13 January 2011

Motorcyclist crushed by truck on Emu Bank

| johnboy
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We’ve had reports of a motorcyclist crushed by a truck on the corner of Aikmen Drive and Emu Bank Road.

In addition Traffic Police have tweeted:

ACTPol_Traffic
Serious collision at the intersection of Aikman and Emu Bank. Avoid the area. Major traffic delays. Road blocks to follow…

More if and when it comes to hand.

This in from an eye-witness:

The guy was still alive when i saw him, he was just pinned by his arm, and screeming and flailing about with the rest of his body, but the truck driver had no idea, like he was just stopped at a stop light and this guy was jumping in the window trying to tell the truck driver.

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far_northact10:10 am 15 Jan 11

bd84 “No sympathy for the motorcyclist, I hope the police have written him a ticket too”

Wow. Wish I was perfect like you.
Nice to sit back and judge everyone harshly, until something happens to you or your family. Good luck with that.

bd84 said :

The incident clearly demonstrates the need for a complete overhaul of the licencing and training for motorcyclists. A vast majority of riders seem to be a law unto themselves…

I can understand why drivers often times feel this way. Those who break the law and hoon around on bikes are typically the only one’s we see in the press and while we are driving. The fact of the matter is that they are a very small minority of riders and that motorcyclists condemn their actions more than most.

I don’t really follow your logic on how this incident demonstrates a need for better training and enforcement of road rules. I can assure you that most riders have significant amounts of training, indeed I ofter think of them as quite advanced in comparison to those driving cars. There will always be people who for whatever reason choose to ignore road rules. I doubt there are many people here who haven’t at one point in time.

If the rider was actually ‘filtering’ to the front of the traffic then he was breaking a road rule. However, I believe filtering is legal in many places and there are valid reasons doing it. As a rider myself I don’t agree with the practice and feel it’s unsafe. I am in the minority in that belief though as stated in a previous comment.

Riders don’t filter to be a smart arse as you might think. They do it to get ahead of the traffic for safety reasons and so they aren’t sitting between two cars where often times they are rear ended. It’s also quite uncomfortable to be breathing in the exhaust fumes especially those not maintained well that are spewing out smoke.

As for the statement of ‘no sympathy for the motorcyclist’ I think that is quite harsh and makes a fairly negative statement about the author. How about we modify that to ‘no sympathy for the actions of the motorcyclist’ as it’s tragic when _anyone_ is injured on our roads. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. If it’s any consolation to the author of the statement, the motorcyclist might be fined. But again, not having the details of what happened I wouldn’t want to jump to any conclusions.

The incident clearly demonstrates the need for a complete overhaul of the licencing and training for motorcyclists. A vast majority of riders seem to be a law unto themselves and with lax training and no police on the roads to do any sort of enforcement, I’m sure there will be many more occurrences because the government is intent on sticking up speed cameras.

No sympathy for the motorcyclist, I hope the police have written him a ticket too.

georgesgenitals6:00 pm 14 Jan 11

pennylane said :

i think we’ve all heard enough about how it was the bikers fault, although it almost definately wasnt the truckers fault and it sounds like the biker wasnt doing the safest things, this has been an aweful tragedy and no matter how stupid what the biker was doing he definately didnt deserve this.

‘Deserve’ has nothing to do with it. The laws of physics take precedence over personal opinion in these situations.

pennylane said :

no matter how stupid what the biker was doing he definately didnt deserve this.

So consequences should not arise from actions? Hmmm, real life may not suit you.

i think we’ve all heard enough about how it was the bikers fault, although it almost definately wasnt the truckers fault and it sounds like the biker wasnt doing the safest things, this has been an aweful tragedy and no matter how stupid what the biker was doing he definately didnt deserve this.

I hope the rider recovers OK. That certainly was a horrible experience.

I rarely filter or lane split as I just feel it goes against the primary technique that keeps me safe which Stay Upright teaches as ‘buffering’ but I like to think of as ‘stay as far away from anything that can hurt me as conditions allow’.

Interestingly enough I was shouted down at length on a popular biker forum for making the same statements, being told that in spite of filtering being illegal it was perfectly safe and that there was no record of any incidents being caused by it. Then again, a significant amount of posts on that same forum are about crashes.

It’s easy to second guess though. I can tell you it’s not easy to stay out of harms way on a motorcycle/bike in the ACT.

Again, I hope this rider recovers fully and gets back to the great time of riding again.

screaming banshee2:55 pm 14 Jan 11

Oh wait, they’re allready their….well, there goes the neighbourhood.

screaming banshee2:52 pm 14 Jan 11

Furthermore, get your licence to drive one and watch how no-one is considerate of the space you require to operate the vehicle. I wont try to pretend their aren’t dickhead truck drivers out there, and like cyclists they seem to be the only ones that you see / notice, but you begin to see in many accidents involving trucks are the result of cars doing something stupid around them.

As for like/dislike, I think it lacks explanation, do you like what the article is about, the fact that the article exists, or the way the writer integrates their opinion of some event into the text. Its all a bit ho-hum really. I just hope we dont start seeing all those stupid digg/twit/facespace nonsense buttons, ‘look ma its web2.0’ what a joke.

Mysteryman said :

I’m curious to know how lane filtering results in the rider being pinned under a truck without the driver realising.

Go & sit in a Kenworth & see how much vision there is from the drivers seat out the side & to the rear.

One of the reasons that you dont pass trucks on the left or while they are turning. There are large blind spots due to their size.

“I’m curious to know how lane filtering results in the rider being pinned under a truck without the driver realising.”

ide say either he fell off the bike then the truck ran over his arm once he was already on the ground, or he was lane filtering and he came straight in front of the truck at the start of the traffic lights thus knocking him off the bike and running him over.

georgesgenitals1:53 pm 14 Jan 11

Mysteryman said :

I’m curious to know how lane filtering results in the rider being pinned under a truck without the driver realising.

Maybe he was moving quickly when he came off, and got part of his body wedged through the force of his own momentum.

bailes23 said :

Someone has been seriously injured and 9 people have still chosen to “like” this story? What’s to like people?

Being informed?

Someone has been seriously injured and 9 people have still chosen to “like” this story? What’s to like people?

Captain RAAF1:26 pm 14 Jan 11

Temporary Australian!

He won’t do that again!

thanks ‘twizz’ you’ve helped complete that picture in my head as i arrived a few seconds after, does anyone know any futher news? if the man survived? but definately agreed about the screems.

I’m curious to know how lane filtering results in the rider being pinned under a truck without the driver realising.

I too saw the gentleman jumping up and down in front of the truck, getting the driver’s attention as the driver seemed to have no idea. I so hope the motor cyclist will be alright, as he was pinned by his arm.

Truckie wasn’t at fault, Ducati was lane filtering to jump the traffic and got it wrong. Might have come from the bicycle lane rather than between the truck and the commodore in the right lane. Going to take a long time before I get those screams out of my head.

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