Mitigating Risk, a Halloween Horror Story

In the motorcycling community there is a group of people who practice the principle of ATGATT (All The Gear All The Time).  I am one of those riders.  We accept that motorcycling is inherently more dangerous than driving.  We acknowledge that the best way to reduce the risk is to ride aware, constantly looking for the change in conditions (including the behavior of drivers, to whom we are largely invisible) which may lead to dangerous situations.  Practitioners of ATGATT also accept that sometimes things go very wrong very quickly.  ATGATT is a risk mitigation strategy.  We choose to take the risk because the reward of riding is worth it.  We choose to wear the gear because we want to minimize the impact of things going wrong.

I experienced the importance of risk mitigation first hand on Halloween.  As a very avid motorcyclist who rides year round in Seattle, I'm familiar and comfortable riding in the rain.  In fact, I really enjoy riding in adverse conditions because adversity is the best teacher.  As someone who rides long distances on a regular basis (1000+ miles a day), I've been caught out in some truly terrible conditions, including snow and ice.  So when the weather forecast showed heavy rain on Halloween, I didn't think anything of it.  I decided to ride the 170 miles to Portland, OR for the International Motorcycle Show.

It was wet.  It was really, really wet.  After 3 hours of riding in heavy rain, I arrived at the convention center safe and sound.  Unfortunately I wasn't terribly impressed with the show, but I spent hours scouring the exhibits, looking for that one thing to inspire my excitement.  Then I headed home.

It was still wet on the ride home, but nothing I haven't ridden in hundreds of times previously.  About an hour into the ride things went wrong.  Given the weather I'd chosen to ride a bit slower.  As checked my mirrors, I noticed a wave of traffic approaching.  Among the cars gaining on me, I noticed some of them were changing lanes a lot, and without signaling.  This is a very bad situation for a motorcyclist, so I initiated a risk avoidance maneuver.  I sped up, moved to the far left lane, started to pass a semi-truck (with a full lane between us).  There was a car in the far left lane just ahead of the semi.  This car suddenly started slowing.  Unfortunately there was another car behind me, still accelerating.  I executed another risk avoidance maneuver, slowing to avoid the car in front of me, I also moved the middle lane.  This placed me directly in the spray coming off the front of the semi, and between the semi and the slowing car.  There was so much spray I couldn't even see my speedometer.  I couldn't see behind me either, so I attempted a 3rd risk avoidance maneuver.  I accelerated to clear the spray and potential squeeze situation.  Shortly after clearing this situation, things went wrong.

I'm not 100% certain how it started.  I never lost consciousness, it just happened so quickly, and so unexpectedly, I can't identify the cause.  The rear of the bike slid to the right.  It then came back and slid to the left.  It swapped back and fourth a number of times before I final leftward swing that threw me into the ground.  I was sliding along the freeway on my back.  I slid across the lanes of traffic to the outside where my foot collided with the curb.  I spun around and stopped.  I knew immediately that my ankle was sprained, at the very least.  A quick self assessment confirmed my concern.  My ankle was very sore, but my should was also sore.  Fellow travelers stopped and summoned aid.

The damage could have been a LOT worse.  A cracked shoulder blade, and a couple of cracked bones in my ankle, plus a sprained ankle.  As hard as I hit, and as far as I slid, if I hadn't been wearing the protective gear, I would have had internal injuries, and likely a displaced fracture of the shoulder blade.  My gear consists of top-of-the line molecular armor which absorbed and dispersed the impact force.  Unfortunately, my boots weren't tall enough to prevent twisting of my ankle.  Still, the armor in the boots did keep things from being worse.

I learned some valuable lessons.  First, I need to figure out how to respond when the rear-end of the bike starts to fish tail.  Just like in any other situation, the better you can deal with a situation before it goes completely bad, the better your odds of preventing disaster.  Second, I want to look for something with a bit more coverage in the shoulder armor.  The better you can absorb the initial effects of a disaster, the better you can recover.  Third, I'll be shopping for taller boots which will be a bit less comfortable, but provide much better protection against twisting.  While it's important to avoid over restricting our movement, it's also important to do what we can to protect ourselves from being pushed too far out of shape.

Achieving greatness means taking risks.  The trick is to know which risks to take, and to do what you can to mitigate the impact of the risk coming to fruition.  I apply these same principles in everything I do, including designing, building, and operating computing infrastructure.  Identify the risks.  Do what you can to reduce their likelihood.  Take steps to minimize the impact should things go wrong.