Ruminations in Korea

Heavy metal thunder racin’ with the wind…

Nearly everyone who has ridden a bike for any length of time will agree. The highways are crowded with people who drive as if their sole purpose in getting behind the wheel is to avenge every wrong ever done to them by man, beast, or fate. The only thing that keeps them in line is their own fear of death, jail, and lawsuits, which are much less likely if they can find a motorcycle to challenge, instead of another two-thousand pound car or a concrete abutment. … Because the only thing that can alter their careless, ingrained driving habits is a threat of punishment, either legal or physical, and there is nothing about a motorcycle to threaten any man in a car.

- Hunter S. Thompson in his book “Hell’s Angels”

Way back in the day, not long after I started driving a car, the Utah Highway Patrol started a seat belt campaign that used the tag line “Arrive Alive”.

Motorcycling can be a truly liberating experience, the best thing you ever do. Riding can be the ultimate act of freedom, where your soul is freed from the strictures of the city and the hustle and bustle of everyday life. You can become one with nature, experiencing it directly rather than looking at it through the glass windshield of a several ton cage.

On the other hand, biking can be the last thing you ever do. Riding can be the ultimate act of freedom, where your soul is freed from the strictures of your body and your physical self can become one with the asphalt or another vehicle.

Biking is one of the great pleasures of my life. It is an activity that I have enjoyed for 22 years. I wish everyone could experience what I experience on my rides, whether it is a lengthy tour or something as simple as my daily ride to the office. As most, if not all, of such things are purely subjective in nature, it would be meaningless to attempt to describe them here. It is something that must be experienced directly and individually.

Many foreigners ride scooters, smaller bikes, and the big machines here in Korea. Every person’s experience is different than that of another. Why people ride and what they get out of it is for the individual to decide. It is my sincere wish that everyone who rides anywhere for any reason, will “Arrive Alive”.

For that reason, I have compiled a few of the lessons and insights I have learned in more than twenty years of riding about safe riding generally and riding in Korea specificially. I have taught several beginners to ride and I have been asked about riding techniques by countless others. What follows is not necessarily the best way of doing things and can in no way guarantee a safe ride. Rather, they are my thoughts and experiences that have helped me ride over the years with relatively few bumps, bruises, scrapes, and stitches.

One thing to note. If you ride for very long, you ARE going to go down at some point! You are going to get dinged. You are going to have an accident. The only real questions are what can you do to minize the risk, what can you do to minimize the accident, and how bad are you going to get hurt. I hope the following suggestions and insights will help delay that event as long as possible, and that what follows will help reduce the seriousness of any incident. Experience and awareness are necessary to successful and enjoyable riding. What follows are a few of the keys I used (many through painful experience) to unlock Experience and Awareness.

I. Pre-Ride Mindset

Riding is as much a state of mind as it is the physical act of moving from point “A” to point “B”. Koreans have a saying that translates to “Starting is half” which corresponds to the western saying “a good start is half the battle”. If you get off to a good start, then you are much more likely to get where you are going without incident. A major part of starting well is starting with the right frame of mind.

A. Give yourself plenty of time.

Give yourself plent of time to get to your destination at normal speeds. Figure in traffic conditions and weather. If you know you are going to be late before you leave, don’t try to make it on time anyway. Take a different mode of transportation. Take a taxi. Take a bus. Don’t get on a motorcycle with speed and darting in and out of traffic in mind.

If you are focused on getting somewhere in 10 minutes when it usually takes 20 mintues to get there, you will be focused more on getting where you are going than on what is going on around you. You will miss subtle clues and hints that signal trouble and danger. You will get angrier than usual at other drivers’ actual or perceived mistakes, and you will begin to make more mistakes yourself. You will drive much faster than usual. An even greater danger is that you will start taking greater risks and start doing things that you would normally never do. This is a recipe for disaster.

B. Don’t drive angry.

If you are angry at someone or something, cool down before you get on the bike. For many of the same reasons listed above, driving while angry is a bad idea. You will tend to drive faster, take more risks, and pay less attention to what you are doing. There are enough potential accidents out there waiting for you without you looking for them. You don’t need to create greater risk through less care.

