What I always do, is motion the car behind me to back off by pointing rearward with my left hand. I find that 9 out of 10 cars get the hint, and fall back to increase the gap to a comfortable distance. After all, they don’t want to get beat up by that evil biker at the next traffic light.
The ones that don’t get the hint, well: given any room, I’ll just shift back a couple of gears and open the throttle. Unless you’re driving a serious sports car, you’re not my problem anymore all of a sudden.
I must confess, motorcycles scare me. I swear that I always look carefully before merging or turning, but motorcyclists always seem to sneak up on me. Once, I merged onto a highway and about a minute went by when a motorcyclist banged on my rear bumper at 70 mph. I swear I never saw him.
I have a theory about car drivers “not seeing” motorcycles. Car drivers are used to seeing cars behind them. We’re all familiar with the “Objects in mirror are closer than they appear” warning on our side-view mirrors. The reason objects appear farther away is that the right mirror (except for RHD cars) is convex. The image in the mirror is smaller. The smaller size of the image in the mirror makes it look farther away. Motorcycles are smaller than cars. Say, they’re a quarter of the size. Since a motorcycle is smaller than a car and car drivers are conditioned to look for car-sized things behind them, the inattentive car driver “thinks” the motorcycle is farther away than it is.
Anyway, that’s my theory – for which I have no cites or other evidence. Just what I think.
I very briefly dated a teacher in Savannah, GA. Like, one date. Maybe two. She told a mutual friend she “broke up with me” because I was a “Bad Boy”. I was divorced, drank alcohol, and rode a motorcycle.
She, apparently, was very intimidated, and she never even saw it!
One of my favorite uncles has always been a bike guy. He and his wife are in their late fifties/ early sixties, and still ride quite a lot. They belong to a bike club full of doctors and lawyers and various assorted mild, innocuous people. They ride safe and sane and with full protective gear, and they have a lot of fun.
Having grown up with this image of bikers, I have a really, really hard time being intimidated, by anybody in riding gear.
Johnny, I’ll find a way to beat out Scotticher for your affections yet, I swear! I’m petite or short, depending on how polite people are being, but not only do I not find bikers intimidating, I find them kind of sweet and sexy. Then again, I hang out with the SCA and my first love was over well over 6 feet tall and 3 feet wide at the shoulders. I’m also not easily intimidated.
On the road, I stay more aware of motorcycles around me than I do other vehicles, and I give everyone plenty of room. In icy conditions, I give more room. A very dear friend of mine’s lover was killed coming back from a Mensa RG they’d both attended when his bike hit a patch of ice and skidded during an unexpected ice storm. The driver behind him couldn’t stop in time. My usual attitude is one of pleasure touched with a tinge of envy – I wish I were on the bike. As for my friend, a couple of years later, she bought a motorbike.
OK, well, I can ride, but seeing as I don’t currently (and never have ) owned a bike, I feel like I can answer.
I have never found people in full leathers intimidating… unless they were also brandishing a riding crop/cane/flogger and were telling me I’d been naughty.
(see, in my life, the motorbike club and the BDSM crowd are the same people)
However, in my full leathers (I have all the gear minus the bike and helmet) I have been told I look “scary”.
cjhoworth: blushing and making circles in the dirt with my toe Aw, shucks! SCA, huh? I’ll have to get my kilt and chainmail out of storage! (I wore the kilt to a Halloween party, and I almost rode the bike – but I thought it might be a little problematic.)
) owned a bike, I feel like I can answer.