So now I’ve been back a few days and had a chance to decompress after my European tour, it’s time I put some words down about it. The main thing I can say is that Motorcycling in Europe is far better than anything I’ve experienced in North America.

First up is the traffic. In France, there virtually isn’t any. I mean almost none, even on the highways which I might add are also immaculate. Switzerland is a little busier but like the French, they know which lane they should be in and pull back in after overtaking. Oh, and they use both their mirrors and their signals which makes passing a little less hairy. Italy is regrettably far busier than both and heading back from Misano I spent literally the whole way in snarled up, slow moving traffic. Now, in North America this would have meant four or five hours baking in even the most minimal of protective gear whilst breathing in fumes. In Italy however, they’ve no problem with you lane splitting and even riding on the hard shoulder. We only remembered this when undertaken but i put that down to the heat addling our brains. A quick spell at 40mp/h down the shoulder soon cooled us off. There was a minor “oh crap” moment when I realized there was a cop under an overpass but he seemed to be sharing a cigarette with two kids he’d pulled over, but waved jovially anyway. OK, at normal speeds you tend to accrue the odd Ferrari or Porsche six inches from your rear wheel looking to get past you but at least they’ve seen you.

And there there are the road surfaces. France has no traffic so you’d expect it to be great and it is. What really shocked me was hitting some of the more rural routes that I can attest to being patrolled by lots of scary-large farming rigs I couldn’t even begin to name. Even with these, the roads are great. No pot-holes, no awkard camber where it looks like the road crew got pissed and decided to see how many ridges they could put in a corner. Switzerland then? Surely, with all that snow the roads would be dire. But again, no. The country is either home to the worlds finest tarmac engineers, whom it must be said also have no idea what a straight line is, or they gather the roads in in November for winter storage, only putting them out again in May. They are superb. OK, some have the odd bit here are there which is patchy but I swear I’ve been to North American race tracks that have more patches. Italy, even for the traffic volume seems great. At least it is if you can avoid the expansion joints which in the heat seem to spurt hot bitumen as you head over them.

And I should add, this all applies just as equally to the back roads as the highways and in case you didn’t know, they like their tractors in rural Europe.

There are downsides too – Northern Italy, especially around Torino, seems obsessed with toll booths but then that seems to be coming to North America too. It’s also a plus point too as it means you consider back roads more, which after all are more fun.

Back home, I went out on the Tiger the other day and ran into some traffic. Still in a somewhat European mode I decided to do a little lane splitting, at least I did after standing on the pegs and checking there were no cops around. I pulled out and as I did so, the car in front decides he’s going to pull over too. Not so he can go anywhere, but precisely to prevent me getting past. After passing him anyway and yelling some expletive over my shoulder I encounter the same thing at least twice more in what must have been fifteen cars. In the end, I didn’t slow a single one of them down or endanger my or their life, so why is this wrong? Why is it tolerated in Europe but not here? The only thing I can think of is the up-bringing. In Europe a scooter is legal at age 14 or so, while a car is 18 and considerably more expensive. As such, I guess a much greater percentage of the population start on two wheels and that makes them more aware.

That doesn’t account for the road surfaces though. Maybe it’s just the language and to prove this you can consider my native England. Close enough to Europe to be part of it, England is anything but. It’s roads are as crowded as Northern Italy but without the scenery and the roads themselves are as crappy as anything in my adopted province of Ontario. The drivers also seem to be on a points system when it comes to harassing bikes and will happily put their car in a ditch if it will arrest a bikes progress. Overtake one and he’ll take it as an open challenge for a race. The one thing you have in your favor is that the price of gas will change his mind in less than a mile.

I appreciate it might all sound like sour grapes, but I fully intend to go back. Not only are the roads better, but the entire experience is better. People talk to you like a human being as opposed to some form of latter day viking raider and seem to realize motorcycles are just a better way of getting around. If only North America thought the same way…

Tags: No Comments