Traffic on Augusta’s streets is a constant, and that puts a huge responsibility on every driver to watch out for people on two wheels. Georgia’s ‘Look Twice’ law is all about this, pushing motorists to actually scan for motorcycles, bikes, and pedestrians to stop a wreck before it happens. When you fail to see a smaller vehicle, you’re creating a massive hazard for everyone. So what can drivers actually do to make our roads safer?
Key Takeaways
- Under O.C.G.A. Section 40-6-74, Georgia law demands you exercise due care to avoid hitting pedestrians and cyclists. This same principle applies to motorcyclists.
- A huge number of multi-vehicle motorcycle wrecks happen because a car turns left right in front of a bike, which points to a major failure in driver perception.
- You can make a real difference by doing a second, deliberate head check before you change lanes or turn, especially at busy spots like the intersections on Washington Road.
- Being distracted, especially by your phone, tanks your ability to even notice a motorcycle is there, which obviously multiplies the risk of a crash.
- Knowing that motorcycles can brake and accelerate much differently than a car helps you better predict what they’re going to do.
The Pervasive Problem: When Drivers Don’t See
After a car hits a motorcycle, you hear it all the time: “I just didn’t see them.” That’s not just some lame excuse. It’s a window into a real, deadly blind spot in how people drive. The issue isn’t that people aren’t looking at all, it’s that they’re not doing any effective looking. Our brains are conditioned to spot big, car-sized threats. A motorcycle’s slim profile just doesn’t register the same way, letting it get lost in the visual noise of traffic, a problem that gets way worse at chaotic Augusta intersections on Wrightsboro Road or Gordon Highway.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has data showing that a shocking percentage of motorcycle crashes involving another vehicle happen when a car makes a left turn directly into the bike’s path. That specific screw-up, usually at an intersection, reveals a systemic breakdown in driver awareness. People aren’t just glancing. They’re looking *for cars*. If their brain doesn’t get a “car” signal, they pull out, completely ignoring the motorcycle that’s right there. This cognitive shortcut is a primary cause of accidents we could be preventing.
The first mistake is thinking a quick look is enough. Too many drivers convince themselves they’re being safe with a simple scan, but that surface-level check misses everything. They’ll peek at a mirror, see what looks like an opening, and start a turn without a second, more intentional look. It might feel efficient, but this is a fundamentally broken process for spotting smaller vehicles. The problem gets worse when you add in bad habits like rushing through a yellow light, trusting your peripheral vision completely, or just being lost in thought. All these things turn the road into a minefield for riders.
The Solution: Implementing a Proactive ‘Look Twice’ Protocol
Fixing this means you have to consciously change how you drive, moving from just glancing around to being actively vigilant. The ‘Look Twice’ idea is a practical, life-saving strategy, not just some catchy phrase from a billboard. It’s a simple, two-step process for checking your surroundings.
Step 1: The Initial Scan and Mirror Check
Before you make any move, changing lanes on I-20, turning onto Broad Street, whatever, you have to do your standard checks. That means looking at your rearview and side mirrors. But this is just step one. So many drivers think this is enough and that their path is clear, which is exactly where they go wrong.
Step 2: The Deliberate Head Check and Re-evaluation
After you check your mirrors, and right before you actually start to move, you have to perform a deliberate head check. This isn’t a quick flick of the eyes. You physically turn your head and look into your blind spots. If you’re changing lanes, you look over your shoulder into the lane you want to enter. If you’re turning, you scan the whole intersection again, looking specifically for motorcycles, bikes, and people on foot. This second, active scan will catch the things you missed in your first, faster glance, especially vehicles hidden by your car’s pillars. This is absolutely essential at intersections where motorcyclists could be legally filtering or coming up from an angle you didn’t expect.
Think about the law that backs this up. Georgia’s code, specifically O.C.G.A. Section 40-6-74, requires drivers to use “due care” to avoid hitting pedestrians and cyclists. The law doesn’t list motorcyclists by name in that exact section, but the principle of protecting vulnerable people on the road applies across the board. The law establishes a clear expectation: you are responsible for actively seeing what’s on the road. A driver who says “I didn’t see him” after a crash is going to have a hard time in court, because the law assumes you have a duty to see what’s reasonably there to be seen.
Beyond the Head Check: Understanding Motorcycle Dynamics
A good ‘Look Twice’ habit goes beyond just looking. You also have to get how motorcycles behave. They can accelerate and brake way faster than most cars, and their smaller size makes them harder to judge. When you’re at an intersection, a motorcycle might look farther away than it is because it’s so small, which causes drivers to misjudge how fast it’s closing the gap, a phenomenon called “looming.” You have to train yourself to give them more space and assume they’re closer and faster than they appear, especially when you’re trying to gauge a gap in traffic.
