Solinary
Mon Jul 25th, 2011, 05:36 PM
Good afternoon,
I did a search of the forums and went back 4 pages without finding a similar question so I would like to ask it here, please.
As I mentioned in my new member post it has been a couple of years since I last rode. I picked up a new bike finally a couple of weeks ago and have been getting back in the groove of riding and trying to brush off the rusty riding. Anyway, so I decided to ride to class tonight which is a trip down 36 from Boulder to I-25. There are a few spots that I know of where traffic tends to stop on a dime with no warning. Well, those couple of spots cropped up this afternoon and I was almost rear-ended two times.
The first time I take fault for as I was not thinking about those behind me and was ok with braking when it felt right to me; this caused a truck to swerve out and around pretty close. The second time I seen it happening far ahead and came to a more gradual stop, but did so through letting the bike slow itself and downshifting; this caused the Jeep behind me to chirp his tires briefly as suddenly realized I was stopped.
So for the rest of the way here I tried a new thought of basically riding my rear brake *very* lightly even though I was not quite decelerating just yet. The thought being that it would kick on the brake light without braking and hopefully wake up the driver behind me before reaching the point of needing to decelerate for the stop.
So the short question for the too long of a story is this: how do you all handle out of no where stops on the highway, or street for that matter, in a safe manner? I do *not* want to be the accident or the cause of an accident and am completely open to any advice you all might care to share.
Thanks!
I did a search of the forums and went back 4 pages without finding a similar question so I would like to ask it here, please.
As I mentioned in my new member post it has been a couple of years since I last rode. I picked up a new bike finally a couple of weeks ago and have been getting back in the groove of riding and trying to brush off the rusty riding. Anyway, so I decided to ride to class tonight which is a trip down 36 from Boulder to I-25. There are a few spots that I know of where traffic tends to stop on a dime with no warning. Well, those couple of spots cropped up this afternoon and I was almost rear-ended two times.
The first time I take fault for as I was not thinking about those behind me and was ok with braking when it felt right to me; this caused a truck to swerve out and around pretty close. The second time I seen it happening far ahead and came to a more gradual stop, but did so through letting the bike slow itself and downshifting; this caused the Jeep behind me to chirp his tires briefly as suddenly realized I was stopped.
So for the rest of the way here I tried a new thought of basically riding my rear brake *very* lightly even though I was not quite decelerating just yet. The thought being that it would kick on the brake light without braking and hopefully wake up the driver behind me before reaching the point of needing to decelerate for the stop.
So the short question for the too long of a story is this: how do you all handle out of no where stops on the highway, or street for that matter, in a safe manner? I do *not* want to be the accident or the cause of an accident and am completely open to any advice you all might care to share.
Thanks!