art of soft merge...

[lucydad]

MH,

Ok, end of my ride coming home after my adventure of testing the MG V7R: on my Ninja merging into 59 North bound from Hwy 99 south of Sugar Land:--

imagine if you will congested traffic on 59 feeder and closing lanes and a huge, jacked up, silver RAM Dodge pickup--no way this guy is going to let me merge onto 59. So, I did a soft merge with a long signal and look back, and he hit his brakes and swerved and let me in, with reluctance. Game time?

I hit the Ninja throttle hard and she pulled to 85 in fourth gear and I got onto the freeway ok all the time really watching my mirrors and 360. The RAM flies around me at 95+ and proceeds to squeal again behind a car maybe three feet from the bumper.

So, I was wondering, did this guy not see me? Yes, he saw me. Did I merge wrong, nope I think I was safe. I concluded he was just driving aggressively.

In the end, the soft merge is always smart: do not ever assume the right of way, but be willing to use your accelleration to save your . If I had flicked the Ninja, the Ram might have clipped me. The soft merge gave him time to brake.

This is the second time I have this experience on this stretch: trucks and right of way issues. These days I guess I expect it, but I don't like it.

Be safe, and keep learning, and focus, all the time, especially at high speed.

cheers,
Lucydad

[phantomzrex]

Originally Posted by lucydad

MH,

Ok, end of my ride coming home after my adventure of testing the MG V7R: on my Ninja merging into 59 North bound from Hwy 99 south of Sugar Land:--

imagine if you will congested traffic on 59 feeder and closing lanes and a huge, jacked up, silver RAM Dodge pickup--no way this guy is going to let me merge onto 59. So, I did a soft merge with a long signal and look back, and he hit his brakes and swerved and let me in, with reluctance. Game time?

I hit the Ninja throttle hard and she pulled to 85 in fourth gear and I got onto the freeway ok all the time really watching my mirrors and 360. The RAM flies around me at 95+ and proceeds to squeal again behind a car maybe three feet from the bumper.

So, I was wondering, did this guy not see me? Yes, he saw me. Did I merge wrong, nope I think I was safe. I concluded he was just driving aggressively.

In the end, the soft merge is always smart: do not ever assume the right of way, but be willing to use your accelleration to save your . If I had flicked the Ninja, the Ram might have clipped me. The soft merge gave him time to brake.

This is the second time I have this experience on this stretch: trucks and right of way issues. These days I guess I expect it, but I don't like it.

Be safe, and keep learning, and focus, all the time, especially at high speed.

cheers,
Lucydad

Sometimes you have to take the right of way LOL, seriously in a case like that I like to try to avoid the aggressive driver, bypass him accelerate a little and merge one or two cars ahead of said Ram, if there is room.

[Bkgraham33]

Umm, what is a soft merge?

[Ryuu0u]

v8 bro-truck driver has to assert his dominance on the road.

[lucydad]

I define a soft merge as looking, moving partially into a lane change, hovering at the lane border, then finishing smoothly. The opposite is a flick: rapid bing-bam counter steer on a sport bike that can happen in less than a second. The soft merge gives heavy traffic the time to respond. In this case the silver Ram driver was way over the top aggressive, and if I had flicked I would possibly have been hit. I gave him time to slow down. Really I had few options, and made my choice, and there it is.

I do the same soft merge in my bmw cage on B8 and the SW freeway...

cheers,
Lucydad

[MauricioF]

Wow.. I've been doing this intuitively and it saved me yesterday from a dude in an Escalade who merged into the lane I was merging into (in my blind spot) a good 10-15 mph faster than me. I hate to think what would have happened, if I had immediately taken the center of the lane