Had to pick some stuff up today at lunchtime for work. Riding back, light rain, along a 2 way double-line road doing 50 in a 50 zone, commercial district, busy road.
A van approached up a driveway from the left (I SLOWED IN ANTICIPATION AND MOVED TO THE LEFT) he looks right at me (DIDN'T SEE ME), looks left, then comes out right in front of me (I'VE SLOWED CONSIDERABLY 20m SHORT OF HIM now probably doing 15km/h) he sees me and does a double-take "WTF!!!! OH SHIT!!! " panic look at me then realises I've stopped then looks embaressed. I nodded at him, and we both kept going.
"IF" I hadn't prepared like the 200 other times I did during the week this 200th time I would have eaten van. What's really interesting to me are the 2 times this week I caught myself NOT preparing.
For me, being prepared while riding a bike is analogous to being a slips fielder in cricket. You have to concentrate 100% and be prepared and ready for a catch the first, and every single 360 balls of an average day of cricket. On those balls when you don't prepare mentally and physically, if you're lucky to not get a catch the best slip fielder will realise the potential outcome of what he just did, get really pissed off with himself because of it, resolve to do better, then relax and forget about it but act on the resolution.
This discipline allows us to stack the odds of crash avoidance in our favour. I sure hope that if i do ever have a crash there's NOTHING else I could have done to avoid it.
My wife wanted to add this (she's shy): hmwjadtbzcqx