Back in July, you will remember that Alex wrote an article about driver courtesy in the canyons, and asked our readers to respond with their own experiences. Installment 1 contained many of the reader responses that we received. Below, in their unedited form, is installment no. 2:
- Although I am not a regular street bike rider, I have ridden on the street enough times to have learned how dangerous and scary it can be. Many car divers just don’t see bikes which gives meaning to the term “defensive
driving (riding)”. My chosen sport is racing a dirt bike (KTM 525 EXC) in
the southern California desert.
I have ridden street bikes between Bakersfield and Lake Isabella, crazy San
Francisco, and many other places in Southern California. No place in the
US I have been comes even close to China. In the major cities in eastern
China, when I take a taxi, I have to simply close my eyes and hang
on. Otherwise, I am a ball of nerves when I get to my destination. The
closest thing to which I can compare how people in China drive, is the
first mile or so in the start of a desert race. For those who have never
started a desert race, picture 100 to 1000 or more dirt bikes lined up side
by side all taking off at the same time funneling into a single track trail
after a couple of miles or so of cross country desert. Every rider trying
to be the first one to the single track trail. That is how everyone in
China drives. It is like there are no traffic laws, and everyone is
racing, trying to get to the next turn before the other drivers get
there. Safe distance between cars? The Chinese have never heard of that
concept. They miss hitting each other by inches, not by feet, or yards.
In America, we are spoiled.
- Okay, so my Honda Superhawk was stolen two months ago. However, in the prior six years of ownership riding in and around the south Denver area, I’ve found the following consisten responses in canyons.
In good weather and road conditions during spring summer and fall, no-one pulls over. In fact, they slow down when you see their eyes look into the rear-view mirrors. Options then become, (1) Pull over and allow a gap to occur so you can actually move at more than a turtle pace (and, believe it or not, it’s also the bicyclists who move towards the center double yellow to block your passage) or (2) pass and then find the middle finger greeting you along with a honk, light-flash, and not too-uncommon, swerve(!) towards you. I’ve met (I greet the public daily as an optometrist) little old ladies who complain about hating men who wear “colorful suits,” and cops who pull motorcyclists over purely because they are motorcyclists.
No tolerance here.
- I read Installment 1 and I am shaking my head. I wonder how truthful some of the riders were with respect to their speed. Sure we’d all like to stretch our legs and really open her up from time to time, but if you ride like it was a track day event you’re not where you should be.
You can never get too aggravated when riding behind someone who is doing the speed limit. While we like to pretend the speed limit is a guide it is the LEGAL LIMIT. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve sped, but you’ve got to have a heart unless they are not paying attention to the road (hang up and drive you moron!).
I ride a 1996 FZR 600 and typically ride in Southeaster PA but have made trips to VA (Skyline Drive & Blue Ridge Parkway), WV (US-30), MD and NY (Adirondacks). I enjoy twisties, but the underside of my pegs are not scratched and my tire edges aren’t scuffed but the tires do not have flat middles. I don’t drag a knee. Does this make me semi-aggressive, moderate or a wimp? You choice; doesn’t matter to me.
While driving my car I have never pulled over, but I have moved to the edge of my lane to indicate I am aware of the person behind me and that I will not speed up as they pass when passing is legal. If the lines are double yellow you shouldn’t pass. On a bike the only time I pulled over was when a tractor tailor was so close to me all I could see was grille in the mirrors.
Enjoy the road, share the road, stay safe.
- I live in Northern California and I ride on the back roads of the Southern San Francisco Bay Peninsula. This area is popular with motorcyclists of all riding categories (Cruisers, Sport and Touring). I ride three different motorcycles: a 1998 Ducati ST2 (modified for sport riding versus touring), a 2001 KTM Duke II Supermotard and a 2001 Suzuki SV-S 650. As you might gather at this point, my preference in riding styles is moderate to aggressive sport riding. I reserve the “hanging off” and knee-sliding action for designated track days. I always wear the appropriate safety gear full-face helmet, armored gloves, back protector, armored jacket and pants, sport riding boots).