C. Don’t drink and drive.

Don’t do it. Don’t even think about it. Almost half of the fatal motorcycle accidents show alcohol involvement. Enough said.

D. Plan your route.

Plan your route before you go, even it is a short drive that you make every day. If you are going somewhere unfamiliar, take special care to familiarize yourself with the route before you go. If you do this, you will not have to waste time or drop your concentration from the road and your surroundings in order to look at signs, wonder where you need to go next, and wonder what lane you should be in. If you are riding in a group, make sure the entire group agrees on the route before you leave.

E. Get plenty of rest before you ride.

Of course, plenty of rest ensures that your mind is sharper, your reflexes faster, your awareness broader than if you ride tired. The typical motorcycle accident allows the motorcyclist less than 2 seconds to complete all collision avoidance actions. You will need clear thinking and sharp instincts to use those 2 seconds to the most advantage.

However, there are other reasons for starting out well rested, such as having more energy and stamina to drive for longer periods of time. Also, do not think that it is impossible to fall asleep while riding a motorcycle. It happened to me after riding about 15 hours with my buddy Jon Lichfield back in the spring of 1991. Falling asleep was the easy part. Waking up a minute or so later completely disoriented, wondering where you are at, and being horrified that you fell asleep on a motorcycle and could have been killed is the difficult part to deal with. It takes a while for that to wear off.

II. Preparing For The Ride

Every pilot runs through a series of pre-flight checks before he takes off. Every Captain of a ship runs through a serious of checks before sailing. Similarly, every cyclist should make in a habit, if not a quasi-religious ritual to make certain pre-ride checks.

A. Wear protective gear.

1. First and foremost, WEAR A HELMET! No matter how hot the day, no matter how short the trip, wear a helmet. Statistically, helmet use by bikers involved in accidents is lower for untrained, uneducated, young motorcycle riders on hot days and short trips.

Make sure the helmet is good quality and has a snug fit. Try various helmets. The question you need to ask is how much do you value your head and ultimately your life? Is your head a $20 head or is it a $250 head?

Wear a full-face helmet. The increased coverage of a full facial coverage helmet increases protection, and significantly reduces facial injuries. The top of your head looking pretty doesn’t really matter if your entire face is ground off on the pavement. My main helmet these days is a modular helment that is essentially a full-face helmet where the visor opens normally, and with the flip of a clamp, the entire front portion including the visor and chin cover rotates up and out of the way to create an open-faced helmet.

A helmet saved my life. Full Stop. If I had not been wearing a helmet on the day of the Big Accident many years ago, I would not be here today.

2. Wear a good leather jacket. Denim provides some minimal protection, but wears through after only about 5 feet of sliding. The thicker the leather, the better the protection. I wear a very full and very heavy leather jacket all year round. This was not always the case. on the day of the Big Accident, I was young and stupid and rationalized that i didn’t need my leather jacket because it was such a beautiful spring day and I wasn’t going very far. The one time I got on the bike without a leather jacket was the time I went to the hospital because I wasn’t wearing one.

The question that everyone asks when I get off my bike is, “aren’t you hot?” My answer is, “Yes, but it’s better to sweat than to bleed.” Although the jacket can be a fashion statement, it’s primary purpose is to keep your skin attached to your body.

3. Wear gloves that provide proper padding on your knuckles and palm.

4. Boots or hightop sneakers will protect your feet, ankles and lower shins from cuts, scrapes, and burns.

5. Full-lenth, strong, sturdy demin or leather for pants.

B. Know the bike.

Start small. If it is your first time riding, start with a 50cc scooter with automatic transmission or a very small motorcycle. You could be suprised how much power you get right from the start. Out in traffic, you do not need to be worried about your control over some tightly wound engine with a huge amount of torque. Let yourself focus on the road.

