Look Twice!

Dealing with impatient summer drivers is extremely frustrating to me. Nobody wants to get stuck in traffic, especially when dealing with the bridge in Charlevoix.   If you are a regular reader of this column you might be aware of the fact that my husband Tom and I are motorcycle enthusiasts. One of our favorite things to do on a summer evening is to ride around Lake Charlevoix or just go to downtown Charlevoix or any other neighboring town to “flake out” in the grass and listen to the band. One such night we were on our way out of Charlevoix and found that the bridge was up. We were waiting to turn right on to Bridge Street and joked “Hey! We’re going to be the first ones across the bridge!” We know that even if we weren’t that someone would let us in and we would eventually get across. As we waited a large Super-Duty pick-up came out from behind us and went around us on to Bridge street, in front of the waiting traffic. We were shocked to say the least. I thought he must have been in a hurry to do something like that. I looked behind us and saw a smaller car and figured that at least he had the courtesy not to do the same thing. But just as the bridge was going down I noticed that this car, a silver Chevy Cruze, followed the pick-up’s lead, went right around us, and squeezed between the truck and our motorcycle! Just to get across the bridge before anyone else! When you live in Northern Michigan in the summer you get to see drivers do a lot of aggressive, stupid things in order to get ahead of everyone else. But what people seem to forget when they are squeezing between cars and motorcycles is that while cars are surrounded by metal, we on motorcycles are not. When you are in a big doggone hurry and hit a car you dent up someone’s fender. When you are in that same doggone hurry and hit a motorcycle, someone gets killed. Every summer I hear stories of people on motorcycles who have collisions with cars. Sometimes those accidents are the fault of the rider, but sometimes they are not.   If a person takes the extra time to look a second time for that motorcycle, maybe an accident can be avoided. I’m guilty of being in too big of a rush and seeing a car right in my rearview mirror after I’ve pulled into an intersection. It honestly freaks me out. I want to ask that guy in the silver car if it really would have killed him to be patient and wait 1 or 2 more minutes to get across the bridge. And the answer is no, it wouldn’t have killed him, but his impatience could have killed me.