I've always wondered what an S2R would look like with pipes on both sides.
I make it a point to keep an eye on my mirrors until I'm sure that the vehicle behind me will be coming to a stop behind me. Some people won't shift to neutral in case they need to make a sudden getaway, but I'm of the opinion that if I'm paying attention I still have plenty of time to shift back into first and take evasive action.
There are other options besides just running through the intersection. You can pull over to the side, either in front of another lane that has stopped or over out of the way when you see someone who is likely to ram you. One thing that I regularly do if I think there is any chance the car behind me isn't paying attention is to flash my brake light several times to get their attention. I don't know if it makes a difference or not, but so far I have more than three decades of riding without being hit from behind. I've been hit from behind in a car at least three different times.
When I'm first at an intersection and nobody is immediately behind me, I always pull to one side of the lane leaving the largest gap in case some moron who isn't paying attention needs to "squeeze by". I'm also not sure if that is worthwhile or not, but I still do it, along with flashing the brake light.
Scott, my S2R actually had pipes on both sides before the crash.
Good advice too from you and everyone else. Thanks. One of my first purchases on the new bike will be one of these
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3603/3446799234_2dce7c3c45_m.jpgI have flashed the brake light at intersections, but never have done it consistently in city driving. Wish I could even remember if I was off to the right of the lane and had room to move further over. Might have been a car parked next to me. I know I wasn't in the center of the lane. I never ride there.
by the way, was she on the phone? i bet she was.
not sure, might have been.
I'm an advocate of NOT running yellow lights. Here in AZ people do it all the time to the point where running red lights is like second nature to most people. In order to combat that sort of action, photo camera's are being put in many intersections, but I was totally shocked to see a sign posted at an intersection that read "Red Means Stop". It's so bad that you can regularly see up to 3 cars run the same red light one right after another. It's like people have just decided to stop acknowledging traffic signals.
Sounds like you had fate watching over you.
It's the same way here in Denver. They're more like traffic 'suggestions'. A bunch of high accident areas have the red-light cameras now and people continue to run them. A few months back at one of those, came up to the light in my car and a guy flew through the red going about 65mph (it's a 35 posted speed limit) There was a unmarked cop car right there that pulled him over. Probably wasted out of his mind.
