Driving Ignorance in Britain

Welcome one & welcome all to the first case of Road RashThe Car Driver has not the same training to go through just to get upon the seat. The system they encounter is designed to be as easy as possible. Their instruction is basically 'how to pass the test' and not much more. The test they get is only on the basic manoeuvres, at town speeds for pity's sake. A theory test that any idiot can with coaching get through, and off they go. In ever increasing numbers they pollute the highways with incompetence backed up by manufacturers whose advertising propaganda assures them they couldn't possibly come to any harm. They are divided from the world by soundproofed air conditioned comfort and great stereo sound. It’s the same world outside but they sit in an ultimately separate environment, divorced from the actuality they move through. Its like a video driving game with more added features as time goes by. Its all right to use the phone, the car has anti collision sensors so they don't need concentrate, the car will do it for them. Outside airbags are beginning to be fitted. The upshot of that will be not worrying about hitting pedestrians before long. They certainly seem to have stopped worrying about hitting motorbikes. It’s quite disturbing that more & more actively get in the bike's way 'if' they see it coming. The City of Preston is one of the places where many block gaps if they see bikes filtering through. There have been more than I care to think about who have tried to put me onto the kerb, or into the opposite lane simply because they detest with surprising vehemence being passed while stewing in the traffic jam they helped create in the first place. But i do not single Preston out; it’s a nationwide illness. English drivers in general refuse to move aside for anything traveling faster than they are. Practically everywhere else in the world moves aside when they see something traveling faster than they. It’s no skin off their nose and why should they impede another's progress. It could be important, but the Englishman in a car I presume is thinking along the lines of "how very dare this bloody hooligan scum on a motorcycle pass me. I am upper middle class, & these bloody bike yobbos are obviously working class as they are on bloody motorbike's. And I am traveling just under whatever the speed limit happens to be, which is fast enough for them too"!  

So the car driver gets it easy testing wise. Yet the biker has to jump through some very expensive hoops before he can reach the road. Even though its fact that the vast majority of deaths and injuries to bikers are caused by unthinking idiots in cars, it is the biker who must be made to pay for it. The biker who has to have far better training than the car driver because of the danger he or she face's daily, thanks to the bloody awful driver in the car! Now more and more creeping and insidious legislation is coming forward, which is designed to eventually remove the bike from the road altogether. Why is the car driver not penalised & made to actually learn the correct use of the mobile murder weapon they sit in. Bikers can have their lights on, be wearing high visibility clothing yet still not be seen. Why is the car driver not educated & trained to concentrate on what he is actually doing while driving on the public highway. Why dose the perception still exist that biker's are the ones to blame for the car driver's wanton stupidity. The perception that is still subliminally taught through the media and advertising that bikers life’s aren't worth as much as a myopic killer in his BmAudmerjageratti.

Day Glow VestsThere's another disturbing side effect of all this safety in being seen nonsense. For nonsense it is. More motorcyclists are wearing day glow coats and vests etc. so everyone on a bike starts to look like policemen in the mirror or at a glance.  Thus they become unpaid secret policemen doing the police's job without the pay or the perks. Less police are employed on traffic control, which then allows the car to get away with more murder. The country is under near total surveillance with plate reading camera's so the tax regime can be enforced and you can be followed everywhere yet not know it. New vehicles will all have data recorders so everywhere you go and everything you do is on record. Motorcycles are not part of the plan unless they are New, and toys for the very rich! It’s unspoken by the politicians as yet but will be in a civil servants bottom drawer somewhere. I guarantee.

So as things stand it’s always the biker's fault. As things are the car driver can stay asleep at the wheel as normal.   With all the eye searing day glow wearing and lights on during daytime the death toll should vanish overnight.  Do ya think?  The still most common words spoken by the car driver after a smash are?
‘Sorry mate, I didn't see you’…  www.syb-magazine.com

Andrew Filson
Editor SYB Magazine