If you are an experienced rider and you are on a new bike or a borrowed bike, familiarize yourself with the bike before riding. Figure out where the controls are, get a feel for the clutch and brake, notice the ground clearance, locate the center of gravity. It does you no good if you need the horn in an emergency and you hit the turn signal button instead. If you are not familiar with the bike, you could think that it acts like other bikes you have ridden, only to learn that you can crash right out of the gate.

C. Check out the bike.

Give bike at least a cursory check before you start it up. Check the tires to see if they are low. Make sure the headlight, turn signals, and horn works. Check the clutch and brakes. Make sure everything is in working order. At least once a week or so, give the bike a thorough check of all fluid levels, cable conditions, tire conditions, etc.

D. Turn your headlight on.

Conspicuity of the motorcycle is a critical factor in multiple vehicle accidents, and accident involvement is significantly reduced by the use of motorcycle headlights in daylight. Keep the headlight on at all times. Koreans are simply not used to vehicles using lights in the daytime. They will often try to use hand signals (usually flexing their fingers at you in a grasping motion) to try to tell you that you are stupid and have left your lights on. Don’t turn them off. My bike has a very powerful headlight and very bright fog lamps. I keep my headlight and fog lamps at all times, day and night. If cars flash their bright lights at me to get me to reduce my lights, I flip the switch, and they get a blast of high beams. On the back of my bike, I have rewired my light system so that my tail light and both blinkers are on all the time. When I signal, the back turn signals will blink off then on again, rather than the usual blink on then off again.

III. The Ride

A motorcyclist has to drive as if everybody else on the road is out to kill him. A few of them are, and many of those who aren’t are just as dangerous … A bike is totally vulnerable; its only defense is maneuverability, and every accident situation is potentially fatal — especially on a freeway, where there is no room to fall without being run over almost instantly.

- Hunter S. Thompson in his book “Hell’s Angels”

There are numerous potential accident configurations. However, there are a few configurations that seem to be more common than others in Korea. My experience has been that the most active threats to riders in Korea is oncoming vehicles turning left across your path or making U-turns directly in front of you, people pulling out of of side-streets or parking lots into your path without looking, people changing lanes suddenly without signaling or looking, and people running red lights. I will address each of these as well as other issues, starting with how to best avoid getting into bad situations.

A. What to look for

Think defensively. Doing this requires that you really open your eyes and your consciousness and expand your awareness to encompass every potential threat around you. Begin by looking for things that are out of the ordinary and looking for obstacles that block your view of potential problems. Always assume you are totally invisible to all other drivers!

1. Look at oncoming traffic. If somone in oncoming traffic is driving very slowly or stopped in their inside lane, this is a huge signal that the oncoming car intends to turn left across your lane. Another clue that someone may turn left across your path is when the oncoming car is not slowing down, or is actually speeding up, at an intersection with a yellow light. They may be trying to beat the yellow light and made a left turn before the light turns red. Also, if there is a line of cars in the inside oncoming lane waiting at an intersection to turn left or make a U-turn, there is a very real possibility that somone in that line of cars will lose patience and make an illegal U-turn from the middle of the pack on your green light.

Anticipiate people turning left across your travel lane. The most frequent accident configuration is the motorcycle proceeding straight then an automobile makes a left turn in front of the oncoming motorcycle. It happens all the time, you must be ready for it. You must expecit it. If not, it could get very ugly.

If you see any of the aforementioned warning signs, cut back on your speed, get ready to use your brakes, and keep your body loose enough to do a bit of quick, controlled dodging.

2. Look for merging traffic. Take note of what is happening on the right side of the road. Watch for people turning right from parking lots, alleys, and other roads to merge into your travel lane.

Here in Korea, it is very common for people to park illegally along the side of the road, effectively blocking the outside travel lane and making it unusable as a travel lane. It is also common for people here to use up every inch of curb space, which means that they will park right up to the very edge of a parking lot or alleyway entrance. This effectively creates a wall of cars that make it impossible for you to see what is coming from the right. It also makes it impossible for the people coming out of the parking lots and alleys to see what is coming. The only way for the merging vehicles to see what’s coming is to inch out into the road far enough for them to see what is coming and then merging into traffic. They usually merge into the second lane because of the cars blocking the outside lane.

