Day 4 — Copenhagen

Nothing much happened today except for some general sightseeing and a lady reversing into my bike. I could talk about all the touristy things I saw but you can check tripadvisor for that. I’m going to use this post to describe to you just how I feel about Danish drivers instead.

A lady in a small blue sedan carefully approached the intersection, she was a good few meters in front of me. The lights turned yellow and as she approached she deliberated the decision to continue. You could see her try unsuccessfully to resolve the internal debate as she sped up through the lights and then slam on the brakes, lurching to a stop on top of a zebra crossing seconds later.

This was fine, as I had anticipated something like this and had left plenty of room. But, because I’m only had a few days experience driving on the right side of the road I was sitting on her left — in her blind spot.

For those of you who don’t motorcycle, you have the choice of positioning yourself behind a vehicle to the left, center or right (because essentially you’re 1/3 the size of a car). Sitting directly in the center is never a good idea because of oil spills and road wear. So it’s either the left or right and this depends on where the driver is. Technically you always want to be diagonal to the driver so they can see you.

Back to the story. The green man blinks and pedestrians amble over the crossing, filtering around the front of her car. I guess she thinks she’d better get out of the way, and reverses backwards. Right. Into. Me.

I scream at her — to no avail of course, she has no chance of hearing me through my helmet. If only somebody invented something that made a really loud noise. I used to have a thing called a horn. But it broke the other day in Berlin. Who knows why, even my crazy Polish mechanic can’t figure it out.

So of course with no obnoxious sounds to stop her she keeps on reversing. There’s only one thing I can do about it now — get out of her way. The problem is I can’t drive forward or I’ll hit her. So I lean my whole bike to the left and balance on my left foot (talk about core strength). I then swing my right foot up and out of the way . She reverses until her open window is parallel with my beetroot red face, until the car is centimetres away from my bike and right leg.

She get’s the shock of her life.

Poor lady. I do feel bad for her, because it’s partly my fault as well. But she’s the perfect example of how bad Danish drivers are. I mean they aren’t the worst, but they have so much potential it’s a real shame. They just don’t concentrate. At least all of drivers I saw were chatting in their cars to their partner, or on the phone. This makes decision making excruciatingly slow.

One driver was on the phone AND chatting to her partner in the car, so of course she found it impossible to turn out of a street. She’d look one way, get the all clear and inch out. Then look the other way and realise it was no good. She’d pretty much inched her way to China by the time she drove off. And THAT pisses me off. It’s not like its fun to balance your way in first gear on a motorcycle with 100kg on the back on a 35 degree day with the sun in your face.