Motorbikes

As I said below Sunday afternoon was back to school after half term for Dominic, which is around a 1.30hr drive each way plus the usual chats with his housemaster and tutors. Anyway the point is, I don't travel much these days, the weekly trip to the golf club, 10 mins, the daily trip to my office, 5 mins the odd trip to the cinema or shopping in Swindon and a trip to the DTI in London once a quarter and I use the train for that (and that's an entirely different story). I just don't have the need to travel these days after spending 20 years doing 30,000 miles per year.
So the journey up to Dom's school (N.Cotswolds) is about as far as I go and is restricted to beginning of terms and speech day (which I loathe, always did when I was at school, having to sit through all the prize giving knowing that you were never going to be presented with anything).
Back to the point: Where the hell have all these motorbikes come from? (yeah Japan - I know)I've noticed a gradual build up locally over the passed few years, mostly Harley's owned by a 50+ age group, but I'm astounded by the proportion nationally. A sunny Sunday and the roads are inundated with Ninjas and Fireblades, mixed in with the odd superb Ducati. Now don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against bikes or bikers having had many myself (bikes that is).
The problem is the shear numbers usually in groups of 3 or 5, traveling on main A roads at very high speed, nothing new about that, but combined with hazards such as geriatric Sunday drivers, Steam traction engines, Gypsy horse drawn romany caravans, horse boxes, caravans/boats tractor/trailers, ice cream vans et al (all of which we encountered yesterday)the bike accident rate must have hugely increased. We witnessed at least three near potential fatal accidents. Two at junctions and one centre carriageway.
I think as a car driver I am now more likely to be involved in a collision with a bike than with a car. Unfortunately, as I drive a large 4x4 the biker is going to come off worse.