Human road-kill

It's inevitable for people who drive that since they spend so much time on the road, at some point in time they will encounter some form of road-kill. Two legs poking out from under a white plastic sheet was what I saw today while on my way to work. There were cops standing around examining the scene, awaiting the clean-up crew to arrive.

Not hard to speculate what had just occurred: truck and motor-bike attempting to merge into one lane, inadvertently merging into each other instead. The operator of the smaller vehicle apparently did not survive the merger.

Motor-bikes are one of the road's most unpredictable factors. They're small and nimble, and appear and disappear off our scopes seemingly at random because they can get to places drivers don't expect to be looking at because no one in their right mind should be there at all. Often, as soon as I signal to change lane, a motor-bike a safe distance behind will suddenly accelerate to get in front of me and I'm forced back into the lane I attempted to leave. Bikers can be so irrational.

But I'm not here to rail at the idiocy of others; and I'm certainly not saying that that was what happened in this traffic fatality. We can't fix other people so let's just be more proactive about the things we can control. Drivers, signal early and check your blind spots always. And can we, like Canadians, give a car's length respect to the bike in front of us and not force them to squeeze in between cars because that's so dangerous? Yes, the idiots will do it anyway because they can, but teaching them a lesson by getting them killed is not an effective pedagogical strategy. Let's please try something else.