Advocacy & Safety - Puzzling motorist behavior

Have you noticed that when a driver is waiting to enter traffic via a right-hand turn, he or she almost always is staring to the right? This makes it difficult for the cyclist to establish eye-contact with the driver, and it's also distracting to the cyclist because for the next mile or so the thought keeps recurring: Why don't they look to the left? That's where the traffic's coming from!

Any ideas?

I've noticed that too I think. What really bothers me is when a vehicle waits and waits to turn right because there's too much traffic for the car to go straight into the left lane. I avoid passing these strange people on the right for fear they may blindly kill me.
The only relief I get when I see a stupid motorist do something at an intersection is that I can better predict more stupid behavior from them later on down the road that may otherwise kill me.

Originally posted by JonR
This makes it difficult for the cyclist to establish eye-contact with the driver...Any ideas?
Blow a whistle. They'll look right at you.

Servus!

Gotta agree with you there Pete! Nothing makes people LOOK like the shrill from a whistle! Try an English Bobby whistle (the tubular kind with no pea inside) - as loud and a piercing as a 5 year old who didn't get her way!

My number one rule of biking is assume no one sees you, even if they are staring directly at you. When passing by a car waiting at a side road, I always bike in the towards the middle of the road to give me more time to react to an absent minded motorist.

I ride as I taught my daughters to drive.
"Always assume that the other person is going to do something stupid. 99% of the time you will be right."

One of my favorite examples, of the thousands I have witnessed, was a minor fender bender a couple of years ago. I was in a car, not on my bike. A woman "paused" at a stop sign then pulled right out in front of me. Had the street not been slick from a slight drizzle, or had there not been construction in the right lane, I could have avoided the accident by getting stopped or veering to the right to go behind her. As it was I did one of those slow motion, wet road skids right into her. SHE was FURIOUS with ME, saying repeatedly, "I stopped!" She just did not get the concept that I did not have a stop. As a very defensive driver, I did have my foot off the gas and poised over the brake ready to, otherwise I would really have slammed into her. She refused to give me her insurance information, got in her car and drove off. I got her license plate number, but she was from out of state. My insurance company tried to track her down, but they were not successful.

Originally posted by JonR
Have you noticed that when a driver is waiting to enter traffic via a right-hand turn, he or she almost always is staring to the right? This makes it difficult for the cyclist to establish eye-contact with the driver, and it's also distracting to the cyclist because for the next mile or so the thought keeps recurring: Why don't they look to the left? That's where the traffic's coming from!

Any ideas?

Just do what I do. Assume they will do something stupid. That way, you can be better prepared when it happens.

Chris