If you live in Johannesburg, you can't have failed to notice there's been quite a bit of digging up of the roads recently.
Many now sport narrow trenches on one or both sides. Some of them have even been filled in. They've certainly made driving a lot more challenging.
I've heard complaints from all over about bumps, scrapes and even a lost number plate. I know it's for a good cause: they're housing the fibre optic cables that should bring us out of the dark ages and into the light soon.
But I'd much rather be alive than have more bandwidth. These narrow depressions on familiar routes might be just irritating to motorists, but they are extremely dangerous to motorcyclists. Although they don't look like much, these trenches parallel to the direction of travel qualify as a nasty hazard to a biker.
Bikes lean to steer at anything faster than a few kilometres per hour and the rider maintains control with a series of small corrections even when going in a straight line. Next time you sit behind a biker, you can see this series of control inputs in action for yourself.
But if a wheel gets stuck in an edge trap, the rider may become unable to lean the bike over in the correct direction in order to stay upright. This is a terrifying experience when it happens: one minute you're riding along and the next minute your bike just wants to lean in one direction and no amount of pushing on the grips will correct it.
Obstacle course
I'd much rather be alive than have more bandwidth. These narrow depressions on familiar routes might be just irritating to motorists, but they are extremely dangerous to motorcyclists.
Paul Furber, group senior writer
If you're unlucky, it's followed by a nasty fall. If you're very unlucky, it's on a highway, which means the fall will happen at highway speeds.
To be fair, most of these trenches are on the very edges of urban and suburban roads, somewhat out of the way. But in some areas, they aren't. On Northway, in Kelvin, for instance, there's one which cuts across the road at the northernmost end, stays parallel for a while, but then wanders through the small traffic circle at the top of the hill, almost exactly coincidental with the optimal route for a motorbike.
It certainly made my journey home a few days ago a lot more exciting. Linden has also become an improvised obstacle course for riders and I've seen other areas which now look more like railway shunting yards than tar roads.
Those of us lucky enough to commute daily on two wheels have enough of a challenge keeping the shiny side up and the rubber side down without these edge traps waiting to pounce on our front wheels - and downloading faster won't be much compensation.
We already have taxis, oil and diesel on the roads, highway barriers that look like high-speed cheese-graters, cars that suddenly change lanes or do U-turns - and people who think they can drive while sending SMSes.
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