Area motorcyclists feel they are targets to hostile drivers
If the weather is fair, Mike Santos leaves the car in the driveway and rides his Suzuki GXSR 600, one of those sleek, compact and speedy sport motorcycles that hum like turbocharged mosquitoes and are known, for better or worse, as “crotch rockets.”
Santos, a barber from Lower Saucon Township, likes the wind in his face as much as any biker, but he tries to be considerate of other motorists — yielding, signaling lane changes, keeping his distance to the extent possible in the Lehigh Valley’s heavy traffic.
It’s a matter of self-preservation. Santos said more than a few car and truck drivers seem to have an inborn resentment toward motorcyclists. So when he read about the Catasauqua truck driver accused of intentionally ramming a motorcyclist whose driving annoyed him, he was bothered but not surprised.
According to court records, motorcyclist Paul A. Entler suffered a collapsed lung, multiple broken ribs and a broken leg last week when 54-year-old Matthew E. Dietrich allegedly swerved into him at Race Street and Willowbrook Road in Hanover Township, Lehigh County.
Police said Dietrich admitted hitting Entler deliberately because he thought the biker was driving carelessly.
“[T]hey need to learn they can’t drive like that and do whatever they want,” Dietrich told state police, according to an affidavit charging him with aggravated assault, simple assault, reckless endangerment, disregarding traffic lanes, careless driving and reckless driving. He is free on $100,000 unsecured bail.
Santos, 37, has been riding for more than a decade. He has never been deliberately hit, but close encounters born of road rage happen “legitimately every day,” he said, recalling his own close calls during a lull at Parkway Barber Shop in Allentown on Saturday morning.
Some incidents stem from drivers simply not seeing or hearing bikers.
“You can hear the Harleys coming down the road,” he said, referring to the roaring HarleyDavidson choppers favored by some, “but the crotch rockets you tend not to hear until they’re on top of you.”
Other drivers — the ones who tailgate or cut off bikers — clearly act out of anger, unmistakably signaled by upthrust middle fingers.
“Merging is one of our biggest problems,” said Mike Gensey of Whitehall, 49, shopping for a jacket at the Cycle Gear motorcycle outfitting shop in Allentown on Saturday. “A bike is quicker, and it might tick them off because we go faster and get in front of them.”
Dylan Strothers, a rider from Bethlehem, said things are getting worse.
“The roads are a lot more crowded,” he said. “And with a lot of drivers, it’s like they have a problem with a person getting in front of them.”
Santos understands where some of the tension comes from — the bikers who flout the rules by speeding, weaving wildly in and out of lanes and driving between cars or along shoulders.
“The issue is, you tend to have idiot [motorcycle] riders who tend to piss off motorists,” Santos said. “So we all get a bad rap sometimes.”
Even so, he said, most riders tend to follow the rules. They are far more vulnerable than car drivers, after all.
In 2017, the most recent statistics available from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 5,172 motorcyclists died in crashes, more than half of which involved other vehicles. Biker fatalities occurred nearly 27 times more frequently than passenger-car occupant fatalities.
Those are sobering numbers, but they don’t deter bikers from hitting the asphalt.
“If it’s a good day,” Santos said, “I’m on my bike.”
Morning Call reporter Daniel Patrick Sheehan can be reached at 610-820-6598 or dsheehan@mcall.com