Motorcyclists – Are we our own worst enemy?
Phil Hall seems to think so…
I went for a ride to the Pie Shop on Sunday. Nearly every motorcycling enthusiast has their own pie shop. It might be a coffee shop, a cafe, a caravan on the side of the road or it might really be, like me, a real pie shop. A place where the enthusiasts gather to compare notes, bench race and hang out with like-minded souls. It’s usually at the end of an entertaining section of road somewhere and the road there and back makes it worth the ride even if, sometimes, the destination is less than stellar.
In my case both the road and the destination make getting on the bike and going worthwhile. My pie shop is at Robertson in the southern highlands of NSW and my road is the famous Macquarie Pass. So any opportunity to enjoy both is accepted gleefully.
I first drove the Pass in 1970, immediately after I got my car licence. None of the adults who had accompanied me on my various drives while I was on my “L’s” had taken me on the mountain road though, oddly, the lady who did most of my instruction DID have me, on a number of occasions, drive up and down Jamberoo Mountain Pass, a much more dangerous and challenging piece of road! (it was still a gravel road at that stage).
I first RODE the Pass in 1974, straight after I got home from getting my licence and I have been driving/riding the road pretty much constantly since. So it is fair to say that I know it pretty well. I have had so much fun challenging its intricacies over the years that I can’t even begin to say. I must also say that I have experienced the worst of the road, it being the scene of my big crash in 2010.
On the Pass I have seen the best of riding and I have seen pretty much the worst of riding and everything in between. I have seen experienced riders whose skill levels I could never hope to emulate and I have seen nervous learners and the whole gamut of motorcycle road riding experiences.
But what I saw on Sunday etched itself into my brain in a way that surpasses pretty much any other experience on the famous road.
Like any mountain road the Pass has more than its fair share of tricky bits. Some people are so afraid of its reputation that they refuse to drive it at all and many (perhaps even most) drivers approach it with apprehension. Neither of these attitudes is necessary. Yes, the road is challenging, but it is certainly not the “monster” that it is made out to be. There are plenty of overtaking opportunities if one is careful and the superior acceleration of a modern motorcycle means that passing can be accomplished with ease and safety.
Well, USED to be…You see, over the recent years the RTA (I don’t know what they are called this week) who manage the highways in NSW has steadily reacted to the shock and horror headlines about “safety” on the Pass and moved to make it “safer” This has consisted, predictably, of the addition of double unbroken lines for the total length of the climb. They have, to their credit, carried out many more improvements to the road all of which contribute to making it safer and more enjoyable to ride but it is the blanket prohibition on overtaking, anywhere on the Pass, that has rankled motorcycle enthusiasts most.
It should come as no surprise, then, that a large proportion of motorcyclists ignore the double lines and continue to overtake slower traffic (and there usually is some) in the places where they know they used to be able to and where visibility and distance allow.
Most of them, that is. At least one exception was found on Sunday morning. Queued up behind two cars, I was waiting my turn for the one turn-out lane that is on the uphill run when I heard the distinctive sound of an R1 coming up behind me. I looked in the mirror to see a matt black bike arriving at speed. The rider immediately pulled out and passed the car behind me then continued on the wrong side of the road and passed me and the two cars in front of me, standing on the footpegs with the front wheel about 3 feet in the air and a blind right hand corner coming up. He did negotiate the corner but it wasn’t pretty and, if a car had been coming the other way as he was trying to settle the bike, he would have been toast and it got me thinking again.
Yes, I know some of you are thinking, “Well, you’re just peeved because he passed you and you don’t have the balls to do stuff like that yourself.” You are, of course, entitled to your opinion but, as one who knows how much a head-on collision hurts, I can assure you that that is the furthest thought from my mind.
You see, regardless of what the authorities might do to try and educate road users about motorcycles, the fact is that they simply don’t want to know. No amount of “Look out for Motorcycles” signage is going to make any difference at all when the average motorist sees two wheeled stupidity on a daily basis. “Look right, Look left, Look bike” is another worthy slogan. Does it happen? No, of course it doesn’t. Do motorists look out for bikes? Of course they don’t. They are only interested in looking out for themselves.
