First of all...Welcome. And I commend your 7 hour trip - I don't know if you had set out from home that morning or were just returning from spending the night somewhere else. Either way that's quite a ride. I hope it was memorable (beside downing your bike at the end).
Otherwise, I'm Sorry but not much sympathy here. You report that you were driving on a "two lane road with another lane for the parked cars". I'm mentally picturing one lane of vehicles traveling ("backed up") in each direction and you had turned out to the right and were traveling at 5mph down the adjacent lane that's normally for parked cars but is apparently empty on this particular day. It seems that you probably had a degree of Tunnel Vision going on d/t being so close to home after such a long ride. Also, being so close to home... (unless you had just moved there) you had to have been familiar with the "keep clear" area by the McD's parking lot entrance. The pick-up's break lights would have likely been on...that, along with seeing the gap in front of the pick-up (obvisously big enough to drive an SUV through) should have been cause to at least hover over your breaks.
With that degree of traffic, your defensive driving should have been peaked - especially driving down a lane that it sounds like may not have been legal to do so.
My other thought while reading your scenario was...how do you drop you drop bike if stopping abruptly from only 5 mph. If your rear wheel skidded, then I say you didn't apply your front brake hard enough which can provide up to 80% of your stopping power. I'm glad your weren't injured and only minimal damage to your bike.
I think the SUV driver could have approached you to help after vacating traffic if they were nice. I don't think he was obligated. Doesn't sound like you had any Right-of-way being in the Passing Lane. The pick-up had the Right-of-way and it was allowing the SUV to turn.
I remember once being at the Laughlin River Run Rally a few years ago and we were walking down the Strip in the evening...lots of slow traffic. There was a steady stream of bikes slowly coming out of one casino's parking lot to turn right onto the strip. My wife and I and some friends were standing at a street corner waiting to cross the casino's entrance. A few bikes were doing burn-outs while waiting. One bike had successfully done one a few dozen feet earlier and then had advanced to right in front of us and was doing another burn. The burn-out got away from him and the rear tire started to arch out to his right. Still "burning", he barely missed contacting the curb and continue skipping on his left foot until he laid his chromed-out bike down after about 3/4 of a full 360. The biker got up, a few of the people watching on the sidewalk went to help him and my wife nudges me and says, "Go help him". I chuckled to her..."I'm not helping that idiot".
I'll aid someone who I see experiences non-provoked misfortune and anyone whose injured but otherwise....if you screw up doing doing something stupid, dumb, unsafe, etc... then your likely on your own. (Unless maybe if you look similar to Marisa Miller, Jennifer Walcott, Marzia Prince, Ines Sainz, Buffy Tyler, Jamie Eason, Jaime Bergman, Crista Nicole, Brande Roderick, Katie Lohmann,...I think you get it).
Like someone around here wrote earlier...Keep those bells shined up (or something to that effect).
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Topic: What would you do? (Read 4882 times)