Micheal Hotchkin

Virtually without exception, any trip I take on the motorcycle that requires my leaving the driveway leads to encounters with others on the road who are not paying attention to what they are doing. This is of particular interest to a motorcyclist because among the most frequently given explanations for rider injuries and death is that the other driver “didn’t see him.”

The most common offense I witness involves cell phones, which the height advantage I have from the bike makes easy to observe. I sit behind cars at stop lights and watch through the rear window as the driver ahead of me fumbles around with their phone, holding it below the dashboard trying to conceal what they are doing, yet making it obvious to everyone waiting when the light turns green as they sit there like the dimwits they are playing with their phone instead of driving. I make a game sitting at those same stop lights of watching oncoming traffic and counting how many drivers have a phone pressed up against their ears, assigning bonus points if their erratic driving prompts another driver to honk their horn. I have had people turn directly in front of me in parking lots, overlooking the 500‐pound motorcycle with its adult‐sized rider that their inattention is trying to maim, and not a five‐mile stretch of travel on the freeway fails to produce at least one lane change by an idiot in a car who has not bothered to notice I am already in that space. The list goes on.

The Washington State Patrol characterizes the driver of the truck shown above as distracted at the time he caused his vehicle to roll onto its side last week.¹ I’ll bet. While I suppose it is possible he was getting a blow job that distracted him, the greater likelihood, in my experience, is that he was screwing around with his cell phone. The people seen standing on the shoulder of the freeway are all congratulating themselves on being much more capable of talking on their phones while driving.

People do not become more attentive when they park their cars. While on the water, I have seen a 25' U.S. Coast Guard response boat equipped with an M60 run a circle around a sailboat not giving way to a massive cruise ship the Guard was escorting out of Elliott Bay. The Guard had been attempting to raise the sailboat’s skipper on channel 16 and, failing that, most certainly got the dumdum’s attention by nearly swamping him in a 360° wake. (It was impressive. I am thinking about mounting an M60 on my Yamaha.) Any number of fair‐weather fishermen dragging worms through the water behind their 12' dinghies think they are entitled to the right‐of‐way when encountering vessels under sail, which is not true and requires shouting at them to clear astern. Nor would a day on the water be complete without hearing at least one instance of someone feeling compelled to sound a warning signal — typically a cargo ship trying to get some goofball out of his way. And yes, I have had to avoid a collision with a sailboat the skipper of which was on his cell phone, oblivious to my presence, let alone that I was the stand‐to vessel.

Then there is the news that a 97‐foot fishing vessel was run aground this week near Bush Point on Whidbey Island,² which, outside Alaska and Hawaii, is the fourth largest island by area in the United States.

The grounding occurred in the early morning hours of a clear day. I imagine the folks whose homes are on the shoreline waking up, making coffee, walking out on the patio to enjoy the morning sunshine, and seeing this thing wallowing in the surf. Probably not a welcome change from the usual boring old killer whales that live in the area.

On the chart, the splash of red terminating at Bush Point indicates a lighthouse, so we can assume this is not some feature of the geography that often catches the mariner unawares. The grounding was moreover just several hundred yards out of the shipping lane that enters Puget Sound, not in some out‐of‐the‐way gunkhole, and Whidbey Island is 35 miles from one end to the other, so making the further assumption that the skipper had been in these waters before … well, he drove his vessel onto the hard despite all that. I was not aboard, and I have not seen any follow‐up in the news explaining the circumstances, so of course I do not know the cause. I have no idea what sort of navigation aids were on hand (although some fixtures are obvious in the photo), but they would not absolve the guy with the license in any event. The story reads to me as if someone on the bridge of the Neahkahnie was having a 4 AM catnap.

It is not a surprise that people driving boats can be just as much a hazard as those driving automobiles. My guess is they are the same people, or at least went to school together. Most likely they are also the people who stand in the middle of the aisle at the grocery store with their shopping carts parked sideways while they read the label on a box of Ding Dongs. Certainly many of them own Subarus. I suspect those on elevators gazing at their phones with the same expression of wonder as an infant crapping its diaper are among the culprits. If they were all identifiable in a way that did not require their first being allowed out of the house, the world would be a safer place. It is instead necessary to know that they are out of doors at all hours of the day, moving about in anonymity, and that they are trying to get us. Be alert. They are not.

Update August 1, 2013
On July 24, a Spanish train traveling at excessive speed derailed as it rounded a corner, killing 79 people. The preliminary investigation into the cause of the accident finds that the train’s driver was on the phone at the time and failed to slow the train as required. The driver reports, I can’t explain it. I still don’t understand how I didn’t see … mentally, or whatever. I just don’t know.

Incredible.