With finally seeing some warmer, sunny weather, all kinds of bikes are reappearing on the roads. Motorcycles included, and since I live in an area with long, uninterrupted stretches of road, they like to come out my way. No problem...usually.
I was on the way home from work and the car in front of me made it through the changing light on a single lane road, but it was solid red for me and I stopped. There was a Motorcycle Dude three or four cars behind me. I hear him cycle and rev his engine and he comes screaming up my left side. Silly me, I thought he was heading for the left turn lane there. Many folks in cars and on bikes will ease over the double yellow a bit to get into that turn lane, so they get a left-turn arrow when the light changes.
Not this dude, nope... He screams through the solid red light. My jaw dropped, and he was missed by seconds as cars with the green light came down that road and through that intersection. As chance would have it, he ended up right ahead of me. I caught up with him at the next big intersection. Young guy, with some kind of body armor, jeans and big boots. None of which would help with an oncoming car that doesn't know he's planning on running the red light.
The light was red for us again, and there is one lane going straight and one much-longer left-turn lane. He was ahead of me in the straight lineup. He shifted and fussed and hopped around on his bike, like he had ants in his pants. Then, when the left-turners got their green arrow, he decided, "Going thataway!" and cut off all of them, no turn-signal, just revved it up and slammed in front of the whole lot of traffic. I should have gotten his plate, but thought he'd learned his lesson from the earlier near miss...
I was on the way home from work and the car in front of me made it through the changing light on a single lane road, but it was solid red for me and I stopped. There was a Motorcycle Dude three or four cars behind me. I hear him cycle and rev his engine and he comes screaming up my left side. Silly me, I thought he was heading for the left turn lane there. Many folks in cars and on bikes will ease over the double yellow a bit to get into that turn lane, so they get a left-turn arrow when the light changes.
Not this dude, nope... He screams through the solid red light. My jaw dropped, and he was missed by seconds as cars with the green light came down that road and through that intersection. As chance would have it, he ended up right ahead of me. I caught up with him at the next big intersection. Young guy, with some kind of body armor, jeans and big boots. None of which would help with an oncoming car that doesn't know he's planning on running the red light.
The light was red for us again, and there is one lane going straight and one much-longer left-turn lane. He was ahead of me in the straight lineup. He shifted and fussed and hopped around on his bike, like he had ants in his pants. Then, when the left-turners got their green arrow, he decided, "Going thataway!" and cut off all of them, no turn-signal, just revved it up and slammed in front of the whole lot of traffic. I should have gotten his plate, but thought he'd learned his lesson from the earlier near miss...
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