Halloween: Our Favorite Frights of 2013

Another year, another Halloween, the one day a year, when it becomes appropriate to dress all in black and creep out your neighbors. To honor this most frightening of days, we thought we would take a look back at some of the scary moments we have encountered behind the wheel or in the saddle during the course of this year. Some of these were genuinely scary moments where genuine unease washed over us, while others were merely close calls.

In August, East Brother shared with us his trip to several haunted sites in the city of Waltham, MA. Joining him in the saddle of the K1200S, we toured the creepy remnants of several mental institutions as well as the grounds of a school and residential facility that is still actively serving residents, but is the site of one of the most haunted places in the Boston area. Just the thought of trekking back to the Fernald School is a chilling prospect.

Our modern cars are also so filled with computers and electronic nannies that the modern automobile can now be easily hacked and taken over. Everything from opening car doors to forcing the car to drive anywhere but where the driver wants is entirely possible. Can you imagine driving along the road when suddenly your doors lock and the steering wheel seems to take on a mind of its own? It is like a ghost has taken over your car. Scary thought, is it not?

There were innumerable close calls, including run-ins with total lunatics perpetrating road rage like nobody's business, near misses with wildlife while biking (damn those squirrels are crafty), and, of course, the death of common sense behind the wheel. Getting on any form of two-wheeled transportation was sometimes frightening enough on its own, with drivers today seemingly completely oblivious to their surroundings and hell bent on doing anything behind the wheel except drive.

On a final note we just want to remind everyone to be safe, be courteous, and to never drink and drive.

Have a safe and happy Halloween!

Editorial: The death of common sense behind the wheel

Image courtesy of motoringtv.com

I have often written about some of my on-road experiences on this blog, detailing the foolish things I have seen from the driver's seat. Over the course of the last few months, the feeling that things are getting progressively worse has been hard to shake. The number of miles I drive each year continues to drop as my personal commuting needs are increasingly met by two-wheeled and public transportation options, but the number of incidents of, what I can only classify as, pure stupidity I observe when I am behind the wheel continue to increase in frequency.

Take the incident I observed earlier this week while I was out to get groceries. The road that I was traveling on was two lanes in each direction with nothing separating opposing traffic aside from a set of double-yellow lines. This road, especially during rush hours, is exceedingly busy in both directions and, given the rather narrow lanes, is a bit crowded to say the least. Approaching an intersection, it widens ever so slightly to include a left-turn only lane in each direction that can accommodate about 5 to 6 cars before it meets back up with the travel lanes. On this day, I came up to the intersection in the left travel lane and am about 8 cars back from the light. I can see that there are 2 cars in the left-turn lane as the light turned green to allow cars proceeding straight to go, but the left turn signal remained red.

All of a sudden, a flash of light in my driver's side rear-view door mirror caught my attention. A beige Toyota Camry about another 8 cars back behind me had pulled into the opposing traffic lane and was trying to rush up to the left-turn lane. Opposing traffic was already beginning to cross the intersection as the Camry whizzes by my car, all the windows down, allowing me to see a father driving with a small child in the rear seat, gazing out the side window. Horns blared, lights flashed, and tires screeched as the Man in the Camry just barely avoided a head-on collision in what, I am almost certain, was a sphincter-clenching moment of utter imbecility.