Ladies and gentlemen, here we have another case of a motorcycle versus car near-miss that looked like it was escalating into some road rage, but instead, everything ended up in a civilized and polite way.
So, we have this British lad minding his own business aboard a nice BMW R 1200 GS. Everything seemed fine until he took a left turn when a white car came out of an adjacent street and almost fully occupied his lane.
Luckily, the man, who appears to be an experienced rider, managed to suppress the urge to brake and swerved around the nose of the car escaping unharmed. He also angrily blasted his horn the whole time to no avail.
“At the end of the day, I was fine, the natural response was to swerve, so I came out of it okay,” the rider comments in the video’s description. “If I had chosen in that split second to brake instead of swerve and ride it out, I probably would have gone over her bonnet.”
After the close encounter, he stops, dismounts and proceeds to meet the car driver who almost knocked him over in what seems like the beginning of a classic road rage scenario,
However, our rider is far from that mentality and laughs it out while shouting to the driver that he comes in peace. He then found out the driver was an older lady who claimed that she looked before exiting the side street and saw no one.
Apparently the rider wasn’t in sight before taking that left turn, which is totally understandable giving a motorcycle’s size and agility. He understood the driver’s point of view, hugged and everyone continued to mind their business, a model anyone should follow in such a scenario.
“When we go out on our bikes, we put our lives mostly in our own hands,” the man further explains. “But a portion of the control is taken away from us. We can do everything we can to stay out of trouble, but we are still vulnerable road users. The last thing we need to do is make enemies for ourselves, by becoming aggressive and confrontational, be it in a close call, or a real accident.”
It’s either this mentality or the fact that no matter how pissed off you are, you simply can’t be aggressive to an old lady exiting her car and coming to hug you and ask if you’re alright.
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