We’re all equal. Just some of us are more equal than others.

For at least as long as I have been riding bikes (at time of writing some 18 years), and maybe I was aware of this even before I was riding bikes, there has existed a “them and us” mentality between non-motorcycle-owning-car drivers and bikers. It’s borderline hateful. Now as a biker you might think I’m biased but until you’ve spent and decent amount of time riding a Motorbike on our roads you really, REALLY have no right to comment. Offer your opinion by all means and I will treat your uneducated, assumption filled, mostly fact-less opinion with the due respect it so obviously deserves. As a biker I am telling you that in my experience as well as those of just about every biker I’ve met, the vast majority of car drivers are complete cunts, especially when it comes to motorcyclists.

Just a little fact for you: I used to drive (a car) a lot. I mean serious amounts. 120,000 miles a year, that’s over 2000 miles every week, week in, week out. I also average over 8,000 miles a year on bikes (which is considered a higher than average amount) and I can tell you now, only ONCE have I had to take avoiding action in my car because of motorcyclist and that was in part due to stupid road layout of a particular junction, at night, on an unlit road. Why I’m trying to defend her I don’t know. That resulted in a rather nasty accident. But NEVER have I had to swerve or brake dangerously or put my life in danger because of a motorcyclist. Something I can’t say for being out on my bike about car drivers.

I will admit I am not the perfect motorcyclist. I do filter between stationary traffic to get to the front of a set of lights. But I don’t see what the big deal is with me doing that. I don’t see why it is necessary for some car drivers, having seen me in their mirrors, to move forward, swinging the car across slightly, blocking my path through. When-ever I’ve done this it has always been at a very slow speed ready to stop instantly should a pedestrian walk out or someone exits a car. It’s not against the law and it is not impeding the car driver’s journey. My bike gets to 60 in about 3 seconds, I am not going to be holding them up when the lights change and I move off.

I am 6′ tall. I jacked the back end of my bike up slightly to make it turn quicker. This has the effect of pushing me well above the height of a car. I wear black leathers in the day time and my bike is bright white. Early mornings or if riding at dusk I wear a yellow reflective jacket. Guess what the most common excuse I hear is when some twat pulls out in front of me. Yup, “I didn’t see you”. This has got so bad in England that now the courts will prosecute any driver that says that on grounds of driving with undue care and attention. In short, they didn’t see me because they didn’t bloody look.

But it gets worse, even if they do look and they do see me they still pull across in front of me. I was nearly killed two years ago by some myopic old bastard who saw me (we made eye contact) and still made a right turn just as I got level with the turning. Unbelievable.

There are many, many pubs in England that will refuse to serve me if I go in wearing my bike gear. Sometimes this is because I might “out off other patrons” and sometimes it’s a simple “we don’t serve bikers”. Funny thing about the second group is that if I go back but drive my car they’re more than happy to serve me. Of course, as soon as it is clear they will serve me I decline and leave.I have NEVER been refused a drink in a pub that I walked or drove to. Ok, not so much a car vs bike thing but just added it to highlight the discrimination.

Why car drivers think it’s acceptable to slam on their brakes when I’m about to over-take them is another mystery to me. As is why they feel the need to cross partly into my lane when I’m on a duel-carriageway overtaking them. And why the need to throw things out the window when I’m behind them. Or speed up when I try to overtake them on a narrow lane just to slow down again after I’m forced to pull back behind them (we have a lot of bends in our roads and I wont overtake on a blind corner). It’s all a mystery.

Now whilst I encounter shocking behaviour from car drivers when I too am driving a car, it’s nothing like the childish, moronic idiocy that I see when on my bike. You turn your car into me at duel-carriageway speeds and I will die. One of those cans of coke you thought it was funny to throw out your window at me hits me and I crash, I might die. You pull across in front of me and I hit the side of your car at national limit speeds and I will probably die. So how the hell is it not classed as attempted murder?

Of course I am not going to sit here and tell you that every biker is an Angel. I see examples of stupidity almost every time I’m out for the day. Sometimes it’s an over-reaction to a car driver, sometimes it’s frustration, sometimes it’s because they’re a GSXR riding prick. But when I see them I normally let it be known to them that they are dicks. The worst being nob-head 16 year olds on their pathetic little scooters. And for some reason, northern GSXR riders.

Yes I have generalise, no not every car driver is guilty just as not every biker is.

Please, car drivers, stop being dicks. And GSXR riders, please, stop giving them reasons. You see, you piss them off then they take it out on me.

Lastly, car drivers, if you ever get a chance, do the CBT bike test. It’s a day, costs about £150 last time I checked and you’ll get a small appreciation of what I’m talking about.

