Been riding for the past 40 + years, and still do. A friend wanted to start riding a few years back, told him that the only way to stay alive is to treat half the people on the road as if you are invisible to them, and the other half as if they intentionally want to kill you. I used to blame car/truck drivers for most of the problem, but over the years I have seen way to many people on bikes that create their own problems.
I hear ya, maggie. I've been riding for 45+ years now and that's exactly how I view things, too. I EXPECT other drivers (and riders) to [bleep] up, so I stay as far away from all of them as possible. I also putt around most of the time, unless I'm out on 27 or some other deserted highway where I can juice it a little and then go back to just cruisin.
Had one dumbazz rider damn near take off a chunk of my driver's side front bumper a couple years back coming back from the Keys. He was desperately trying to stay with the "pack", which had already gone around me. I could tell he was an inexperienced rider, watching in my rear view and driver's side mirror how he was riding my rear bumper and came out to pass. Really, really dumbazz move and he could have easily been road grime if I didn't see it coming.
GF was almost crying and begged me to pull over for a few minutes so they could "get the hell away from us".
