Total Motorcycle Community Forums

Normally my commute to work has a few issues. Most of them are easily avoiding using my good old MSF strategies like SEE and rider radar. Things rarely bother me.

Today I was cutoff twice... by the same SUV.

The first time- whatever, I anticipated it. The car had the "I'm a princess" aura around it and I gave it space. Sure enough, no signal and over it came cutting me off.

I was already covering my controls so adjusting speed for a safe following distance wasn't an issue.

We continued and the SUV went to the left lane to try and take advantage of some room. I kept my place in the left part of the right lane for visibility and kept on trucking.

Boom- the car was back in my lane.



He could have made more progress from staying in the left lane but yet again, no signal and this time I had to swerve right and really use some breaking. For reference my front tire had been next to his rear tire at that point.

I've doing my best to stay calm and not do anything stupid so my good samaritan takes over.

When we stopped at the next stoplight I lane split next to him. Knock on his window and let him know that his tail lights out.

"Which one"
"Both of them"
Tries his turn signals, looks to see it reflecting off the car behind him "They seem to be working"
"Oh! Well maybe you could start using them"
gets that I'm having a seizure face and is about to say something... so I interupt
"I'm sorry sir (he starts to calm down) I didn't mean to offend. I only pulled up because you almost killed me twice in the last 2 miles because you were trying to save 30 seconds on your way to work."
He looked shocked and apologized.

What I wanted to say? "I'm sorry sir, I just wanted to make sure you knew about your lights. I had no idea that you were just a huge "O Ring"" The responsible way seemed to work better

I pulled up in front of him and was on my way.

storysunfolding wrote:When we stopped at the next stoplight I lane split next to him. Knock on his window and let him know that his tail lights out.

"Which one"
"Both of them"
Tries his turn signals, looks to see it reflecting off the car behind him "They seem to be working"
"Oh! Well maybe you could start using them"

what a great approach - i'm going to have to keep that in mind...

Good job controlling it! Some days I have to just repeat over and over "it's not worth it, it's not worth it, it's not worth it" when really all I want to do is throw things.

I always just tap the horn, then if I'm able to pull alongside them later, I make the "watch out" hand signal (two fingers pointing to the eyes and then pointing ahead).

Tower18CHI wrote:I always just tap the horn, then if I'm able to pull alongside them later, I make the "watch out" hand signal (two fingers pointing to the eyes and then pointing ahead).

I thought that meant look... at least it does in scuba diving

heh, nice verbage. I wouldn't have been so clever or so pleasant

That's why I love my air horns... A long blast of those and he would have had to change his pants while moving over and looking for the truck at the same time....

That's probably going to be my next mod haha.

I think that was a pretty reasonable response to what he did. Of course I think booting in his turn signals then saying, "yeah you weren't using them anyways," would have been reasonable.

storysunfolding wrote:

Tower18CHI wrote:I always just tap the horn, then if I'm able to pull alongside them later, I make the "watch out" hand signal (two fingers pointing to the eyes and then pointing ahead).

I thought that meant look... at least it does in scuba diving

I didn't know it actually meant something Just figured the point would get across.

Tower18CHI wrote:

storysunfolding wrote:

Tower18CHI wrote:I always just tap the horn, then if I'm able to pull alongside them later, I make the "watch out" hand signal (two fingers pointing to the eyes and then pointing ahead).

I thought that meant look... at least it does in scuba diving

I didn't know it actually meant something Just figured the point would get across.

Yeah- I'd take it to be look ahead.

If you pointed at them, gave them a no no, point at your blicker, made the blicker signal, pointed at them and gave them the thumbs up... I'd take that to mean "You're bad for not using your blicker. Blickers are good"

That might take awhile and they might miss everything ahead of them for 30 seconds if they watch the whole way through.