When you ride in the outside lane, always drive slowly and be on the lookout for people pulling out in front of you or people opening doors of cars parked on the side of the road. Even if you are not in the outside lane, be cautious. People can and often do pull out in turn into the second lane or even cut across all lanes of traffic to turn left.

3. Look for people suddenly changing lanes with or without signalling. This hazard comes from impatient and inattentive people. The most common occurrances seem to be from people who are in the inside lane at an intersection who grow tired of waiting for the left-turn signal or people who accidentally get stuck in that lane behind a bunch of people waiting to turn left and simply jam the wheel to the right and punch the accelarator out of impatience, thereby lauching themselves into the next lane without looking or thinking. Another source of this problem is impatient people traveling in one lane who see a microscopic opening and try to get in the faster moving lane by suddenly jerking their vehicle into your lane. Also, people parked on the side of the road can pull out at any given time for any reason. And then there are the people who are simply not paying attention and can’t be bothered to check what’s going on around them before they drift into your lane.

These people are everywhere…Ubiquitous omnipresence. Due to the suddenness and unexpectedness of their actions, these drivers are almost impossible to anticipate. They just happen. The best and safest thing to do is to assume always that someone will do something stupid. Pay attention to what the cars on either side of you are doing. If there is a line of cars waiting to turn left, make sure you are traveling slowly enough that you can stop if any one of those cars suddenly lurches in front of you. Keep your horn thumb ready.

4. Watch the road in front of you. There is always construction going on. Potholes can literally pop up overnight. Things fall off of trucks all the time. Keep your focus far enough ahead that you can stop or avoid the hazard if there is something in your path. While you are at it, keep your eye on the car in front of you and be far enough behind him so that you can stop if he jams on his brakes for whatever reason.

5. DO NOT RELY ON TURN SIGNALS in Korea! Many people do not signal and many other people signal exactly the opposite of what they actually want to do. For example, if someone on a side street want to turn right and merge into traffic on a main street, that person will commonly signal a LEFT turn. Thus, he will signal left but turn right. The mixed-up local reasoning for this is that if he signals a right turn from the side street, then the people coming from the left will not see his signal, but if he turns his left signal on, then people coming from the left will see his flashing light and be alerted to the fact that he intends to merge into traffic by making a right turn. I have seen many scooters and bikes get hit this way. They see the car in front of them make a left signal and they cut around the right side of the car to make a right turn, only to have the car turn right and collide with and/or run over the guy on two wheels. Trust no one to do what they should do or what they signal they are doing.

6. WATCH OUT FOR CELL PHONE USERS! Stay as far away from people talking on cell phones as you possibly can. They are too busy chatting into their stupid phones and trying not to ram the car in front of them. Motorcycles are the last thing on cell phone guy’s mind. He doesn’t know about motorcycles and doesn’t care about motorcycles. STAY AWAY FROM THEM!

The foregoing things are only a few of the things that you should watch for. Statistics say that the average driver makes approximately 200 decisions per mile. Obviously, most of this happens in the subconscious mind and there is no way to discuss every possible danger. You must become so accustomed to looking for the hazards discussed above that it becomes second nature. These assessments and reactions to the assessments must become instictive. If you have to try to analyze and react consciously, you won’t make it. Things happen to quickly. Experience and awareness are the keys to your increased safety.

B. Where to ride.

Look at it this way. In any kind of race, we’re all going the same way and we all know what we’re doing. Nobody has to worry abou nuts or drunks or old ladies coming out of blind alleys. It makes a hell of a difference; you can concentrate on your own motor and keep it under control.

But the highways! Here you are moving along in traffic about sixty-five right there at the speed limit, and it’s all you can do to keep out of people’s way. … And once you go down, you’ll be lucky if you only get run over twice.

Don McGuire, veteran scrambles rider

A question I am often asked is where is the safest place to ride on the road. That is a question you should be asking and answering, both consciously and subconsciously, continually. Literally, that is the question that should always, at all times and in all places, be running through your head in one way or another.

