It seemed to be silly season here yesterday, sun was out some drivers got a little exuberant.
First example was at 9am (i was in my car like thing) passing through a T junction, me driving on the main road part and a driver entering from the side. The issue was the car didn’t stop at the junction and car straight through, wheels locked as she skidded through to nearly T-bone us, her car stopped 3-5cm from our side door and she was in total shock. I asked No3 daughter is she had noticed anything odd as she was in direct line of sight and she said that as the driver approached she was looking down and not ahead…. No idea what she was doing but certainly wasn’t aware that she was about to enter a junction.
Then later in the afternoon 2 head on’s when out on the bike.
The first was on a 50mpm road where a pickup was passing 3 vehicles, he was doing 60+ at a guess and i had no choice but to dive into the side of the road unless i wanted to become part of his vehicle…
Then about 2hrs later another driver decided to pass a tractor with a large trailer. The thing was i was already coming in the opposite direction. In this case is was a 30 zone and they were going quite slowly. The driver flashed her light at me to move out of her way ie i move off the road so she could use “my” side of the road…. I decided to hold my ground as by now she was side by side with the tractor/trailer and a sort of in the middle of no where. I road straight up to here front bumper (she’d now had to stop) leaving about 1cm space and forced her to reverse back😂 the driver was not impressed as was some how having to do the reverse of shame (i may have blocked her passage as much as i possible could…).
Otherwise on my commutes I’ve concluded there’s 3 primary things that increase risks to me as a cyclist on the road:
1) People in a rush, that to me seems to be the main issue (in the morning I’m commute more “rush hour” and funnily enough people are in a rush…)
2) People that just thing “it’s only a bike” and make their manoeuvre, “the bike will slow down” or “I’ve got loads of time before that bike gets here” sort of thing
3) People using devices, generally distracted and fiddly with knobs: see less of these but on a bike you do tend to notice them quite easily as you can often see in through a window and see a hand doing something it shouldn’t be doing
I never know what to do in all these circumstances as so far every driver I’ve every challenged has told me he was expert in his craft and i was absolutely wrong in my suggestion🤷♂️ maybe i have just got it all wrong.
Until then i still dream of being
egg man
