Today is the busiest driving day of the year — so please be careful. And please take extra caution to watch out for the motorcycles and bikers that are sharing the roads with you — not just today but every day.

Knowing I’ll be out there on my bike today while 4 gazillion people are trying to get to their Turkey Day destinations, I wanted to take this time to rant about the drivers who most irritate me as an everyday biker:

1) People who text while driving. Seriously — What. The. Hell. Do you think you are doing?

It’s bad enough to have a cell phone pressed against the side of your face. But to be actively reading and typing on a keypad made for a 24″ tall stick man? Inevitably, these are the people driving in the Left lane who are driving way too slow (they think they are being “safe” by leaving a 15 car gap between them and the car in front of them. They are the car you have to honk at to get them to go after the light turned green 5 seconds ago. These are the drivers that will merge into my lane because they were scrolling through their blackberry rather than looking in their blind spot.

2) People who talk on their cell phones while driving — right now, where you are sitting, put your left hand up to your left year as though you are talking on the phone (most people hold their cell phone in their left hand while driving). Now, shift your eyes to the left. What do you see? That’s correct — you see your left forearm. Now tell me, how can you possibly see out of your rear driver’s side mirror? How can you look into the blind spot right next to you? The spot where I’m very likely to be riding when you decided to merge into me without looking?

The answer is you can’t. Which is why I have exceptionally loud pipes on my cruiser. Whenever I’m stuck next to a driver talking on their cell phone, I always roll on the throttle to make sure to get their attention. Then I flip them off and give them the universal signal for “Hang up the phone”.

Seriously people — you are not that important. Hang up the phone and drive.

If I were our nation’s Traffic Czar and I could instantly implement and enforce any traffic laws, the very first thing I would do is to make it unlawful to drive while using a cell phone.

3) Women putting on their makeup while they are driving — Ladies: Stop doing this. You are a serious hazard to everybody around you. Wake up five minutes earlier and do your makeup at home. Or wait until you pull into the parking lot at the office and do it while your car isn’t moving and you can’t kill somebody.

Cops should be able to pull over and ticket any women they see putting on makeup while driving.

4) People who tailgate me — I’m a pretty fast driver; almost nobody in the left lane is ever going to be going much faster than I am. And I don’t care if you’re in a Vette, a Porch, or a Ferrari — my bike will easily out accelerate your car from the red light or from a start. So get off my ass.

If you rear end another driver, you’ll both get out and swap insurance. If you rear end me, I’m going to die or be seriously injured.

If you are following too closely, I’ve found that the “Biker Stare” to be quite effective — where I turn around in my seat and glare you down for a second or two is usually enough to get you to back off.

I’ve found that most people don’t want to mess with a 240 lb, skin-head looking biker.

5) People who throw cigarette butts out of their car windows — First of all, it’s littering. So stop that. Second, I wear a half-lid helmet. Burning cigarettes hurt and will likely cause me to pull up along side of you and spit through your open window.

6) People who decide that the best time to wash their windshields is when I’m riding behind them — when the vehicles are moving, your windshield wiper washer fluid flies over your car and into my face, obscuring my vision. Plus, wiper fluid tastes like ass. If I’m hit by your fluid, it’s because 1) you didn’t bother to look in your rearview mirror to notice who/what is behind you, or 2) you did look and see me behind you, and just didn’t care.

7) Illegal immigrants — you can almost always guess which cars on the roads are being driven by illegal immigrants. They are almost always driving exactly the speed limit or a few miles below it out of fear of being pulled over. And they are almost always doing so from the Left lane, since they are unaware of the “Left Lane is the Fast Lane” rule of driving in America. They are almost always driving late model vehicles that don’t look like they could honestly pass most state safety inspections — the tires are bald and the exhaust is spewing smoke. You can often tell that there is some confusion about what certain street and safety signs mean.

And God forbid that you happen to get into an accident with them — like the illegal immigrant lady that rear-ended my wife’s Land Rover a few weeks ago. That’s right — no insurance.

/rant

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Seriously folks, watch out for the bikers out there — your cars are deadly weapons, and the thing you almost always hear from the car driver after they have killed a motorcycle rider is, “I never saw them.”