This is slmjim.
I have one more that might offer a takeaway to other Riders in hopes of preventing injury or worse.
This happened about 15 yrs. ago.
The day was warm & sunny. I was by myself on Z1BEBE's '75 Z1-B, northbound on a 2-lane US highway in south-central Indiana. It's a a rural area of farms, forest and the occasional roadside small business. The road is good, straight & flat. I'm following behind a car by about 50 yards at 55 ~ 60 mph.
I usually ride lane-left. I spot a pickup stopped in the oncoming lane with it's turn signal on, waiting to turn left into a parking lot ahead on my right. The pickup's front wheels are turned to it's left, so any forward movement will direct it into my lane. As the car ahead of me passes the waiting pickup I move lane-right as is my habit in that situation, and make eye contact with the pickup driver. I'm satisfied that he sees me. At almost the same time I notice a SUV too close behind the pickup, and barely have time to see that the SUV is in a seriously nose-down attitude. In the instant that I realize what seriously-nose-down implies, the SUV rear-ends the pickup HARD, launching it into my lane. As if in slow motion I can only watch as the left front corner of the pickup comes at me. It passes behind me by maybe..., maybe 3 ft. and a tiny fraction of a second in time. I probably could've reached out & touched it. A split second later I pass through a shower of antifreeze and a hail of hard bits of debris liberated from the now-crushed front end of the SUV. Partially blinded by the antifreeze coating my face shield, I roll off the gas, pop the shield up and stop on the right shoulder. Looking back, I see the pickup stopped at an odd angle about 25 yards into the parking lot it was waiting to turn into. The SUV that hit the pickup was just rolling to a stop about 50 yards out into fallow a cornfield on the other side of the road.
It takes much longer to read it than it took for the entire incident to happen. From the first instant I noticed the SUV nose-down, to passing through the shower of antifreeze and debris, I'd estimate no more than five seconds elapsed.
The inattentive SUV driver was seriously injured. The pickup driver was not seriously hurt.
Every street Ridin' training class me & Z1BEBE have ever attended has stressed the importance of lane positioning as a means to mitigate risk. Whether used to increase conspicuity or as a method to distance a Rider from a perceived threat, lane positioning is one of the most valuable survival tools a Rider has while on the road.
Had I stayed lane-left upon first noticing the pickup I'm sure we would have collided head on. Moving lane-right bought me that fraction of a second needed to survive unscathed. If a Rider reading this has no other takeaway from this event, let it be the importance of lane positioning as a means of reducing risk based on the Riders' predictive cognition.
Of perhaps equal importance, the episode made me think of Ridin' more like a chess game. I now scan as far into traffic (as many moves ahead) as is practical in order to identify developing situations and their possible outcomes as early as possible.
I nearly hung up my helmet that day.
Good Ridin'
slmjim