Now that you can download satellite navigation (sat nav) applications to phones such as the T-Mobile G2 (aka HTC Hero), the makers of in-car satnav products need to come up with something new and better to ensure that we keep forking out the £100′s on their products.

By a huge margin, TomTom are probably the best known manufacturer of in-car sat nav systems and although other big name brands include Garmin, it’s TomTom that are leading the way in innovation.

A few quick statistics for you: During a typical morning rush hour on roads in the UK you can expect to find nearly 2,000 miles of traffic jams with over a 1,200 reported traffic “incidents”, 900 of which happen on major roads. For those that are part of the ever increasing traffic, crawling its way along our congested, pot-holed roads, this probably comes as no real suprise but fear not, help is at hand.

If you have recently purchased a new TomTom unit you may already be aware of a bit of technology that TomTom call “HD Traffic” but for those that have never heard of it, let me tell you now that it’s impressive. The idea of the HD Traffic system is that it sends a users journey times back to TomTom headquarters where the information is quickly analysed. The information is then instantly fed back into the system as part of the sat nav’s Live subscription service which provides real-time (live) traffic updates to other users. Furthermore, armed with this information, your TomTom can then re-route you if a faster alternative route is available.

So now, where-as before all you could do was tune into the radio in the hope that a traffic report is going to offer some glimmer of hope, albeit too late, you now have an all-in-one sat nav system that can provide “on-the-fly” traffic updates with the ability to re-route your journey to avoid the traffic jam(s) up ahead. All you then need to worry about is why the route around the traffic involves going the wrong way up a newly created one-way system and whether or not the apparent fields involved are still swamp like.

Of course, all this still isn’t going to help you if you breakdown whilst sat in traffic, but the same GPS technology is now being used by motoring organisations to more effectively locate stranded customers (it’s not just taxi drivers that have fastened TomToms to their windscreen). Taking that one step further, companies such as startrescue.co.uk have recently released an iPhone application that with just a few clicks will contact the roadside breakdown company including exact location of the vehicle.

Of course, after all that, we all know that I won’t be purchasing either a TomTom or an iPhone any time soon…

I came across this on MySpace and thought it was so good that I’m going to quote it here. Written by (or at least, posted by) someone called Billie Williams and it makes me cry every time I read it.

"I saw you, but you didn’t see me.

I saw you hug your purse closer to you in the grocery store line. But you didn’t see me put an extra $10 in the collection plate last Sunday.

I saw you pull your child closer when we passed each other on the sidewalk. But you didn’t see me playing Santa at the local Mall.

I saw you change your mind about going into the restaurant when you saw my bike parked out front. But you didn’t see me attending a meeting to raise more money for the hurricane relief.

I saw you roll up your window and shake your head when I rode by. But you didn’t see me riding behind you when you flicked your cigarette butt out the car window.

I saw you frown at me when I smiled at your children. But you didn’t see me, when I took time off from work to run toys to the homeless.

I saw you stare at my long hair. But you didn’t see me and my friends cut ten inches off for Locks of Love.

I saw you roll your eyes at our leather jackets and gloves. But you didn’t see me and my brothers donate our old ones to those that had none.

I saw you look in fright at my tattoos But you didn’t see me cry as my children were born or have their name written over and in my heart.

I saw you change lanes while rushing off to go somewhere. But you didn’t see me going home to be with my family.

I saw you, complain about how loud and noisy our bikes can be. But you didn’t see me when you were changing the CD and drifted into my lane.

I saw you yelling at your kids in the car. But you didn’t see me pat my child’s hands knowing she was safe behind me.

I saw you reading the newspaper or map as you drove down the road. But you didn’t see me squeeze my wife’s leg when she told me to take the next turn.

I saw you race down the road in the rain. But you didn’t see me get soaked to the skin so my son could have the car to go on his date.

I saw you run the yellow light just to save a few minutes of time. But you didn’t see me trying to turn right.

I saw you cut me off because you needed to be in the lane I was in. But you didn’t see me leave the road.

I saw you, waiting impatiently for my friends to pass. But you didn’t see me. I wasn’t there.

I saw you go home to your family. But you didn’t see me. Because I died that day you cut me off. I was just a biker. A person with friends and a family. But you didn’t see me."

Links:
Possibly the author on MySpace

Honda make what I consider to be the finest piece of motorcycle technology ever created, the CBR1000RR Fireblade. This bike started out back in about 92 as the CBR900RR. The bike that finally stole the number 1 spot away from my beloved Yamaha FZR1000.
Since that time we have seen manufacturers developing machines that are just sublime. From Kawasaki we have the ZX-10R Ninja (was ZX-9R), Yamaha gave us the current favourite R1 and Suzuki (*spit*) barged in with their animal of a bike, the GSXR.

