The nitwits at Fox 9 managed to cobble together this information and interview with the rider, “Jankowski [the rider] was wearing a helmet and motorcycle jacket when the object fell of the back of the boat. He says he just bought the jacket within an hour of the crash, and was saving up for the pants and gloves.
“’I didn’t want to just swerve and possibly hit a car and get run over so I tried to get to the furthest part of the right of my lane . . .I just bought the jacket that day thinking I’d come back next week and get the gear and have the full set’ Brendan Jankowski said. ‘I happened to use the jacket I just bought to help save me quite a bit of pain.’” Apparently, he didn’t own a pair of jeans?
I really wish I could buy his evasive maneuver claims, but it looks to me like he was tailgating, panicked when he saw the pad fall out of the truck, and focused on hitting the damn thing until he did. Total rookie from the moment he appeared in the camera until he stopped rolling on the ground.
I agree. This was my commentary on facebook:
ReplyDeleteOK, let's start here: The truck driver is clearly at fault. I'm not going to blame the motorcyclist here. I'm glad he was mostly uninjured. BUT:
The rider was gaining pretty rapidly on a truck with a weird load on it. To me, that's strike one. Always give vehicles with odd loads extra space.
When the foam roll came loose, it immediately started moving right... and the motorcyclist tried to dodge right. Someone from a local rider training group says "usually you go to the right because there’s no oncoming traffic that way.” Except that that's dumb. The training course I took emphasized that you might need to go in either direction, and you'd better be ready to do it. I have had to dodge left several times. If he'd dodged left, he would have been fine... and on a divided highway with a broad grassy median, there couldn't be any oncoming traffic.
WHY was he wearing shorts? OK, he's quoted as saying he couldn't afford the armored pants, and had just bought the jacket, but seriously? Not even jeans?
The helmet probably saved his life, and the jacket probably saved him a lot of injury, but still...
Andy I agree with all of your analysis. It's rare that finding the actual "fault" in a crash is useful, when a motorcycle is involved. In this case, the doofus was incedibly lucky.
ReplyDeleteI think the kid just fixated on the pad and drove right into it. I saw no sign of an evasive movement. Everything about his riding style screams "squid!" I suspect he'll be selling the bike gear soon and will be one of those "Motorcycles are too dangerous" ex-riders any day now. But he can say he was a "motorcyclist" without anyone but all of us laughing at the claim.
Yup. I also wish there were a practical way to define the difference between "legally at fault" and "this is your fault; you totally could have avoided that, you moron."
DeleteIn this instance, as I said, the truck driver was clearly legally at fault. But the rider really should have been able to avoid that.
Oh well.