My experiences of car drivers allowing me to pass them on tight twisty sections of the highway are varied. A lot of it depends on the day of the week and the time of day that I’m out riding. I try to avoid riding on Sunday afternoons as the traffic density is always a bit more (Sunday drivers, you know). If I’m on one of the canyon roads on a weekday and particularly in the early morning, I usually have the road to myself along with the other savvy motorcyclists in the area (there are many). It then becomes more of an issue of the sport bike riders’ courtesy rather than the car drivers. I can spot the highly skilled riders versus the”squids” pretty quickly. The “squids” consistently pass over the double yellow line on blind turns and have little or no regard for anyone else on the road. The skilled and experienced riders “may” pass over the double yellow after evaluating that it is “appropriate” to do so. Your definition of “appropriate” will quite possibly be different from theirs or mine.
So now as far as the car drivers are concerned, for some reason, the drivers of Volvo automobiles have demonstrated to me time and time again that they are oblivious to anyone behind them who might be capable of negotiating a tight, twisty canyon road better than they can. I don’t like to stereo type and/or generalize but these particular automobiles and their drivers have demonstrated the same behavior repeatedly. My riding partners joke about it but it’s seems too consistent not to have some validity.
My latest method upon approaching a car driver from behind is to first show them some courtesy and not “barrel up” on them by riding too closely. This allows them some time to assess my riding style (and attitude) and potential for displaying common courtesy to them. If it’s not a Sunday afternoon, then I can safely say that probably six out of ten drivers (60%) will acknowledge that I’m behind them and will actually pull over while slowing down and wave me by! I always acknowledge their courtesy by waving back as I pass and giving them space during the pass when possible. My guess is that because of the time of day and day of week, these are locals who know the road and also know that motorcyclists can be capable of negotiating tight, twisty canyon roads at a faster pace. So, choosing when to ride as well as where to ride figures significantly into the kind of riding experience I have that particular day. I will continue to show courtesy to car drivers in the canyons and I most likely will be shown courtesy in return. If they don’t pull over or there are a number of cars ahead and there are no opportunities for overtaking, I pull over and relax and enjoy the view of a really beautiful area while remembering how fortunate I am to be able to ride there.
Thanks Motorcycle Daily, you’re a regular part of my daily information gathering about the world of motorcycling.
- Hi, thought I’d weigh in with my response to your article about slow
driver courtesy. I ride mostly in Vermont, where I live. I ride a
Triumph Bonneville cafe racer
(http://www.triumphrat.net/albums/album710/aao.jpg) and tend to ride
pretty aggressively in the twisties. The little metal nubs on the
ends of my footpegs are ground flat at the ends — I constantly
scrape pegs in the tighter turns, and take the longer sweepers at
70-80mph (tend to limit my speed to that due to visibility around the
corners, possibility of animals/people/farm vehicles in the road, etc
— these are two-lane country roads).
In my experience, it’s quite rare for cars to pull over and let
motorcycles by, even when coming up on tight hairpins. The few cars
who do pull over (I’m guessing 5% or so) are probably motorcyclists
themselves. In fact, I’ve had car drivers give me the finger when I
pull out and pass them in a perfectly safe passing zone.
That said, I have not experienced anyone being particularly stupid.
Drivers tend to stick to their side of the road in the twisties
(unlike some of the photos I’ve seen from Deal’s Gap), and no one’s
been more aggressive towards me than flipping the bird.
- I ride an 06 klr 650, live in central Indiana, I ride agresive/defensive, and no the drivers here will absolutely not pull over or attempt to let you pass. If you manage to pass one, he will then speed up and tail gate you. I have had some drivers honk their horn, attempt to slide me off the road. No here in Indiana no courtesy at all. It didnt take me
long to figure out what Hoosier means. If your lucky all you get is the
finger.
