one thousand feet. That’s the length of three and a half football fields. Next time you cruise down a straight road, lay that distance out in your mind. Think about that distance and ask yourself if you were looking that far before the exercise.
What happens when you don’t look that far ahead and behind? I got a shocking reminder recently. I was riding north on US-15 between the Maryland state line and Gettysburg. The weather was clear and beautiful, and the traffic was light. I was relaxed in the right lane with the cruise set at 65 MPH, thinking about the weekend. There was a small white car ahead of me in the right lane almost a thousand feet away. The car was slowly getting nearer so I began to think about passing. Looking behind, I saw a car in the left lane but far back. I looked forward again and the white car was quite near, I paused to process a second and realized that the small white car was stopped in the right lane, not moving at all! I was almost upon it, so I signaled and moved to the left lane, looking in the mirror as I moved over. The car that was so far behind me a couple of seconds ago was near and getting closer quickly. It was obviously traveling much faster than the speed limit, perhaps twenty MPH faster.
I completed my lane change less than fifty yards before the stopped car and the speedster behind me came no closer than a one-second distance. Just before I passed the little white car, both driver and passenger opened their doors. Since my habit was to be in the left side of the lane while passing, I was not in danger of hitting it. My sixty MPH plus wind blast must have startled the driver because he pulled that car door shut as quickly as he opened it.
I let the tailgating speedster pass and pondered what had just happened. I never saw any lights on that stopped white car. Perhaps it suffered a complete electrical failure or was parked in the lane before I noticed it. Nobody approaching would ever expect a parked car in the right lane of a 65-MPH highway. Since I would not get an answer for their actions, I evaluated my own.
In hindsight, I was watching ahead less than the recommended 12. However, I could have been looking farther since the road was flat and straight. I was leisurely scanning for other road users and evaluating what they might do but my list of things to evaluate did not have a checklist item for cars stopped in the road with no warning flashers. If I had kept my brain in “Beltway Mode,” i.e., using all my brainpower to search and evaluate, I would have chosen an action to execute in less time. A few more seconds would have given me the option to stop and help push their car off the road while muttering under my breath like an angry Boomer.
Obstacles twelve seconds in front of you come at you rapidly because you’re going fast. Things behind you come at you more slowly, at least you expect them to. It’s difficult to estimate speed in a small handlebar mirror which shows a sliver of roadway above your elbow’s reflection. From the time I looked in my mirror to when the speeding car was a second behind me was only three or four seconds. I had not been scanning for him when he was twelve seconds away from me; I had not noticed him until he was half that distance. It’s easy for me to forget to check my six o’clock when the traffic is light, and the weather is good.
This incident happened when I did not expect it. I expected tailgaters speeding up behind me when I was escaping the Washington, DC beltway. I was on full alert a little earlier when the Maryland suburban racers were threading their way through traffic as if they were piloting a PlayStation instead of a sedan. My mistake was that I relaxed when the traffic thinned out on Pennsylvania’s Route 15. When the obvious dangers are not around, we tend to relax instead of looking for new possibilities for mayhem. We cannot let mayhem surprise us.