Issue #2.........Don please forgive me for this blunt statement: I'm not buying the "if the rider hadn't stopped in the middle of the highway (for whatever reason) it almost wouldn't have mattered how stupid or distracted the cage driver was." That is so passive, yet blameshifting. Each time a driver straps a cage to his ass, he is responsible for each and every action he does, or fails/neglects to do.........even if he plows into the ass end of bike which has mysteriously stopped in the middle of the fast lane.
Henry, I don't disagree with you at all. And what I said was laying a lot of blame on the bike. We don't know what happened. And I don't place a lot of faith in eyewitness accounts in and of themselves. Considering those witness reports, however, the bike stopped in the middle of the road, leaned over as if to pick something up, and then a few seconds later got hit.
Perhaps the rider was having medical issues of some kind. Perhaps leaning over as if to pick something up was instead leaning over because he couldn't stay upright. It's a tragedy either way. But if that's the case this is even more so. The passenger not knowing fully what's going on, paying attention to her spouse, and not even considering yet the vehicle approaching them.
Short of illness or injury though the riders just screwed up. "A few seconds" is enough time to haul my ass off the bike and get it out of the way. A few seconds is also enough time for the cage to do some kind of avoidance. But we all know that something wholly unexpected is simply tougher to avoid. And someone suddenly and unexpectedly parking in the fast lane would be unexpected.
The cage screwed up. If there really was a "few seconds" between stop and impact it too had time to stop. If he was fully tuned in that is. Trouble is none of us are fully tuned in all the time. Swapping radio channels, screwing with the phone, just zoning out for a second. That's why when on the bike we just can't get stupid. Because someone else always might. And they're all bigger than we are.