Put yourself in a position where you always have a way out, no matter which direction trouble comes from. In my experience, that place differs depending upon the layout of the road. My general rule is to ride as close to the middle of my side of the road as possible. Of course, if there are only one or two lanes going in your direction or an even number of lanes, then there is no real middle. Thus, I generally try to ride as close to the middle of my side of the road as possible. My reasoning for generally riding in this location is fairly logical.

Note: From here on out, when I talk about one-lane, two-lane, three-lane roads, etc., I am talking about lanes going in my direction only and not the road as a whole.

1. One-lane roads: One-lane roads make me nervous. There is too much that can go wrong. Just as in any situation, vehicles, people, dogs, balls, and other objects can come at you from any direction, but you have less room to react and avoid than you do on larger roads. Given the closer proximity to things on the right side of the road, it is easier to see and avoid cars cutting across the road from the left, oncoming cars turning left, and other left-side threats than it is to avoid cars, people, animals and objects that can come at high rates of speed out alleys or from between cars that are literally only inches from your right side. In order to better balance the situation and to take advantage of the better visibility on the left side, when I am riding on one-lane roads, I tend to ride closer to the median, say approximatley 3/4 of the way to the center line. You don’t want to get too close to oncoming traffic because those yellow lines in the middle are often just suggestions to some drivers and are crossed with frightening regularity.

2. Two-lane roads: Two-lane roads make me slightly less nervous than one-lane roads. Bascially, you have all the same problems of a one-lane road, but spread out over a slightly larger area. However, it is very common in Korea for drivers to park illegally in the outside lane, effectively turning a two-lane road into a one-lane road at best or a 1.5-lane road at worst.

If the road is reduced to a one-lane road then I drive as I would on a normal one-lane road. However, if the road is narrowed to only a 1.5-lane road, then there is the additional risk of having another vehicle trying to use the half a lane next to you as a full travel lane. The result of this is that the other vehicle will take up part of your lane, which means that you have all of the problems of a one-lane road in a space only about 3/4 of a lane wide, plus you have a moving vehicle next to you.

The best way to handle this situation is to prevent it. Own your lane. Don’t let a car squeeze in next to you. I do this by riding in the inside lane close to the right side of the lane, effectively creating a situation where a car cannot squeeze between you and the cars parked on the side of the road or between you and the center of the road. If I find myself in a situation where I am one of two vehicles in a 1.5 lane situation, then I back off, let the other vehicle move ahead and then take possession of the lane again at the outside of the inside lane.

If the two lanes are normal lanes with no blockage of cars or other obstacles in the outside lane, then I will ride about 3/4 of the way on the right side of the inside lane. This gives me more room to deal with potential problems from the right side of the road as well as giving some room to deal with problems that can come from the left side. It is important to pay special attention to the possibility of oncoming cars turning left or making u-turns across your path.

3. Three or more lane roads: Generally, I try to stay as close to the center of the lane that is the closest to the middle of my side of the road. Thus, if I am on a three-lane road, I will try to stay in the center of the middle lane. On a four-lane roade, I will stay closer to the right side of the third lane from the right or the left side of the second lane from right. This allows for more time to react to things from either side and allows more attention to be focused on watching out for other drivers crossing my lane or pulling into my lane. Again, assume you are invisible to everyone else. If I am on a huge road with 6 or more lanes going in one direction, then i will usually stay in the second or third lane from the right in order to cut down on the number of people jockeying for position and switching lanes quickly and frequently around me.

IV. Additional Riding Tips

Unfortunately, safer riding is not simply about choosing a safer position on the road and watching out for other cars. The natural tendency of a rider is to seek the freedom of the open road, to open the throttle, to experience the thrills of weaving through traffic, and the unfortunate desire to screw around. The motorcycle is an iron horse chomping at its bit, begging to be unbriddled and given free run of the road. A large part of a successful riding experience is to know when to rein in the trusty steed and keep it under control.

