Looking out the window this morning, I see a beautiful day
is ahead of us, this seems to me to be a superb day for golf, and a superb day
for riding a motorbike, neither of which I do.
Yesterday my Wife witnessed the immediate aftermath of a
horrific collision involving a motorbike.
It was on the Bourges Boulevard road heading out of Peterborough City
Centre, just when you get to that stretch of road nr Argos. The collision appeared to have happened where
those traffic lights are. Those lights
serve 2 purposes: they allow pedestrians to cross an extremely busy road, and
it allows buses only leaving Lincoln Road to go on to Bourges Boulevard.
My Wife and all vehicles in her vicinity came to halt on
that stretch just before the lights, and witnessed a helicopter landing on that
road – which seems to me to be an incredible achievement from the pilot. The general consensus from all drivers around
her was that the motorbike rider had been ‘side swiped’. Now when you think about it, the only way,
and I really do mean the ONLY way that a motorbike could be wiped out from the
side at that location, is if the rider (or the other vehicle concerned) was
coming out of that stretch of road, which is for buses only. When there is a bus waiting to come on (held
on a red light), the lights on Bourges Boulevard eventually go red (that
stretch of road is 40 by the way), and then the bus can safely come across both
carriages of the dual carriageway. So
what could have gone wrong? The
motorbike may have ignored his amber/red light while travelling on Bourges
Boulevard. He may have tried to follow a
bus through, and went on a recently changed amber or even red. He may even have had a green light, and a
vehicle on Bourges Boulevard carried on through an amber or even red. There’s loads of possibilities.
I fairly recently provided some training for a chap who
rides a meaty motorbike, and wanted to have the option of being able to drive a
car (so he can carry around equipment for his work). There is no doubt that his attitude to
driving had to dramatically change to cater for the size of the car compared to
his motorbike and also the lesser power of the car compared to his
motorbike.
Only yesterday I was driving towards Peterborough and saw 2
motorbikes together that were in my view, riding really dangerously – the overtakes
they were doing were quite frankly mad.
The thing is, you could be the best motorbike rider in the world, but if
you have a momentary lapse, and do not cater for the worst car driver in the
world then that is all it needs for it to be curtains for you. But my point is, if you are normally riding
around taking those risks just as a matter of course, then the odds are slowly
but surely stacking against you.
So take a day like today.
A beautiful day. Let’s say, as a
motorbike rider, you decide to meet up with a mate or 2, and do a ride that
takes a few hours. And let’s say in that
journey you take, you overtake 70 vehicles... let’s just say 70. Now, 60 of them may well have been low risk
(no oncoming vehicles, plenty of room around you), but 5 were medium risk
(there were oncoming vehicles, but you just managed to make it), and 5 were
positively high risk (after the journey, these are the ones that stuck out in
your mind). Now those 5 dodgy overtakes
will have got the adrenalin running alright.
They will have spooked the other road users around you (both the vehicle
you overtook and the oncoming vehicle that narrowly missed you). Thankfully, more through other peoples
actions than your actions, today, you live to tell the story. Unbeknown to you, the oncoming vehicle braked
really, really hard to allow you to make it.
Or thankfully, the car you were overtaking, suddenly and dramatically
veered to the left so that you were able to squeeze in right at the last
minute. But the point is, you were not
in control of that situation. So your
life was in the hands of other road users, not a good place to be – there are
some poor drivers out there.
I’m not deliberately trying to be controversial here, but
riding round and effectively shortening those odds each time you do one of
those dodgy overtakes is really not clever.
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