I’ve been fortunate enough to ride some of those bikes listed above, namely the Honda Fireblade and the Yamaha R1. I’ve only been pillion on the Ninja and I stay away from Gixers. Here follows a brief summary of those experiences:

Honda Fireblade: I wanted to ride this bike ever since it first arrived in 1992. I was *ahem* a teenager running around on an old Honda CB125T and easily impressed except my love affairs were more Harris Magnum’s, CB900F’s, evil looking Z1′s and Katana’s but that all changed with the Fireblade. It was stunning. It was tiny (relatively). It had holes in the fairing. It was fast. And it was gorgeous. I wanted one and I wanted one bad.
They say you should never meet your hero as they’ll more often than not disappoint. The Fireblade I got to ride was the exception. I loved this thing already but I didn’t dare imagine it would be this good. When I got on the bike and rode off I did so with a grin that stretched from ear to ear. By the time I got back from the ride and stepped off the bike, that grin was in danger of removing the top half of my head. The only words I could get out were “that… is… a… fuckin… good… bike”. It took weeks to stop grinning and longer still to stop telling everyone about it. I wanted one.

Yamaha R1: Up until this point I had a bit of a love hate thing with Yamaha. My FZR (florafumi) was the first Yamaha I’d ever ridden and the first Yamaha to make me think “actually, these are bleedin’ good, these are”. I just couldn’t (and still can’t) forgive them for the V-Max. When the R1 first came out I was angry and annoyed immediately. People were already shouting about how it was going to knock the Fireblade off it’s perch. People were crashing them instantly. I hated it.
But when offered a ride on one I thought it rude to say no. But this was really only because this particular R1 belonged to the above Fireblade owner and he was waxing on about it. I had to find out why.
The short version is that I got off the bike with an equally stupid grin but this time my words were “Now that was a fuckin good ride”. It’s true. The Fireblade will always be the bike my heart desires. It will always be the best piece of motorcycle engineering. But I’d buy an R1. Bastid.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing could be better than this.
Wait, I can hear you all screaming “Ducati” but I don’t care. No, I’ve not ridden one. I have my own reasons for not wanting one and I’m keeping them to myself, for the moment.
I repeat, NOTHING could be better than the ‘Blade and R1.

…

Then, one day, along comes an Aprilia RSV1000 Factory. Gold frame. Ohlins front and back. Angles to make the new spy planes look rounded. And sweet Jesus did it shout and spit at a deafening roar. I was hysterical just looking and listening to it.
The English language doesn’t contain the right words to describe how much I loved riding this bike. The way it… the way it did everything.
I wasn’t grinning when I got off. My senses were on overload. Imagine believing in God and actually meeting him/her/them/it. I just can’t explain it.
Oh and the noise. The bike I got to ride was fitted with some very special Akrapovic titanium “intelligent” pipes that made the greatest sound ever. And LOUD. It was the first time in all my motorcycling years that traffic got out of my way. Seriously, it was like Moses parting the sea. Proof that a nice fruity exhaust note (read: ear splitting) is a safety feature.

It used to really annoy me when people said things like “…I had to get rid or I’ll lose either my life or license”. A bike will only go as fast as you twist the throttle but whilst that is still true, when you’re used to the feeling of speed on an in-line four, nothing prepares you for the power and grunt of the Aprilia v-twin. It takes every ounce of self control and will and concentration to keep within usual dual carriageway speeds. “Effortless” is an understatement.

I’ll finish by saying: “The Fireblade, the R1 the what ever; You can stick ‘em. Mere pretenders. I’m having an Aprilia RSV1000 Factory”.

Am I really the only person who has noticed this? Lorries overtaking one another cause unnecessary traffic jams. Next time you’re travelling along a fast road during rush hour and you come across a lorry overtaking another (usually just as the road starts to climb), watch how quickly traffic builds up behind it. Why do they do this?

The speed limit for an HGV’s on UK motorways is 60mph and dual carriageways is 50mph. I won’t moan at the fact that nearly ALL articulated lorries travel along our dual-carriageways at 60mph because as a motorist myself, I don’t always stick to 70mph, but it is a major reason why they overtake one-another. If their vehicle is capable of 60mph and they come across a vehicle doing 55mph (smaller lorries are often limited to 55mph) they will overtake it. Fair enough but for fucks sake, don’t do it on a slope and don’t do it during busy times. Wankers.

In France, lorries are not permitted on the motorways during certain times and they’re roads are virtually jam free. (Another point worth noting but won’t be discussed here is that their speed limit for cars is 80mph!!)