- I ride a 2002 Honda 919 in SE Ohio. This
is a rural area and I ride mainly back roads. I
typically ride moderately aggressively and often catch
up to other cars. I consider the people in the area
generally polite but I have never had a car pull over
to let me pass. I do not consider this rude because
there are no turnouts. If I want to go faster than
they do I feel I have plenty of acceleration to pass
and I just need to wait for a passing zone. I had a
car speed up once when I tried to pass but even though
it was very rude it just made me laugh because it was
still so easy to pass. I have caught up to other
bikers (mainly cruisers) and most of them will wave me
around. Generally the only time I get annoyed at
drivers is when they tailgate me or do something
dangerous to me.
- I ride a Kawasak Concours, my son rides a Honda Interceptor.
We live in southwest Missouri, near the Ozarks. Drivers here will NEVER pull over to let you pass.
Riding style is fairly aggresive, but I like to keep a good safety buffer, been riding for over 36 years and hopefully all of my get offs were a long time ago!
Son and I just returned from a 2 week,6000 mile trip to catch the race at Laguna Seca (a good excuse). We rode in 10 states on the trip. Was totally surprised by the number of Northern California drivers who would let us past. Not the same in Southern California (PCH riding along with…295 I think it was from Lasson to Eureka). Got to Arizona, FORGET about anyone letting you pass.
- I ride a portly ST 1100 throughout the North Georgia / SE Tennessee / SW North Carolina region at whatever pace suits the day. This area has become a well publicized motorcycling mecca, for mostly valid reasons. While car drivers have always been an issue, it’s usually the weekend sightseers moving slow. The weekday locals hustle their pick-ups quite briskly through the mountains on the way to and from work.
More interestingly, the most numerous offenders now have become the packs of domestic and metric big twin riders out for their weekly group parade. Ten years ago, it was unheard of for a sporting rider to be held up by anything other than a car or truck. Today, now that everyone and his sister has purchased a cruiser, beanie helmet, and chaps so that they may demonstrate their “individuality”, the southern mountains are awash with large groups of questionably confident riders plodding along at whatever pace the least capable rider can maintain, a rider usually found at the tail of the train and slowing to well below the speed advertised on the yellow corner sign. Often, these slow cornering speeds are mandated by the grinding of aftermarket straight pipes. These groups almost never willingly facilitate a pass, and become much harder to safely pass than one or two cars. It has radically altered a sunny Sunday ride, and I look forward to the passing of that fad, no pun intended.- I ride an FZ1 in the hudon valley/catskills area of New York. Depending on conditions I generally ride moderate-aggressive. I try to ride “the pace” where you don’t speed up much on the straights, but you don’t slow down much for the corners. I find that very few people will actually let you pass on a twisty road. It’s not even a matter of pulling off the road, I give a big grateful wave whenever someone doesn’t put the pedal to the metal as soon as we reach a passing zone.
My wife and I spent a week in central California last year on a rented BMW, before the MotoGP. We were amazed at how much more courteous California drivers were. The one exception were people in rented CruiseAmerica RV’s. Riding through Yosemite, the captains of these land yachts would plant the left wheels firmly on the double yellow line and slowly Cruise some of America’s most beautiful roads. This lane positioning had the double effect of making it more difficult to pass, and causing you to soil yourself when you came upon one around a blind turn going the other way.
I also don’t want to let some of our moto brethren off the hook. More often then not Goldwing riders, and to a slightly lesser extent, Harley riders hog up the lane, pull to the outside, and do everything in their power to prevent me from passing. I have even had older gentlemen (and I use the term loosely), riding 2up on wings, attempt to race me. I wouldn’t really have a problem with this except for the fact that prior to my trying to pass them they seemed content to putt along doing 10 miles an hour below the posted limit.
It’s very frustrating, but what are you gonna do.
