I knew the car was going to be trouble as soon as I spotted it. I could see the left rear passenger window was covered by a sales sticker as the Toyota sedan sped up the highway on-ramp.

Great, I thought to myself, someone taking a test drive during rush hour.

The Toyota merged onto the lane next to me. I could see the driver chatting with the passenger, waving his right hand excitedly. The car was rapidly approaching the car in front of it, and I knew the Toyota driver wasn’t paying any attention.

I started doing all of the things I’ve written about before: I moved over to the left side of my lane, I put my finger on the horn, and I turned my head so that I could watch traffic in front of me as well as the Toyota to my side. I put the Spring Hypothesis to the test. Sure enough, the car started to come into my lane without signaling as soon as the driver perceived the car in front of him.

Beep-beep-beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!! my horn sounded. The car jerked right and swerved back into its original lane.

I kept my speed and moved ahead in traffic. I looked in my side mirror just in time to see the Toyota cut off an SUV behind me. The SUV flashed its lights and I heard another horn go off.

Even though I identified a source of danger, anticipated a dangerous situation, and reacted appropriately, I wasn’t out of the woods yet. Now I had to deal with my mind and body’s reaction to what happened.

Here’s how to deal with the emotional and physiological issues that come from surviving a near miss.
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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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