Two-wheelers are irritants

Last Friday, I had a business lunch with my brother-in-law.

No, not my wife’s brother but one of the lucky men who is married to one of my sisters.

As we walked to his car after a sumptuous meal, I noticed that his brand new Toyota Hilux Surf, the 20th Anniversary model, had an ugly scratch and broken lights on the rear bumper.

In my earlier years, he viewed me as an inexperienced driver, so he would never let me drive his cars for fear of ruining the paintwork. So, nowadays when I see a small scratch on his car, I cannot pass over the chance to point out.

“Jeez, this is ugly. What happened?” I asked him.

“I was driving along Uhuru Highway then some motorcyclist scratched the vehicle.”

The funny thing is that your insurance company/broker tells you how to behave when you are involved in an accident with another motor vehicle, but no one in the insurance industry has bothered to arm their clients with a practical how-to when you are in an “incident” with the motorcyclists or a hand cart.

I was curious. “How did you sort it out?” I enquired.

Frankly speaking, I was still trying to figure out what I would do myself.

“What can you discuss with the hand cart guys? He just said he was sorry,” he lamented

“Never mind, it will be fixed when I get time to go to the garage,” he brushed it off.

This got me thinking.

If you are unlucky enough to cross paths with a motorcyclist on the road, you will be surrounded by a horde of mean-looking men in puffy clothes with helmets within a short time.

What is intriguing is that it does not matter whether the motorcyclist is an employee of a certain delivery company or just another holloi polloi trying to eke out a living in the big city. When you as a motorist gets into an altercation with one, they all flood the scene. They harass, harangue and intimidate the poor motorist partly because other motorists do not stop to help sort out the matter.

All that we do is roll up the window and complain to ourselves how the motorcyclists have become a nuisance on the road.

The other day I witnessed a female motorist get into a shouting match with a horde of them motorcyclists on Nairobi’s Eastern bypass.

There was obviously a collision but the motorcyclist felt more aggrieved partly because of his place in the highway “food chain.”

They demanded all sorts of things and apart from plainly trying to extort money, they demanded that the “victim” be rushed to any of the city’s most expensive private hospitals because those were the only places which could handle his “injuries.”

Of course the driver, one of those good sisters from the lakeside would not take it lying down.

She unleashed her tirade in equal measure. When none of the parties would budge, it was decided that they leave go home to nurse whatever injuries, real or imagined.

Though motorcyclists have a right to be on the road, their bullish behaviour and alacrity of darting in between cars will always lead them to hospital wards with broken bones.

Little wonder that in Kenyatta National Hospital, they have opened a ward specifically for the motorcyclists. Or should we call it the bone yard for motorcyclists?

Twitter: @tonyngare