GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – If you cover police news regularly, as I do, it’s impossible not to notice the number of motorcycle accidents. A 25-year-old man was sent to hospital in Geneva in critical condition Saturday shortly after 18:00 when he lost control of his bike on the rue de Chêne-Bougeries, touched the corner of a tram, then was thrown into the path of an oncoming car.
Some motorcycle accidents are a fluke of fate – the wrong move, the wrong place, the wrong time. Others are caused by dopey car drivers who don’t really see motorcycles or who don’t understand how bikes work. Some accidents are the fault of arrogant bikers who think road rules are suggestions they can afford to ignore.
This isn’t a rant against bikers who sail down the middle of the road between lanes or those who pass on blind curves (two of them died this month on Swiss roads).
This is a request to one motorbike rider on the A9 yesterday who isn’t a kid, who is old enough to know better, to get off your bike permanently or think about somebody besides yourself. It comes as the police start a safety awareness campaign this week, linked to roadworks on the autoroutes.
You passed me on the right in a tunnel, then gave me the finger because I wasn’t going fast enough to suit you and I didn’t get out of your way. I was going 80kph, the speed limit, and passing a line of cars going about 78. That meant I wasn’t passing them quickly, but I knew something you might not have, that around the bend, in just a couple hundred metres, the speed limit drops to 60kph. Hardly the place for me to speed up, if you think about it.
The fines for speeding are pretty high on that stretch of autoroute, with a lot of roadworks, if you want to put it in monetary terms.
I do think about the money, partly because last year I paid a fine for going 3kph over the limit – 2! – on that same stretch of road. But more than that, I think about the roadworkers, whose jobs are not that safe, even if we’re inured to the danger because we drive this stretch of road regularly, as I do.
You took a risk – the gap between me and the car I was passing was small and closing but you went through it. And then you accelerated, just as the speed drops to 60kph, so you must have been going at least 30 over the limit as we entered the roadworks area at the end of the tunnel. Of course, since it was Sunday, you probably assumed no one would be working, if you ever gave it a thought.
When I entered the area the sign said 262 drivers licenses have been confiscated by police since the current roadworks session began. I’d be very pleased if today it said 263 and you were one of those caught by the radars.