Spreading the word..
 

I've just made my son read this article and it's opened his eyes, if you'll excuse the pun. When I was teaching him to ride I always said to him before he went out to keep in mind that every other vehicle out there was trying to kill him and consider every other driver as an idiot who doesnt know the road rules, because you have no way of knowing if they do. He forgot these simple rules one day a couple of years ago and assumed he'd been seen when he hadn't and wound up lying on the road with two broken femurs and a smashed right hip. He's riding again but he's a lot more aware of other drivers now.

I passed this on to my dispatcher who in turn passed it on to our company safety dude. I imagine that as Drivers we will be seeing it soon in our safety bulletins as he was very impressed with it. He is a rider as well. We did have an incident where one of our drivers was hit by a biker and the biker was killed. Ruled "no fault" to our driver but he will never drive a commercial truck again. He can't get over the fact that the rider died in front of his eyes. I drive for a living and I ride as well so I look a bit better than most, but hell I can lose a whole car (Blocked by my mirrors) so on a bike you are very vulnerable.

There is a Semi demo rig that goes around proving that point to the public. I've never personally seen it, but we discussed it at my MSF class. They set up 4 cop cars and 28 bikes around a truck, and have regular people get in and sit in the cab. They look in the mirrors and realize that they can't see ANY of the vehicles because they are all in the blind spots.

I printed out several copies of the little booklet I made out of this post, and gave them to the MSF instructors. They liked them so much they handed them out to the class and asked for the URL so they could find it again.