Modern Vespa

I thought only guys in cartoons (think Coyote) pull that kind of shenanegon - wow...

Not exactly a brilliant move.

I don't think he was going that fast for the road - but he should absolutely have been looking far ahead enough to realise those lorries were stationary! Bloody obvious from the video. Lesson learned one hopes.

'Aggressive' as in the title? Hell no.

Watch his mirrors when he says the first "shit." He's turning the bars left to go left. He doesn't know how to countersteer. He's counterbalancing, which is exactly the opposite way to maneuver at speed. That's why he went inbetween the trucks. After turning left to go left, his center of gravity shifted right and initiate the lean to the right (unintentional countersteering response), right into the gap of the trucks. He also had plenty of time to stop with the brakes on that bike, if he merely did a proper e-stop. He didn't even get near the limit of his max stopping force, which you can see due to no light trail of rubber. An e-stop without skidding still leaves marks on the road because of high friction.

He could have burned off most of his speed by not trying to maneuver at all and doing an e-stop straight ahead, then he would have had plenty of time to countersteer at a diagonal angle to the left hand shoulder, further increasing the distance he had to stop by 40%. The hypotenuse of a right equilateral triangle is about 1.4 of the "legs". A diagonal angle gives more stopping space than the line straight ahead. The left shoulder of the road was completely clear.

He spent more time "shitting" than stopping. He should never had been filtering and passing at those speeds based on the lack of skill he demonstrated. Those trucks didn't jump out of nowhere.

+1

whoops. Anyone tell what bike that is?

or was...

Glad the rider was OK and hopefully he learned his lessons. Sometimes the best learning happens when we spectacularly fail but walk away in one piece.

I think it's a Suzuki Bandit S?

No, a bell end!

Too true. Those bars barely needed to move to weave by those cars. The reason he may not have applied enough brake is the bike felt too unstable to chance it what with all the wobble from the inappropriate steering inputs.

Then of course there's the fact that his judgment sucks to begin with.

I'm positive he learned zip from that experience.

"No way I was going to stop".

That simply means he was going too fast. Period. Full stop. End of message.

Why did he not slow down as soon as he saw the trucks up ahead? He was in the right lane, it was clear and as soon as I saw the trucks I would have started breaking. He had plenty of time.

I am guessing he saw the trucks but failed to notice that they were nearly stationary. Probably dawned on him a millisecond before the first "Shit". He also failed to note that there does not appear to be many options for escape on that road as the guardrails are pretty close in on the right and the shoulder on the left does not look like much of an option.

I echo the responses so far, particularly that he was going too fast to begin with, and add one more possibility: his attitude.

It seems that he assumed that he would be able to split lanes no matter what and wasn't mentally prepared for the possibility of having to stop. By the time he realized he wouldn't make it between the trucks it was too late.

I have been guilty of this (to a much lesser degree). Luckily all I did was tick a couple of mirrors. I've learned from this. Hopefully he will, too.

On my commute I've seen guys splitting between two solidly packed lanes so fast that if a vehicle narrowed the gap there would have been no possibility of stopping or evading.

Agreed.

His mind was focused on weaving in and out of traffic and passing everything in sight. He hadn't considered that reality might interfere with his fantasy.

Shit happens.

Playing Monday-morning quarterback here...

It seems to me he wasn't going very fast by the time he actually got to the trucks. Looks like he had braked to about 10-15 mph to me.

There was quite a bit of space ahead of the last car he passed on his left. He appeared to me to be a victim of target fixation, as he should have been able at that point to swerve to the left of the left-most truck where there was no guardrail. Even if he hadn't been able to keep it together enough to stay on the narrow paved shoulder, dumping it in the dirt would have been preferable to getting into the truck sandwich.

Agree that he was having perverse fun swerving around the cars and not directing his attention far enough down the road for his speed.

The information was there in front of him-he either couldn't interpret it or didn't see it until it was too late to respond properly. Maybe he thought he could squeeze between the lorries. Also the car just before the lorries had its hazard lights on to give even more warning that something was amiss.

Panicking instead of braking is pretty common. Looks like the swearing (and possibly pooping) bit of his brain was using all available computing power.

Sometimes it's hard to tell if somethings stopped up ahead but as Ash said the hazards should of clued him in. He was being inattentive to things up ahead and like SS said had a bit of target fixation. Glad he wasn't hurt tho.