"Do that again and I'll split you in half"....

[Mr Pig]

I'm not very good in these situations. When I was a kid I was a bit of a coward, used to hide from kids who said they were going to beat me up. Then, in my teens, I just got fed up with it and stopped backing down.

Just a few weeks ago a guy, in a Focus funnily enough, cut me up coming off a big roundabout. I tooted and he made the mistake of giving me the finger.

I chased after him, got along side of him half a mile up the road and tooted. When he looked round I gave him the tosser sign. He looked a bit shocked. I did this with my wife and kids in the car! Kids thought it was hilarious but my wife was, understandably, not impressed.

I'm not boasting about such antics, it's not very grown up and could be very dangerous if you got into a row with the wrong guy. I just down care that much. If someone said to me that he was going to cut me in half I'd tell him to get out of the car and give it his best shot. I know it's dumb but I just don't care. I hate bullies and I don't take much crap off them.

 

[Lardyboy]

Riding into work yesterday a bus pulled out with me about a foot in front of it's rear end. The driver looked in his mirror and SAW me, but still carried on! So I pulled in behind and when we came to a stop at the next set of lights I came along inside and banged as hard as I could on the door, which made him and a number of passengers jump, told him in no uncertain language how he had almost taken me out and that I'd got his reg. number!

 

[Mr Pig]

You know that you are 'supposed' to let buses out?

 

[Cubist]

I was once a passenger in a car driven by a mate of mine. We were on a length of road with a few roundabouts on it, and at some point Tony "straightened" one roundabout despite the lane markings, and as a result a car which had been trying to pass him started blaring his horn, flashing his lights etc etc. Tony stuck an arm up as if to say "sorry", but this only seemed to enrage the driver more. He got right up behind our car and Tony, a patient man, decided to pull into a layby to let him pass. As he did so he said "Oh hello, he's following us in."

I looked out of the back window to see a middle-aged driver getting out of the car and start walking towards us. He was red-faced and in the process of removing his watch, a sure sign of someone spoiling for trouble. Tony was watching him in the wing-mirror and as he got level with the back of our car he opened the door and hauled his 6'6", 35 stone frame out of the seat. The bloke stopped in his tracks, and I could hear his wife screaming something about "Get back in the car, he's a f*cking giant".

Tony however stooped over the driver and said.
"I was wrong to cut you up at the roundabout, and I thought I'd said sorry. Now I'm a fair man. You can have the first punch. THEN IT'S MY F*CKING TURN." The driver trotted wordlessly back to his car and drove off. His missus could be seen rubbing it in as he passed us!

 

[hackbike 666]

He was red-faced and in the process of removing his watch, a sure sign of someone spoiling for trouble.

No really?

 

[dellzeqq]

Let's just take a breath here....

I'll start by admitting to having climbed into a lorry cab to punch the driver, and thrown myself into the open window of a van to seize the keys and then throw them in nearby shrubbery. The memories still make me laugh out loud.

But....how many of these encounters do we win? And what do we win when we do? Joe24's case is a classic. The mirror may or may not have been damaged, but for what? For the sake of being right?

The basics can be set out as follows. Motorists frequently do things that endanger cyclists. Frequently, as in if you go cycling for a day, then two or three occasions might be the average. You can respond to this in a variety of ways, from cycling after them and telling them that you've heard an odd noise from their rear left hub, to inviting them to a punch-up, but given that they've got a tonne or more of metal on their side, it might just pay to be cautious, and, however unfortunate the thought, it might just pay to let things go.

I remember the case of the 36 year old engineer cyclist and the taxi driver in Victoria. They had words. The taxi driver accellerated and rammed the engineer. The engineer died. The taxi driver (iirc) got twelve months. And a three year ban.

Sorry to pick on you Joe; you'll have to put it down to my being middle aged, and being concerned for you.

 

[Mr Pig]

Yes, I know it's stupid and you could get hurt, or worse. I'm not defending it as rational or logical but at that particular moment in time, I like road rage!