this topic validates the point that YOU ARE INVISIBLE.
there are not enough signal lights in the world to make the machine visible. ride accordingly. buy good life insurance. mostly learn not to count or dwell  on  the "near misses", you will drive yourself nuts.

Please know this.  There are two types of riders,
those who have been down, and those who will go down.  me 6 times in the last 20 plus years.

one thing i did that helps somewhat in traffic is a cage horn. scares the crap out of people.

It  must be something in the air.  When I was coming homw from work the other day, with a pack of Dr Pepper on the tank, an idiot in a hoddless Subaru decided to pass about 5 cars on a 2 way highway (FM157),  I saw him off in the distance, so I slowed and moved off the road into the ditch.  He flew right past me, on my half of the road, and barely made it back in his lane bfore creaming another car.  His car could barely go faster than the traffic he was passing.  Looked like he was barely old enough to have a license.  I don't know about up north, but down here every darn kid has an import hatchback that they think could outrun everything on the road.  They, by far, have caused more near misses for me than any other group.

hov super fast lane



shawn

Riding a motorcycle in the HOV lanes around Seattle is a suicide ride. Even the motor officers (motorcycle cops, AKA, bacon bits  ) avoid them. Kids in tuner hatchbacks tend to go 80-100 mph in the HOV lanes, and of course, that is with just a driver, no passengers. HOV lanes are a nice concept, but, around here, they don't work very well. PLUS, you can soon buy a single occupancy pass to drive in them. I hate this state.
-WD

How many here are familiar with the term "bacon bit"? Or am I the only former truck driver?

Reblslb13, bacon bit is just trucker slang. Kinda derogatory. You know how cops are referred to as "pigs".  Well, on some CB channels, they break it down further. Sow= Caprice or Crown Vic. Boar= DOT code enforcement SUV. Piglet= Mustang or Camaro interceptor. Bacon bit= motorcycle cop (because the bike is little). Also known as "Evel Kneivels", because you've got to have a big brass pair to ride a garbage wagon (full dress police Harley) on the interstates.

And that traffic photo was light. Rush hour in Seattle, it can take 4 hours to go 1 mile. Sad, the whole state only has maybe 7 million residents, 4-5 million of which are on the west side of the Cascade Mountain range. Don't ask me why. The west side is barely tolerable as a place to visit, let alone live.
-WD

Paladin. wrote on 12/31/69 at 16:00:04:


That looks very similar to my commuting ride every day... the good thing about such a bottleneck is that you go slow, maneuver between cages and if any idiot makes a bad move, the relevant side mirror is gone in a blip...   sometimes I even look for potential candidates ahead and swerve to get closer, have them make a bad move and knock the mirror off... OK, OK, I know it's bad, ugly and disgusting, but have you thought of a better, "hands-on" learning experience for those su*kers?  
Sure it helps I carry no plate on the back...  

I would try to get Sunny's bastard address out of the plate numbers and pay a polite, well-mannered visit to his porch...  

Take care,

RW

I wonder if all those people stuck in traffic realize how much of thier life they are loosing because of the hours spent sitting in the traffic. I tend to go postal after about a hour in traffic, just hate spending all my free time going to and from a job no matter what it pays.
Instead of knocking off mirrors try pepper spray in the vents of the cages that are going for the Darwin award, heard about that trick from a New York biker who rides in traffic a lot. Of coarse s-ht happens so fast when on a bike you don't have much time to do anything but react and pucker, even reaching for the pepper spray will take too much time. Ed L.