Think Once…. Think Bike

I live in the Peak District National Park, a place of peace and serenity ….or so you might think …?

Well, not when we have a sunny weekend when it turns into a cross between Mad Max and a track day at Silverstone.

We have motorbikes passing our house (30mph speed limit) doing 70/80/90 miles per hour – pulling wheelies as they pass the road junction, leaving me cringing as I anticipate the thud of a biker hitting the turning cars.

Pretty much every Sunday morning, we are serenaded by the exhaust note of the bikes hitting the red line – followed 20 or 30 minutes later by the ambulance going up Snake Pass to scrape them off the road surface and try and find all the body parts that have been scattered on the road side.

Yesterday, in Bakewell, we observed a bike mounted on a car bonnet with the driver trapped beneath the car – in the town centre. Duuuuh, how the hell can you end up beneath a car ….in the town centre… for god’s sake …????

Pedestrians everywhere, 30 mph speed limit and you’ve managed to get yourself trapped beneath a car??? Sorry, but that can only be complete idiotic driving from the bike …observers told me he had been pulling a wheely and showing off… when it all went wrong.

Later in the day, I was in a line of traffic on a fairly open stretch of road when a speeding motorbike passed me – then he realised there were cyclists coming from the other direction, so hastily pulled in front of me and braked so heavily that his rear wheel was off the ground – I managed to brake and didn’t hit him but only through my quick reactions and road awareness was an accident avoided.

What the hell is wrong with these people?

‘Think once, think twice, think bike …’

Maybe it should read, think once – you’re on a bike – watch out for the bloody cars…because you will come off worse in a collision?

 

Mike C – grumpy as always.