Also, remember that riders will often move around inside their lane to get a better line of sight or to dodge potholes. This means they might not be dead-center in the lane, which can throw off a driver who isn’t paying attention. You can’t assume a rider will stay in one spot. Give them the whole lane and expect them to use it.
Measurable Results: Enhanced Safety and Reduced Accidents
When you actually drill the ‘Look Twice’ habit into your driving, you get real results that prevent crashes and keep people out of the hospital here in Augusta. When drivers consistently use these techniques, you see a direct drop in the “failure to yield” accidents that plague motorcyclists. Just imagine if every single driver at the Washington Road and I-20 exit did a proper head check before turning left. How many times would a car *not* cut off a motorcycle? The number would plummet.
The Georgia Department of Driver Services (DDS) is always promoting motorcycle awareness, and their campaigns are built on these same ‘Look Twice’ ideas. It’s hard to get granular data proving a specific accident *didn’t* happen because of one good head check, but the trend is clear: when public awareness goes up, motorcycle deaths and injuries go down. Reports from the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA) repeatedly point to driver inattention and failure to yield as the main culprits in bike crashes, which confirms that making drivers more vigilant is the answer.
Forget the stats for a second and think about the people. Fewer wrecks mean fewer brain injuries, fewer deaths, and fewer families getting that horrible phone call. The financial cost to everyone involved also drops. A single bad motorcycle wreck can lead to a lifetime of medical bills, lost income, and rehab. By taking an extra second to look, drivers reduce that burden on everyone. For example, a severe traumatic brain injury can cost millions over a person’s life, and that cost usually falls on the victims and their families. Proactive driving has a direct economic upside for the whole community.
And the legal heat for a driver who fails to ‘look twice’ can be intense. If you’re found at fault for a crash because you were negligent, meaning you didn’t yield or weren’t paying attention, you can be sued for damages. Those lawsuits will go after money for medical bills, lost wages, pain and suffering, and property damage. For a serious injury or wrongful death, the numbers can get huge. A personal injury claim in Georgia can chase after all of it. The financial and emotional damage on both sides is immense, which really shows the value of just taking that one extra second to look.
At the end of the day, ‘Look Twice’ isn’t just a recommendation for working through Augusta’s traffic. It’s a duty for every single driver. It’s about sharing the road and making sure it’s safe for everyone, especially those of us on two wheels.
What is Georgia’s ‘Look Twice’ law, exactly?
There isn’t a specific statute literally called the “Look Twice Law.” Instead, the principle is built into other Georgia laws that require drivers to be careful. O.C.G.A. Section 40-6-74, for instance, says drivers must use due care to avoid hitting pedestrians and cyclists. That legal standard is understood to cover all vulnerable road users, which absolutely includes motorcyclists. It means you have a legal responsibility to actively look for and yield to others.
Why don’t drivers see motorcycles?
Drivers often overlook motorcycles because their smaller size makes them harder to spot in a busy environment. This gets worse with visual clutter on the road, driver distractions (like phones), and a psychological bias where our brains are scanning for car-sized objects. Drivers also tend to misjudge a motorcycle’s speed and distance because of its slim profile, a dangerous effect known as “looming.”
What’s the most common crash when a driver doesn’t see a bike?
By far, the most frequent type of multi-vehicle motorcycle wreck is when a car makes a left turn directly into the path of an oncoming motorcycle. Other common and dangerous situations are drivers changing lanes right into a motorcyclist they didn’t see or pulling out of a driveway or side street without properly checking for bikes.
As a driver, how do I actually ‘look twice’ every time?
It’s a two-part habit. First, do your mirror check. Then, before you move, perform a deliberate head turn to look over your shoulder and check your blind spots. Don’t just glance. At intersections, scan left, then right, then left again, and be intentional about searching for smaller vehicles. Always give motorcycles plenty of room and never drive distracted.
What happens legally if a driver fails to ‘look twice’ and causes a wreck in Georgia?
A driver who is found at fault for causing an accident because they were negligent (they failed to look properly or yield) faces big legal problems. This can mean traffic tickets and higher insurance, but it also opens them up to a civil lawsuit for all the damages, including the rider’s medical bills, lost income, and pain and suffering. If the crash is bad enough, criminal charges aren’t out of the question.
