It never ceases to amaze me the level of selfish stupidity displayed by some drivers. There are the usual degrees of stupidity, the Ill Informed, the Ignorant and the Bigot but it would seem the Driver has to be added at into the list at some level.
I commute to work every day by motorcycle (an R1150GS) and the acts of stupidity I witness are often beyond my ability to explain. However today’s episode surprised even me.
There are often long queues of traffic which I carefully and, as considerately as possible, filter through. I look for pedestrians, watch the cyclists and try to keep out of other vehicles way in an effort to get to and from work with the minimum hassle. As is often pointed out, a motorcyclist rarely comes out of any collision well.
Every so often some idiot decides that he (almost always he) is not going to let bikes pass and positions his car, van, bus, lorry, etc. across the road to try and block motorcyclists.
Why do they do this? I assume it is petty spite “I am stuck in traffic, so everyone else must be as well” or the good old British standard “he’s jumping the queue”. Pretty small minded stupidity.
I wonder if they’ll ever realise that every bike and cyclist passing them is one less car “in the queue” in front of them or that they are directly and deliberately endangering the life of someones husband/wife/child/father/sibling? I won’t hold my breath.
However back to this morning, a van (white of course) swerved across the road in a queue forcing me to brake hard and swerve to avoid it. Slow as I was traveling (< 20 mph) it still hurts if you hit something.
As I passed his window at less than walking pace he starts swearing and shouting at me. Not being in a hurry, possibly because I don’t have to sit in traffic queues, I stopped to listen. His reason for trying to kill me was that filtering through lanes is illegal, that it is in the highway code that you are not allowed to do it and that makes it law and that it is dangerous.
I may be wrong, the law may have changed since I last checked but as I understand it filtering between traffic lanes is not illegal. As with any maneuver on the roads if you do it badly or dangerously the police can prosecute you for a number of offenses.
I have been riding bikes and commuting, into around and from Perth, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Basildon and London for about 29 years and in all that time I have passed and been passed by any number of police cars and bikes and never once has one pulled me for filtering.
One did pull me for going a bit fast while filtering through the Tower of London junction but only to warn me against taking too many risks.
On the topic of the Highway code, it is a code of behavior not the law. Much of it is underpinned by the law but despite being advised to let out buses for example it is not a legal requirement. Does it prohibit filtering through traffic, I must check.
Lastly of course he seemed to entirely miss the fact that he had committed a dangerous maneuver that would have got him pulled by any watching office when he swerved at me. The scale of his stupidity and lack of self awareness would be funny were it not for the fact that his actions were life threatening.
I should say I don’t think motorcyclists are especially picked on here, we at least have a bit of an intimidating appearance and reputation, body armor and a helmet. I have watched drivers exhibit dangerous and intimidating behaviour simply because the vehicle in front was not driving at or over the speed limit or not driving with the same level of aggression as them risking themselves, the oncoming traffic and others. This often justified by “not wanting to get stuck behind” or “I am in a hurry”.
So I left the idiot sitting ranting to himself in his van in the queue and went to work, wrote this and had a small idea. I am going to do an irregular piece here on what I witness on my daily commute across the Forth Road Bridge into Edinburgh every day. We are approaching Christmas and that always seems to put everyone in a tolerant and attentive frame of mind. If I am lucky I will never have anything to write about at all.
Who knows one day I might be able to afford the kit to let me start recording it for YouTube as well…
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