SMIDSY'd (again)

Some of you may remeber that I was SMIDSY'd (Sorry Mate, I Didn't See You) last December. I was 'got' again last week, this time I was on the scooter.

Travelling along (at around 20mph) a city dual carriageway (30 limit IIRC), I was in the right-hand lane (moderately clear) passing a moving queue of cars in the left lane, and a woman pulled out, into the side of me withy minimal indication and observation, and hence I ended up in a heap on the floor in the middle of a (now busy) road. No serious damage to the bike (mirror broken off, and probably steering squashed off-line) and some nerve- or tendon-based shoulder pains, but nothing broken fortunately.

As a motorcyclist, while I'm driving the car, I'm much more aware of where a motorbike could be, and I now sub-conciously think to myself "have you seen a bike? Are you sure you've not seen a bike?" and I tend to be much more aware of other road users than I ever was before.

Also, I was quite heartened by the number of people that appeared on the scene offering to help. Amongst others, there was a doctor, a salesman from Reg Vardy came and offered to store the bike overnight for me, and several others tried calling for an ambulance/police. The ambulance people were quite good, and the staff at A&E were great (generally!) My faith in humanity has been restored!

And he dares to call me names!

On my way in to work this morning (on the scooter) I pulled up at some
traffic lights, and there was a bloke driving a Range Rover chatting
on his mobile phone. I signalled to him through the window to get off
the said phone. He ignored me, so I tapped on the window and told him
to get of the phone. He wound down the window and had the nerve to
call me a wa***r! It's people like him that kill other innocent road
users.

On my way home yesterday, I overtook an old fiesta, with the rear
fog-light dazzling everyone behind them (it wasn't anything like
foggy!) As I went past, I noticed the young woman driving and
composing a text msg as she went along in the (moving) queue of
traffic. It's people like her that kill other innocent road users. I
didn't actually stop and scowl at her as I was travelling too fast to
stop safely and not cause problems for other road users.

Another pet-hate of mine, while I'm ranting about drivers is those
people that drive around with their front fog lights on. There is
never any need for front fogs to be on, as you already have two bright
lights on at the front, so there's no need for any others! On our car,
when you turn off the normal lights, if I've had fog lights on because
of the fog, the switch for the fog lights gets re-set to the 'off'
position automagically - Why can't that happen in all cars?