- I live and mostly ride in Northern California, in the hills south of San Francisco and in the Sierra. I also commute regularly on US101 through Silicon Valley. I ride a Ducati Monster at a moderate to occasionally aggressive pace. I really don’t see any patterns; sometimes I am amazed by drivers’ courtesy and awareness, and other times stunned by their cluelessness. There are so many bikes riding the local twisties at speed here on weekends, that when I am out with my family in my car I actually get tired of pulling over. Most of these guys should just go track days at Sears. But on the open passes of the Sierra, I will always pull over and find that about 1/3rd of the cars and motorhomes eventually do the same. I hate to say it, but worst offenders are groups of mixed metric/Harley cruisers with both men and women riders. Hard core Harley guys are usually fine – hey, they often pass me on the straight two-lanes in the Central Valley at 80+.
I know your question was about twisties, but on 101 in commute hours, look out for cell-phone guy in a German sedan, young driver (male or female) in small Japanese or Korean car, and the Escalade or Navigator with double-dubs and vibrating sub-woofer. They won’t make room for you – they won’t even see you.
- I ride both my bikes (ZRX1200R and S4RS Monster) almost exclusively
on Angeles Crest Highway, Angeles Forest, and connecting roads. My
pace is moderate, but sporting. A surprising, but pleasingly high
percentage of drivers either use turnouts or move over in the lane to
let me pass them without crossing the double yellow. Of course there
are a few drivers who refuse to move over and speed up. The rest, a
majority, just continue along as if you don’t exist. I’d say it’s
40% courteous, 50% oblivious, and 10% aggressive.
I always let the drivers who move over for me know how much I
appreciate it by waving. I am also cognizant of the nervous driver –
distinguished by their erratic tapping on and off the brakes, and
their tendency to weave about in indecision. I try not to scare
them, and I give them an especially big wave of thanks when I pass –
whether they move over or not.
- I just came back from a ride and my experiences today with drivers and other riders on the road put me in a mood to respond to your question.
I, and a handful of friends (usually two to three others) ride
moderate to slightly aggressive on a weekly basis in the canyons
around the Julian area. Our usual array of bikes includes a couple of
sporty standards and sportbikes. We all live in the San Diego area
and usually come up the Interstate 15 and take different routes up to
the Julian area, with the usual route being the 78 through Ramona to
Santa Ysabel and then to Julian.
Similar to another of your reader’s response, there’s three types of
drivers I come across going up to the canyons. The first one, and the
one that I could use more of, are the courteous drivers who notice
they are going slower than others and move over as soon as reasonably
possible. The second one are the ones that think they can outpace the
person behind them. The third are the ones I could use the least of;
these are the ones that know they hold people but don’t care.
As I’ve alluded to, there’s not enough drivers that fall in the first
category. Thankfully, there’s also not a lot that fall in the second
category because they can be extremely dangerous. I’ve actually seen
a person driving a stock Honda Civic on Banner Grade (a stretch of
road composed of tight turns with no or relatively short straights)
push his car so hard that his outside suspension (in relation to the
turn) was compressed to the max and his inside suspension so
decompressed that the inside tires were barely on the ground just so
he could keep in front of motorcycle riders. He eventually gave it up
and pulled over when his car started to repeatedly drift wide onto the
oncoming line.
The majority of the people (60% to 70%) on the roads I go on fall on
the third category. I’ve actually had several instances when drivers
in cars would either purposely miss a turn out or slow way down and
then flip me off (most recent incident happened two weeks ago)!
Today, I sat behind a silver Ford Explorer Trac pulling a trailer down
the 78 from Ramona to Julian that literally passed up every turn out
the whole way down! It was difficult to pass because of the amount of
oncoming traffic. The driver knew he was holding me, my friends, and
a good number of cars up because I saw look in the rear view mirror a
couple of times but just kept the same pace.
And for clarification, my friends and I don’t often run up on cars to
force them to move. We often keep a decent distance that keeps things
safe but gives a signal that we are capable of going at a slightly
higher pace. Yes, I’ve been guilty of riding a bit too aggressively
behind someone but that’s after I’ve witnessed them drive for miles
without even considering a turn out.
I know this is getting lengthy but let me end it with a topic that
hopefully doesn’t offend too many people. From my perspective, the
same categories for car drivers apply equally to motorcycle riders.
