The Daily Brush with Death
I commute daily on my sidecar, a 1995 Triumph Tiger with a Sputnik sidecar. Since I live in a rural area and work in a small town about ten miles from my home, the ride is a pleasant one, and traffic is normally no problem at all.
That was not the case on my ride home yesterday. Traveling south on a 2 lane, one-way street, in what, for Hood River, is rush hour traffic, I saw a white SUV pull into the lane to my right from a side street. I was pretty sure she wasn't aware of my presence so I beeped my horn and moved out of her blind spot as we rounded a gentle right hand bend and the road became a 4 lane, two-way street. I now had an open lane ahead of me and immediately to my right, with a car in the right lane in front of me and the SUV I had just passed to my right and behind me.
As we approached a carwash on the right, without warning a green van pulled out of the parking lot across traffic, and paused directly in front of me, blocking my lane. Her view had been obscured by a parked truck and the car ahead of me in the right lane. I had a clear look at the back of her head as she scanned traffic in the northbound lanes waiting for an opening. She was oblivious to the fact she was blocking traffic in the southbound lanes and that I was bearing down on her vehicle. I applied both brakes hard, but there was not enough room to stop.
I released the brakes and initiated an emergency swerve, a hard right followed by a hard turn back to the left, missing her back bumper by inches. She never even knew I was there.
My sidecar actually crossed into the right lane. Had I not positioned myself with space to move by passing the white SUV, I would not have had room to safely execute the swerve. I took the ESC S/TEP class in January and completed the S/TEP Instructor Prep course in March. I had been intensely studying and practicing defensive driving techniques and emergency maneuvers all winter. I am absolutely convinced that training and practice makes these techniques and maneuvers an ingrained reflex, and those reflexes saved my butt yesterday.