Drivers

Quite the simple title, I'm trying to keep it none inflamatory.

There was a time when I thought I was alone, alone in a world of abuse towards me when I was on my bike.  I've had kids make neandathal like noises as I've ridden past, I've had teenage drivers try to grab my arm and pull me (succeeding on some occasions), drivers spitting, throwing cans or random objects at me.  I thought I looked weird or stupid so it made me somewhat self conscious.  Recently there was a post over at Bikeradar in which other cyclists posted similar problems with drivers and it shocked me that some non-cyclists are such idiots.  Below are some quotes from forum posts;

Pamuzu said '...riding at a good speed this week (around 20mph), a white van pulled up really close to me. Next thing I had an egg smashed over my helmet! I pulled over, and seriously found this hard to comprehend.'

Flasheart said  'Back in Oz when I was in my late teens I cycled my road bike to work the 5 miles although I did have a car.  One afternoon riding home after work, some pr1ck pulled up along side of me and his mate threw a glass fruit juice bottle at me. It hit my right hand and broke a small bone and sliced my hand open. I couldn't put any weight on that hand for a while after that so I had to drive to work until it healed.' 

Dukegledhill wrote 'I once had fireworks thrown at me from a moving car.  Missed me though so no physical damage.'

Rick Chasey said 'Last time I had something like that happen, it was when someone leaned out of the passenger window to push me off.

Ended up in hospital.

*shrugs*

Not much you can do about it to be honest.'

Guilliano wrote 'I've had a couple of incidents like this.... both involving vans.

First one was on a bypass, riding between Leighton Buzzard and Dunstable. Pushing along at a decent pace, a van goes past, obviously slowing as it did and sprayed silly string at me whilst laughing manically. Kuntz!

The second was riding along the A418 from Leighton Buzzard to Aylesbury one morning. Van hurtles past giving me about 6 inches of space with some cokc screaming out of the window. As I came into Bierton they were in traffic so I unclipped and as I pulled alongside I aimed multiple kicks with my cleat at the van and screamed the same thing back through the still open passenger window at the now cowering chav scum bucket who realised I was nearly twice his size.'

***

That's just a small sample of the incidents that happen to cyclists.  9 times out of 10 it happens to be a chav with his/her scallie mates in a crap car or some moron/s in a white van.   On the upside one member wrote quite the amusing story after he was abused by a car driver.


Stacks234 wrote 'Just felt the need to add to this; there have been a number of occassions lately where I'll be walking along very late at night or extremely early in the morning where people have driven past and shouted/screamed something at me which is pretty pointless as I usually have head phones in meaning that they are muffled by the music.

I however have had the last laugh a number of times, the reason I'm around that late/early is because I'm a police officer and I've come off duty. It is a real picture to see their faces when I stroll up to the side of the car, flash my badge and ask them to pull over through the lights so that we can have 'a chat'.

I then have a good 5 minutes of bollocking them where I say that I now have their licence plate and a description of the car and driver which I will be flagging up on the Police Network Computer so that if they drive past they will continually get stopped and that their family should expect a visit from two officers the following day to discuss further the penalty for breaking public order involving fines and confiscation of their licence.

Two 'hardnuts' in their car started crying.' 


This is an awesome tale.  We need more of this happening.  What we do need is more laws to prevent cyclists being used for target practice but it would be nigh on impossible to stop it completely.  If I had my way both drivers and other road users (cyclists, horse riders too) would have to have a compulsary test every 5 years.  Not only would this test for knowledge in dealing with other road users but it would refresh their memories.

 Anyway I've moaned enough now; please be careful on the roads and do as I do, treat every driver as a potential idiot until they prove otherwise.