How Pet Peeves Cause Motorcycle Crashes

DanF9 | March 23, 2026 — I think "pet peeves" are the sort of thing we have a tendency to downplay. After all, they're just minor nuisances that pop up contextually, and we typically address them by either ignoring them, stepping away, or shifting our facial expression from neutral to annoyed.

Personally, I've noticed that when you're in an environment that constantly exposes you to things that can annoy you, even if they bother you only slightly, they have a tendency to become more frustrating than they initially are over time.

To Illustrate

I absolutely can't stand it when a car is chilling in the passing lane. I encounter this pretty much every time I commute, and I've noticed that my attitude, and even the way I ride, changes throughout the season the longer I am exposed to this kind of behaviour.

When April rolls around, I might see this and laugh, or start a monologue in my helmet like:

C'mon buddy, you see me, move over, you can do it...

By November, however, I'm saying:

If this moron doesn't move in the next 2 seconds, I'm passing him on the shoulder and flipping him off.

I don't actually do this, but I definitely think it. I get more affected by the same situation simply through exposure. I'm fairly certain it happens to everyone, and so we can clearly see how this can lead down a path of frustration and anger, thus affecting our safety and the safety of others on the road.

We Need Some Kind of Solution

I've spoken about anger and how Stoic behaviour can aid in regulating our expectations. How it can lessen the way reality affects us, simply by expecting it to be this way. If I tell myself, "Today, I will see multiple drivers chilling in the fast lane," I set myself up to expect a reality, and I am less stressed out when I am confronted with it.

Then, there's the Epicurean method: to realize that things affect us negatively, and to avoid the situations that spark this negative reaction. This might look like:

I see a driver chilling in the fast lane, let me just change lanes, take a small detour, or focus my attention on something else.

In this case, you don't confront the issue directly, you just learn to focus on things that don't turn you into a ball of frustration.

This is kind of fun, because I could go on and on about different philosophies, and I just might pursue this at the end of the article. But for now, I'll say that there's something else you can do, something a lot simpler for a change.

Realize This

You are the only one fueling your pet peeve. I totally get it, there's a degree of fun involved in ranting about the small stuff, and it never feels like it does that much harm. But in the case of consistent and repetitive nuisances, you have the option to simply stop feeding into it.

Just like in a silly argument, you can either get caught up debating whether or not hot dogs are sandwiches, or you can understand that it's not worth the expenditure of energy. And this has a lot to do with how you see yourself, how you value your own time, and the degree of security that you foster in your own life.

Feeding into a pet peeve is giving something irrelevant power over you, your own peace, stability, and value. If something so small has the capacity to crash your bike, it's only because you let it. You give away the time and energy to feel vindicated in feeling annoyed. And then what? It's not like your quality of life improved just because you got to flip off the moronic fast-lane blockader.

Letting Go

I talk about this a lot, I think, but I think it's one of the central struggles in a motorcyclist's journey: training their capacity to let go when they recognize that the things they're holding on to increase their chances of crashing.

Personally, I think it's quite the pragmatic approach, even though it sounds all philosophical (the way I'm phrasing it is the likely culprit here). I'd be curious to hear what your pet peeves are, because it's still fun to rant about... just not when you're going 60 mph!

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Appendix: How to Deal With Pet Peeves, According to Various Philosophical Worldviews

• Pyrrho of Elis: I don't know.
• Aquinas: Pet peeves? Your struggle is too mundane, focus on your union with a greater power and things will sort themselves out.
• Spinoza: Your issue stems from the erroneous belief that you are free. Understand how everything is necessarily determined, and your striving will mirror nature, as self-preservation.
• Kant: Use your head, reason will conquer the emotional illusions you feed into.
• Nietzsche: Stop being a baby, there's no time for pet peeves in the Overman's worldview.
• De Beauvoir: Pet peeves are a part of the ambiguity of sharing a world with other free, flawed people. Choose not to let irritation harden into resentment when your freedom is better spent acting with lucid restraint.
• Bertrand Russell: Let R = { x ∣ x ∉ x } . Then R ∈ R ⟺ R ∉ R .

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