A. Don’t ride between cars to get closer to front of the line at a red light. The desire to do so is there, particularly when you see other scooters and motorcycles squeaking between cars to get in front of everyone else and then launching out in front of the pack when the light turns green. You can save an incredible amount of time doing this, but you can also spend months in the hospital or die doing it.

B. NEVER ride between a vehicle and the curb or the edge of the road. A stopped vehicle doesn’t necessarily mean that nothing is going to happen. Next time you are in the back seat of a taxi here in Korea, look near the door handle or window. You will almost always see a sticker warning you of motorcycles coming up on your right side. Also, buses will usually have signs warning people to look for motorcycles before the get off the bus. From the motorcyclists point of view, this means that taxis and other drivers’ doors will be opening, and people will be getting off of buses. Also cars can make sudden right turns. Long vehicles such as tractor-trailers, container trucks, etc. cannot see you. And don’t forget that dust, loose gravel, sand, and other traction-negating debris collects there on the side of the road.

I know of many cases where people have been seriously injured while riding between vehicles and the side of the road to move faster through traffic or to get to the front of the line at a traffic light. In one such case, a guy was riding between a bus and the curb. He thought he would be safe because they were not at a bus stop. However, due to the traffic jam, the bus driver decided to let the passengers out several meters before the bus stop. A girl exited the bus and the guy hit her and injured her before he could stop. He came to a rest leaning against the front door of the bus. The bus driver opened the front door, which caused the rider to fall inside of the bus. This trapped his leg between the bottom step of the bus and his bike. The result was a horribly broken and shattered leg, which took about two years of surgery, treatment, and therapy to heal. He remains in pain to this day. That was a completely avoidable accident. Had he stayed behind the bus where he belonged and not tried to save a few seconds by going between the bus and the curb, no one would have been hurt and he would have gotten where he was going safely. Whatever financial compensation you may get out of an accident is not worth the agony that could have been avoided by proper riding.

C. Signal your intentions. Use your turn signal. Even if other drivers don’t use or misuse their turn signals, you must use yours and use it correctly. You need to do everything possible to let other drivers know that you are there and to let them know what you are doing. By and large, Korean drivers do not like to let other vehicles change lanes to get in front of them. This is especially true of motorcycles. Often, if I am changing lanes to the left, in addition to my turn signals, I will stick my left arm out and motion for the car in the next lane to drop back a bit so I can get in safely.

D. Pay attention when changing lanes. Simply using your turn signals is not enough. Drivers of other vehicles are often not paying attention to your turn signals. They are busy putting on makeup, eating, talking/yelling at other passengers, talking on phones, trying to change lanes themselves, and any number of other things. You must assume that they didn’t see your signal. Other drivers expect you to stay where you are. Before you move over, you must make sure that it is safe to do so. Don’t assume it is safe. Pay attention when changing lanes. Otherwise, the car in the next lane could hit you and send you to the hospital.

E. Slow down when cornering. Korean roads are not very well engineered and not very well contstructed. In some other countries, it is possible to take curves and corners and high speeds because the roads are designed and built to pull you down into the corner. Korean roads are not. Aside from road construction, principles of physics show that you cannot successfully navigate a certain corner or curve beyond a certain speed. Every corner is different. It is always wise to slow down before entering a curve or corner. This will greatly reduce your risk of driving or sliding off the road while you are going around the corvern or curve. (note: try to avoid using the brakes while taking corners or curves. That is a very easy way to go down.) Slow down around corners. If you go too fast, you could lose control and end up off the road.

F. Be careful late at night. As evening turns into night and night turns into early morning, traffic begins to thin out, speeds begin to increase, red lights begin to be ignored, the use of turn signals virtually ceases, and a great percentage of the drivers have likely been drinking at some point in the evening. Taxi drivers and drunks are your greatest threat in the night time hours. If you are driving in on the roads in Korea a night, particularly between around 1am and 5am, be extremely cautious! Drive slower and pay careful attention to what every vehicle on the road is doing.

G. Don’t show off. Don’t screw around on the bike. Respect the bike’s power and potential engergy. You may stick that wheelie 99 times and miss once, but one miss is all it takes.