It may just be me, but I've been finding that what you ride and what you wear has far more effect on other road users, rather that the way you ride. When I took out the little CBF a few years ago, I found that more people would pull out in front of me that if I were riding the Ninja. I don't have any scientific proof of this, no study that says X percent of people are more likely to do that, that or the other. When riding the Ducati and filtering through traffic, people do tend to try and get out of the way. This could be down to the noise, or it could be down to any number of other factors. I bring this up as today, whilst riding this X Max thing, a van driver tried to hit the back of my head with his wing mirror. Now I had filtered to a point where I could go no further, with the van behind me on the right. There is no way the driver couldn't see me, so therefore his actions were intentional. I think he saw me as just another scooter rider. I very much doubt he would have pulled such a shocking piece of behaviour if I was on the Ducati, fully leathered up, or riding a Harley with the attitude to go with it. It's a sad fact, but anybody on two wheels is vulnerable on the road. It doesn't matter if you're 6'3 or 4'11 in a fight with another vehicle, we will loose. Its just a shame that this idiot of a driver didn't care enough about anybody else. I hope that it doesn't cost somebody their life one day.
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