Watch Rider’s Scary Moment With Oncoming Pickup Truck  Rider comes face-to-face with truck grill in blind turn - what went wrong?

If you ask a motorcycle rider why they crashed, their depictions usually include a little hyperbole, some heroics, and a few reasons why they were forced to “lay it down.” But today’s prevalence of action cams and dash-cams are keeping motorcycle riders honest.

Maybe you can relate to this rider. One minute you’re riding your motorcycle down a lonely dirt road, loving life – you are the master of your machine. After not seeing a soul for a while, you begin to feel like you are the only one on the trail. Then at once, you are snapped into the sobering realization that you’re about to crash into the grill of an oncoming pickup truck as you come around a blind corner too fast. You’ve got only seconds to decide how to save yourself. But no matter what you do, you’re sliding uncontrollably towards the truck heading right at you, and there’s seemingly nothing you can do about it.

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Perhaps you or somebody you know has been in this situation? As a medic and rider coach, I’ve seen this situation unfold too often. But I have also seen huge improvements in riders’ performance once aware of their natural tendencies in times of extreme stress. Let’s take a light-hearted look at this unfortunate lad’s incident and see what we can learn by breaking it down.

1) Too Fast: About 2 seconds elapse between the time the truck comes into view and the time he strikes the bumper. His bike traveled quite a distance before he made contact with the truck but at that speed there wasn’t much time to react to the situation. Slowing down would have bought him some precious time.

2) Target Fixation: Once he realized he was in trouble, his eyes fixated on the chrome-plated Ram emblem charging him. Had he used the first moment of the incident to find a safer path to be with his eyes, essentially refocusing the natural tendency to target fixate, he may have had a better chance of avoiding the collision. It takes a lot of discipline to take one’s eyes off of the threat and create another possible exit, especially in those moments of extreme stress. But that’s exactly the skill that needs to be cultivated if you are to save yourself in these moments. It bears repeating — Your bike goes where your eyes go!

3) Panic Braking: Lots of brakes, but why am I not stopping!?!? Most likely, his panic response is tied to his right foot like it would be in a car. This kind of unconscious response translates all too often on a motorcycle to an uncontrollable rear wheel slide, very common results that you can see in the video. Remember that it’s the front brakes which hold 90% of your ability to effectively scrub speed. Applying light pressure on the front brake may have allowed the rider to hold a tighter line and avoid the crash, or he could have even come to a controlled stop before making contact.

Riding off after the accident. A scary experience, but luckily the rider came through with no major injuries.

Thankfully, the rider was not seriously injured – it could have ended much worse if the speed of the truck had been faster. The driver, Jim Boone, offers sage advice for off-road travel, “always drive as if the guy coming around the corner thinks he is the only one on the road.”

Have you been in this situation before? Leave a note in the comments on how you’ve made similar mistakes or used techniques to avoid blind turn mishaps. Also, check out this article for more on how our brains are wired to crash.

Photos and video courtesy of birdandhike.com