Strategies for motorcycling through an earthquake

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By Susan Carpenter
This week’s magnitude 7.9 earthquake in Chengdu, China, reminded me of a question I’ve always wanted answered: How should a motorcyclist react when the earth starts rolling beneath the bike? I know the chances are slim that I’d actually be on a motorcycle when The Big One hits, but being a resident of fault-laced Southern California (which, according to a recent U.S. Geological Survey Report, is pretty much guaranteed a 6.7 quake by 2028) and a motorcyclist who logs about 20,000 miles a year, it doesn’t hurt to be prepared.

So I reached out to Ray Ochs, the Motorcycle Safety Foundation’s director of training systems, to see what advice he had for riding through a quake. Personally, he said, he’d never ridden through one -- nor had he ever been asked this question! -- but he’d talked to people who’d experienced a quake in a car, and they said it feels like the earth is rolling.

‘If the terrain starts to shake,’ Ochs said, ‘your normal balance would probably take of you. For a rider with good perceptual skills, it’s probably going to be a situation similar to how he’d respond when a car pulls out in front of him.’

Ochs emphasized the importance of a two-second following distance, which typically gives a rider enough time to respond to whatever is happening in front of him. Beyond that Ochs had the following advice:

- Watch for cracks in the roadway so you have enough time and space to stop.

- Pull off to a safe location away from any potential falling objects.

- Stay away from underpasses because of the danger of collapse.

I have no idea if anybody else out there has thought about this or if it’s only my brain that’s filled with nuts and bolts and worst case scenarios, but if you’re at all like me, now you know!

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