Unfortunately, there is a noticeable enough percentage of riders that
fall into category two and three that it is both worrisome and
annoying. Of course, I’ve been guilty of trying to keep ahead of a
rider behind me but there are some who simply refuse to yield
regardless of the dangers they are putting themselves or others
(category two types). In addition, I’ve been behind a lot of the
category three riders recently. Without stereotyping, my personal
experience is that a lot of the category three guys I’ve been behind
have been on some shiny crusiers or extremely expensive Euro bikes.
These rider often refuse to move so someone can pass and then they
occupy the whole road while going through turns. Once again, I am not
stereotyping but commenting from my personal experience.
Thanks for allowing me to vent and feel free to edit my lenghty response.
- I suspect that living in CA, where lane splitting is allowed, makes drivers more aware of motorcycles in general because out here I’ve virtually never had a car driver volunteer to move aside. In fact, this area (DC suburbs) is now a land of road ragers who take any attempt to get ahead of them as a personal insult. Further out in WV, where the really good roads are, drivers aren’t as bad but I still don’t recall them moving aside too often–fortunately, the roads tend to be not busy. Anyway:
– Northern Virginia.
– Sport-touring (Triumph Trophy).
– Moderate to aggressive on “commuting” roads, i.e., I try to stay a little ahead of traffic. More aggressive on the twisties when riding for fun, but – I’m not particularly fast.
– ~0% of drivers move aside.
Drivers in this area are generally terrible. As traffic volume as grown road rage has become the norm, with tight lane changes and passing (mainly in cars, not so much when riding) taken as a personal affront. Signals used perhaps 33% of the time, and signage (e.g., No Turn on Red) generally ignored. Out in the boonies it doesn’t seem as bad due to traffic format (i.e., 2-lane vs. 4-or-more), but you still never see a driver who’s obviously slowing traffic (bikes or cars) make an effort to get out of the way unless there’s an actual lane to move into, and even then not always.
I DO think moving out of the way for faster traffic–whether 2 or 4 wheeled–is the courteous and safe thing to do.
- I live in northern Ohio but frequently ride down to the twisties in Southern Ohio for a more challenging ride. Bike of choice is usually a V-Strom 650 though sometime I’ll take the Harley FXDX. My pace is generally 5 – 10+. I have found In Ohio, cars drivers are generally oblivious to what’s behind them. Yesterday, (while in a car), there was a pick-up pulling a boat going down the left lane of the three lane turnpike and he would not pull over even though the middle and right lanes were open. I’d love to see the LEO’s pulling over and ticketing these folks. As far as the two lanes are concerned, I can’t remember the last time anyone pulled over to allow for a good pass.
Now for a personal rant. While the cars are bad, in the twisties (and you’d think they’d know better), the packs of cruisers (can you say Harleys?) are just as bad except they sting out the pack, insist on staying in staggered formation, and really get pi**ed-off when you try to get around them. Talk about a group who parks it going into a corner and then goose their 110 cubic inch S&S coming out. It becomes a matter of having to work your way up through the group with also obviously irritates them.
Lane courtesy works both ways. I just came back from a week of riding a R1200 GS in the Alps and it was amazing how well the bikes and cars coexist. Everyone just knows that bike go to the head of the line. The only real road hogs that I found on the entire trip were the tour buses going up the passes. And I can’t really fault them as it’s a matter of size versus tiny roads. On the passes, the trucks all pulled over. At least the buses would give you a lane on the outside to pull around them before getting to the next switchback. Europe isn’t perfect but their drivers, in general, have us beat hands down any day of the week.
- I ride an FZ1 in the hudon valley/catskills area of New York. Depending on conditions I generally ride moderate-aggressive. I try to ride “the pace” where you don’t speed up much on the straights, but you don’t slow down much for the corners. I find that very few people will actually let you pass on a twisty road. It’s not even a matter of pulling off the road, I give a big grateful wave whenever someone doesn’t put the pedal to the metal as soon as we reach a passing zone.
