To give yall some background info:

• My work van is a Ford E-350 Super Duty
• I have zero visibility out the rear window
• In South Philly streets wide enough for 4 are can narrow to single lane mirror scraping due to double parking

I'm on one of those streets. Street width is varying between 1 1/2 car widths (some people are out enjoying the day) to 6 inch clearance bottlenecks. I'm approaching a side street that has a guy on a larger scooter waiting to turn on the street. I got right of way. So I check to make sure he's not about to do something stupid like try to jump ahead of my van, which is doing its normal 40 mph (I move between jobs). I pass him and continue towards a bottleneck.

Dunno why but I slam the brakes. Seriously, no clue why. Was staring at the gap between the cars, lining up my truck and... just jammed on the brakes. I look to the right and see this pissed face looking thru the passenger window.

The @sshole on the scooter bypassed stupid and went straight for Darwinism: Share the ****ing lane with my van. Apparently he turned on the street behind my van into my blind spot. But being in my blind spot also means my van billboarded him. He couldn't see around me. I guess he took my slowing down for the bottleneck to mean I was stopping and swung out to overtake me. Result: His face in my window and maybe 1" clearance from my door to his handlebar

I always check my mirrors before hitting bottlenecks cause the Philly bicycle riders have zero regard for their own lives. And love to squeeze thru any gap with their narrow profile. But once I clear them, I focus forward so I can make any minor corrections to get thru. Never knew the guy was there.

I rolled down the window to tell him: if you get squished, I'd get the rest of the day off with pay so go ahead and be stupid.

 

 

Good story.

Ya know, the more I hear about Philly riders, the more I tend to believe it! ;-) Last summer, spent a few days in Philly for vacation. My wife & I were walking from our hotel to the Rocky statue. In that small span of space, we saw 3 riders do wheelies down that strip...one of which barely got stopped b/f almost hitting the back of a cab.

 

I don't consider the scooter people to be riders. Hell, there are so many of them and most of them dangerously suicidal (ie: will damage my vehicle's underbody if they die under my wheels) they're low point targets. In my book, they're worth about 1 point with beer cans scoring higher for the crunch sound

Actual motorcycle riders it seems to be a black and white contrast. There are those guys that demonstrate safe riding and awareness that'd you be cool riding anywhere with. And then there are the squids that are so frighteningly dangerous, you want to pull over to the side of the road to give em the extra 5 minutes head start to the ER.

 

cages aren't the only hazard on the road. a family friend was killed last year on his motorcycle when a kid on a moped pulled out in front of him.

 

Scooters are a big problem here in Philly actually. 99% of the scooter riders don't have the required motorcycle license for the size of the scooter. And prolly 60% have no license whatsoever, many having had their regular license revoked for some reason (no insurance and DUI being very high)

And cops completely ignore them. I've never seen a scooter pulled over, even when they ignore traffic laws like stop signs dead in front of a cop.

 

+1 just the same thing here too man...
and they throw me 2 down like cool kids.
that's why when I hit them, they are worth 10 points instead of 5.

 

I don't really consider squids to be riders either. ;-)

All joking aside, I think there's a lot of the same everywhere w/ the attitude of "scooter people".

Let's go further... I live in an area where bicyclists are everywhere. Many of these guys simply will not move over to the far side of the lane when they hear motorcycles or cars coming. There's this prevalent attitude w/ bicyclists, that they deserve to be in the middle of the lane/roadway & everyone else must go around them. To be clear, I'm not anti-bicyclist but I believe a bicyclist should move over to let motorized vehicles pass...especially in the mtn twisties. Believe me, its pretty darned scary coming around a tight turn, to find a bicyclist in the middle of the lane! ...Talk about pucker-factor! ':|

There was an incident last yr in a very popular mtn twisty route, where a bicyclist supposedly got intentionally hit by a sportbiker. He said, that a sportbiker "ran him over" in a turn on this mtn road. He made a big spectacle of the situation by running his mouth all over every sportbike forum he could find...presenting his side only as pure fact, w/o the benefit of the sportbiker's side of the story. He got his story on the local news & they replayed the story several times. He said that the sportbiker hit him & "left the scene".

Being a regular rider of that road, I've seen how many of these bicyclists act. That's why I took this guy's story w/a grain of salt. I simply didn't take him at his word. As many of the locals don't like motorcyclists on their mtn, the bicyclist knew his story would stir things up...& it did.

 

I work pretty much on Campus for the University here, and these Kids are all over on their Scooters/mopeds. Law states anything over 50cc's requires a class M to operate, but you know they don't have it. they park those things all over the bike racks on campus, and leave them buried in 5ft of snow in the middle of the winter. Working on Campus for the last 4 years, I've seen at least 3 scooter "riders" hit sand, salt, and rocks and either smash into a car, or lay it down and rash themselves up real good. Of course NONE of them wear an single piece of gear, and the girls will be riding around with little skirts on with heels or sandals....All I can do is laugh.

 

you know scooters should be banned and im from england i dont ride a scooter i ride a 50 geared although i have a cbr 600 for when i pass my A2 i get more respect and you feel like your on a proper bike and after couple a months u realise its a toy bike compared but it does give you the sense of bein part of the biker comunity and i personally felt that i should not be giving bikers a bad name so dont do stupid **** and nod at any friendlys but my mates do stupid **** and ignore all road users the community really does change the way people drive as they are outsiders on their ****ty scoots never mind how much it cost to fix a geared 50 when sent down the road