While I do enjoy a nice fast motorcycle lap of the Nürburgring Nordschleife, Murtanio’s latest upload is not making me want to pull my leathers on again any time soon.
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It’s a heady mix of good luck, skill, big balls and ridiculous-life-threatening optimism.
Sounds good? Just watch for yourself…
So with all that fresh in your mind, let me tell you about something.
One of the most important points I ever learnt in the first few years of riding my bike was this:
“It doesn’t matter who’s to blame, when you’re the one who will be in the ambulance.”
Truer words were never spoken, and when you’re sat on a 170kg bike, fighting for track postion against 1800kg family cars, SURELY you need to ask yourself a question…
“JUST WTF AM I DOING?”
It’s a lesson I learnt (and forgot again) repeatedly, culminating in several crashes and a few interesting x-rays of my spine.
So did you NEED to go for a gap on the left-hand-side of a Passat estate that was barely wider than your own knees?
Now before all you militant “rechtsfahrgebot” guys get your knickers in a twist, and shout BUT THE BIKER CAN OVERTAKE ON THE LEFT WHENEVER, let me put down a few points.
- Are you racing? Is there a pay cheque at the end of this lap? A trophy? An official record? If not, then chill out.
- All the cars should be on the right hand side when traffic approaches
- If that car hits a bike from the right to the left, the chances are good that the German courts will *probably* decide in the bike’s favour.
- But the biker might be hurt, he might even die. The car will be lightly scratched. Being in the ‘right’ doesn’t make two broken legs hurt any less.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy Murtiano’s videos, and you should go check out his channel, but car drivers see us bikers as risk-taking lunatics with no sense of danger or self-preservation. And this compilation of his closest ‘near-misses’ over the year, does nothing to disperse that image at all.
Drive (and ride) safe.
Pssst…. WHERE ARE THE BIKE-ONLY NIGHTS??!?!?!?
