Anticipating traffic behavior is vital if you ride a motorcycle on the street. It’s important to keep track on that one car that may make a left-hand turn in front of you, but the typical driving snafus that happen every day are just as dangerous. Anticipating how cars interact with each other is more important than just that old lady with her left blinker on. The more cars you add into an equation, the more random acts of stupidity can take place. If you commute to work on your motorcycle like I do, getting a feel for the ebb and flow of traffic is a key to riding as safely as possible.

I’ve developed a hypothesis for traffic patterns that help me avoid potentially dangerous situations. I don’t know if there is already a defined theory for this, but I call it the Spring Hypothesis. The concept is simple: the more “pressure” between two or more vehicles on the road, the more likely one or more of those vehicles is going to do something erratic and dangerous.
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