Take a poll of a random group of motorists and ask them about motorcycles and I’ll predict the results before you even begin. The answers will be “No, mate, temporary Australians, they are. I had a mate once who owned a bike. Used to ride it to work every day. One day a semi turned in front of him and he couldn’t stop in time. Never catch me on one of those death traps.” Or..”Motorcyclists? The ride up beside me when I’m stopped at the traffic lights then they pull in front of me.” (Um, hullo, the law now allows them to do so, sir). “Yeah, I used to ride years ago but I had a crash on some oil and I gave it away after that.” And so on and so on..
You see, it doesn’t matter how much you try and educate road users about motorcycles the fact is that they don’t know, and, worse still, they don’t WANT to know. The question is why?
I believe the answer is very simple. The road HAS become a race track. Regardless of how much we don’t want it to be so, the fact is that the vast majority of road users, both of two AND four wheeled devices are on the road in deadly and fierce competition with every other road user. Our cities are grossly over-crowded. Just getting down the streets to the shops is a challenge. Driving/riding to work every day is a grand prix. Carve them up before they do it to you is the mantra. We bitterly resent the driver in the car next to us if he gets ahead of us in the queue. How do we explain the dramatic increase in road rage incidents that we are seeing? Do we blame it on drug-affected drivers? There is probably an element of truth in that. There are probably other contributory factors as well but the bottom line is that road rage is mostly a result of someone taking exception over another driver getting an advantage over them in the traffic.
Competition rules our lives; it’s a jungle out there; devil take the hindmost and so on. And, as the saturation of our roads with vehicles reaches nearer and nearer to complete, the competitive urge will become even more and more in evidence. It’s not going to change and it is going to mean that no amount of driver/rider education is going to make any difference at all when the rubber hits the road. Every other road user is there to be beaten and beat them we must.
Of course, motorcycles have an almost complete lock-out of advantages when it comes to the traffic light grand prix. No car can live with the superior acceleration, manoeuvrability and ability to master the traffic that a motorcycle has. So, is it any wonder that, every time you use your legal right to filter to the front of the queue, you feed the simmering cauldron of discontent and resentment in the vehicles that you pass? Yes, it is legal, but you are still hated when you do so. The next time you overtake in a space that a car can’t you stoke the fires again.
Now it would be easy to be flippant and say, “Well, who cares? I have the advantage and it doesn’t matter to me if people don’t like me using it.” But the road only works with a degree (a large one, actually) of cooperation and give and take. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t USE the advantages that being on two wheels provides, but I AM saying that we need to be far more aware than we presently seem to be of the fact that our freedom is resented by the majority of the road users with whom we share the tarmac each day.
So idiots like old mate on the R1 on Sunday only serve to not only grossly endanger their own lives and the lives of those with whom they share the road, but they also impact directly upon the negative perceptions about motorcycles that are rampant in the community.
Back when Honda was making its big sales push into the USA its marketing people understood that, if they were to sell bikes there, they would have to counter the negative image of motorcycling that had grown up around movies like “The Wild One” and others. How were they to so it? Well, we all know what the answer is, don’t we? They employed Grey Advertising, an American ad agency who came up with the famous “You meet the nicest people on a Honda” slogan and it and the advertising campaign that accompanied it gently prised open the door of the US market and made, almost singlehandedly, motorcycling and acceptable, even DESIRABLE pastime.
Will government education programmes work? No, of course they won’t. As long as the “them vs us” mentality exists out there, no amount of “Watch out for bikes” will make any difference at all. Can WE do anything to improve our lot? Yes, we can. Instead of behaving like fools on the road we can take a leaf out of a 50 year old advertising campaign and start our OWN education programme. It worked then and it could just work again.
I am totally fed up with the negative “It’s always the “cager’s” fault” drivel that you hear from so many motorcyclists. Instead of promoting the confrontational situation that benefits neither side of the equation, how about we try to be the “nice” people and win them over that way. It can’t hurt, can it?
