Close shave in France

[Ianmc]

Got back early yesterday after a week in Brittany,great week,good weather,but nearly came back in a black zip up body bag.Travelling down to St Nazaire for a visit to the U-boat pens,I was driving at around 60 mph approaching an on ramp,the cars in front moved over as usual as did myself and the bike behind me,I spotted a woman driving a small van going a bit quicker than the other joining cars,it pulled onto the carriageway behind the other joiners then kept coming over into me,I was so close I was looking straight at her and she never even looked my way.I had to do an emergency stop as the barrier was nearly on my left leg and the van on my right,the Wee brakes were up to the job with the back wheel chirping as the ABS kicked in.When I eventually got past her and gave her some horn,I don't think she even knew what had happened.I was glad it was not wet as I reckon the outcome would have been much worse.Also I am very glad I changed the OE rear brake pads when I first got the bike as the originals were as hard as glass and would never cause the ABS to activate no matter how hard I tried.   

[Joe Rocket]

Glad to hear you escaped any form of contact and the bike did it's bit.

Unfortunately you have to do far more thinking for other road users over here. A lot are totally oblivious to other road users, the driving test standard is less rigorous than in the UK and drivers learn bad habits very easily (not that they know it).

Only last weekend we left Redon to go home from shopping, as we exited a roundabout and I had a BMW flashing his headlights behind me  but it was a solid white centre line and I was going at the speed of the car in front. He (in front) overtook the car in front of him on the solid line  only to reveal a car driving slowly because he had a loose flat load on his roof rack he was holding on with his left hand out of the driver's window  . My Laguna out-dragged the BMW on a double lane up the next hill but I knew there was a 70 kph limit coming up so levelled out ready to slow down  and the BMW passed me and raced through the speed limit at 110 kph or more  . All of this in less than 1 km!

Back to the roundabout we drove round earlier......... there was a Police  stop/random control going on at the junction before the one we joined. 

[Flanners]

I found my recent forays into France a pleasure; I recently went on the Autoroute to finish the drag back up to Calais for 100m and found that there seems to be this desire to tail gate by French drivers even if there is nowhere for them to go, given the 4/5 vehicles in front of me in Lane 2; they appear to legitimise this by keeping their indicator flashing? That said I'm off on Weds morning to Arras and I know which country I'd rather ride my bike in and it's not SE England.