Honestly, I want to push back against the "you're invisible" and "everyone's out to get you" memes that permeate so much of motorcycling lore. If I believed either one, I wouldn't be able to get on a bike and ride in traffic.
First of all: bikes are NOT hard to see. But people don't always pay as much attention as they should, and so they cut off or pull in front of other drivers. This happens to motorcycles, but also to cars, minivans, SUV's, and big trucks. Sure, a driver who plows into a bike says "I didn't see him", but that's almost always because they didn't look. A driver who drives into a big brick wall, or over a curb, or into a fire hydrant, or under a bus will say the exact same thing. It doesn't mean that any of those things are hard to see.
As for other drivers being somehow dangerous or out to get you, it misses a very important point: WE ALL MAKE MISTAKES. This includes motorcyclists! Most of the time, though, most drivers are doing basically what they should. most drivers make it through years or even decades without even a fender bender. If you see other drivers as unskilled and chaotic, then that means that you can't interpret what they're doing, or anticipate what they are likely to do next, or take cues from them about what you should be doing. Maybe that cager in front of you is slamming on the brakes not because he just dropped his cell on the floor, but because there's an obstacle in the road that you can't see.
Anyhow, if someone encroaches on you somehow, if they don't actually cause you to wreck, then calm down and try to let it go. You don't ride well when you're stressed out of your mind, and you are MUCH more likely to end up wrecking if you do dumb things like escalate by blasting past someone in order to flip them off, etc.
Most importantly, I don't like this line of thinking because it makes motorcyclists out as victims of the whims of fate, as opposed to independent agents responsible for their own safety. Here's an example of what I mean. YES, the most common car-bike collision scenario is a left-turning car pulling out in front of an approaching motorcycle. It seems obvious that this is negligence on the part of the car driver, and I don't deny that it is. HOWEVER, in his analysis for the Hurt Report, Harry Hurt found that more than 50% of motorcyclists involved in those collisions didn't know what countersteering aka push steering is. So, half of the bikes that are colliding with left-turning cars have no idea how to steer a motorcycle - they lacked the most basic skills required to dodge the car. Is it surprising, then, that those motorcyclists are ending up involved in head-on collisions?
In my experience, BY FAR the most important factor in wrecking is whether you as the rider have made something else more important than not wrecking. You most often crash when you decide that something other than not crashing is your top priority. Keep safety in mind, keep cool, keep focused on the life & death task at hand, and have a long, safe, and rewarding riding career!!!
