Motorcycle Sport & Leisure Magazine 678 - October 2019 Vorige editie

Public relations management is a dark art. I have witnessed some very clever PR gurus putting a 'spin' on things and completely changing public opinion about the subject at hand. But it doesn't always work. For instance, calling the M25 a motorway rather than a rolling circular car park was never going to fool anyone. You can’t even pretend it’s a decent car park.

Over the last month I have spent far too many hours on this soul destroying stretch of Tarmac. Friday rush hour there makes medieval torture seem like just a bit of harmless fun. And that's even if you're on two wheels and manage to make more progress than most.

However, crawling along in the middle of such a huge number of vehicles allowed me to look around and see what people did in their cars. It wasn't a pretty sight. A worrying number of drivers seemed to be paying almost no attention to what was happening around them. Some were just eating and drinking. Others were chatting to/arguing with their passengers. And a scarily large number of drivers were on their phones, doing everything from talking and texting to actually taking selfies!

When you ride a motorcycle on a multi-lane carriageway and people in the
cars around you are more interested in updating their social networks ('I'm stuck in traffic, again, lol') than concentrating on driving, it makes you think. Although mostly it gives you visions of them casually killing you with their absent-mindedness.