Though I was a car nut even before I was a bike nut, I've never kept up with the popular culture aspects of automobilia. If it isn't involved with some form of racing, it usually escapes my attention. And so it was with "dub rollin'", an unfamiliar term I ran across today in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Columnist Mike Seate writes:

The late Lawrence Grodsky, of Squirrel Hill, was perhaps the world's best motorcycle safety instructor. He once taught me that the best way to cross an intersection where a car is waiting to make a left turn involves riding through as quickly as is safe to reduce the amount of time your motorcycle is at risk.

I thought of that last week while rolling my motorbike toward the intersection of Western and Allegheny avenues on the North Side. A car waiting to make a left flashed its lights to allow me through, but as I passed that car, a dingy old Volkswagen Rabbit that was second in line suddenly whipped across my path with an unexpected left turn into an adjacent parking lot.

A deep intake of breath, a hard squeeze on my front brake lever and a miracle of physics left my bike missing the VW's rear quarter-panel by a couple of inches.

I was so shaken that I immediately turned around to confront the careless, impatient fool who'd nearly punched my time card for good.

I wasn't road-raging. I just like to be on a first-name basis with people who try to end my life.

But the driver, it turned out, wasn't trying to bump me off. In fact, he didn't see me at all.

His driver's seat had been intentionally broken from its mounts, allowing him to ride so low in the saddle that he could barely see over the dashboard.

"My bad, dawg. I never even saw you," the young man offered with a shrug.

Seate goes on to explain that this modification (or posture style, it isn't clear which) is called "dub rollin'". So in addition to 3-ton SUVs that we can't see over, around, or through, and on top of A-pillars--forward roof supports--that block enough of a driver's sight area to hide a city bus, we have the hip-hop generation, in the interest of coolness, intentionally making it impossible to see beyond the steering wheel. It's a conspiracy, I tell ya!

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A superior rider uses superior judgment to avoid problems that would demand his superior skill.

Ok, now I have to say, there's something that shouldn't be allowed!  There are already many states that ban the use of such dark tinting on windows and this should be added to the list.  Personally I can't see how most of these people can drive anyway, leaning back or tilted over so far they are barely looking over the dash.  Then add a cell phone and some music and its amazing to me they don't crash leaving their own driveways.  When my daughter was getting her license I told her that if I ever saw her driving like that I'd have her head.

 Of course, she has been on the back of her dad's bike a time or two, so she is very sensitive to bikes and won't do a thing that would impair her ability to see them.

I'm afraid that if someone had said "my bad, dawg" to me, there would have be an altercation.  Not a good answer and not even close to an excuse!!!

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Only a biker knows why a dog hangs his head out the window.