I do not know what it is about this time of year.
I have a local road I ride most weekends year long. Maybe two or three times during the year I see some silly car action. More often that not is is silly motorcycle passing action witnessed during the year.
But in the past couple of days I have witnessed absolute stupid passing moves by drivers. Blind wideish corners, wrong side of the road, open road speeds - both times the drivers to their credit (?) were totally committed to their moronic move as they continued to pass a second vehicle ........ WTF - got away with one- lets try another?
In a funny twist today, I stopped for fuel on the way back as did a car driver - turns out he was behind me when todays silly actions started - he commented that I almost made him shit his pants when I passed him earlier - bike noise and he was in the humdrum of stuck in a line of slow cars - but he started paying attention when I started braking for no apparent reason. I'd seen the car pull out with no reasonable vision of the other side of the road (think - bikes sit higher than cars and accelerate like hell, and I'm thinking - farrrkk I'd not pull that move on my bike) and started pulling back in expectation of potential mayhem.
Anyway - the car driver commented - there is something very wrong on the road ahead when it's a motorcycle rider you see shaking his head! - as in people are usually shaking their heads at us!
Worst thing is, the statistical chances of a crash in both cases were car vs motorcycle due to the roads popularity with bikes. ACC would have stacked this up as another motorcycle injury/death.
So I have been wondering a bit this evening about Xmas nutters - my theory is there are a fair number of reasons for the sillyness:
Volume of traffic = frustration (lack of self control)
Lack of open road experience (annual holiday after 50 weeks of suburban tootling)
Brain fart.
The later happens to all, hopefully without dire consequences to others.
Stay safe.
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