You know who you are!

[Markymark]

I'm guessing you woukd have been drivibg at around 40mph if a free road. You say that you followed him for 2 miles. Therefore he slowed you down by around 6 minutes.

Oh the drama.

Yes he could have pulled over. Maybe he didn't feel safe. When cyvling I iften get held up by traffic that could pull over. They don't either.

It sounded like a nice country lane. Yiu were slowed by a few minutes. Get over yourself else choose faster roads or leave earlier.

 

[Ihatehills]

I'm guessing you woukd have been drivibg at around 40mph if a free road. You say that you followed him for 2 miles. Therefore he slowed you down by around 6 minutes.

Oh the drama.

Yes he could have pulled over. Maybe he didn't feel safe. When cyvling I iften get held up by traffic that could pull over. They don't either.

It sounded like a nice country lane. Yiu were slowed by a few minutes. Get over yourself else choose faster roads or leave earlier.

Would you have the same attitude if he was riding in the middle of a narrow cycle path slowing you down and not letting you past when he had the opportunity ?
It's easy to let people through on country lanes due to low volume of traffic and there are Always places where you can move over a bit whith the maximum loss being a couple of seconds, it's just about showing some courtesy really

 

[jonny jeez]

As it's you, I'll maybe concede that you may have a point. It can happen to all of us.... But last week 3 of us pulled over in a farm entrance to let a car go by without a word of dissent. Sometimes it is just the right thing to do. You only have to have a modicum of decency to do it ... and the absence of a huge chip on your shoulder. I imagine the vast majority of adult leisure cyclists in this country are also car drivers. Live and let live.

What you have done is what I do every day. The moment we get into our car, or on our bike, or motorbike, or scooter, or fixie, or tandem, or bent, or ark...we join a tribe and immediately find reasons to dislike other tribes.

As a cyclist, you have a greater ability to appreciate other tribes but ultimately can get as fed up with them as all the rest. When I drive I generally find cyclists annoying, when I cycle, I generally find fixed riders annoying, when I motorcyle, its scooters, when I scooter it's cabs, in the Audi, it's BMW's, on the Specialized, it's condors, when I walk, I find everyone annoying.

Unfortunately, this is a cycle forum, so expect some negative views of your honesty. Having said all that, I think you will admit yourself that, whilst patient and understanding, you still got fed up and got too close at times.

I'll bet money, the rider wasn't a knob...in reality. I'll bet he was panicking a bit, feeling harassed, felt his lovely gentle ride through single track had been spoilt by traffic and just wanted to get home.

If it were me riding, I would have gotten fed up and stopped, if only so I could ride in peace once the following traffic had gone.

 

[Markymark]

Would you have the same attitude if he was riding in the middle of a narrow cycle path slowing you down and not letting you past when he had the opportunity ?
It's easy to let people through on country lanes due to low volume of traffic and there are Always places where you can move over a bit whith the maximum loss being a couple of seconds, it's just about showing some courtesy really

Yeah I cyle a lot in London and there's often lots of cyclists being held up by slower ones on cycle lanes. The impatient cyclists tend to be the nobbers. You get impatient cyclists and impatient drivers. Both are dicks. Impatient drivers have potential to also do more harm.

 

[jonny jeez]

Yeah I cyle a lot in London and there's often lots of cyclists being held up by slower ones on cycle lanes. The impatient cyclists tend to be the nobbers. You get impatient cyclists and impatient drivers. Both are dicks. Impatient drivers have potential to also do more harm.

This is very true...as they say, sometimes idiots ride bikes.

When they drive cars or trucks the possibility of harm is massively increased

 

[alecstilleyedye]

i always apply the lbw rule* where there is not, in my estimation, room for a safe pass. always pull over when safe to do so though; why bait a motorist for the sake of it?

that said, if you drive on those sort of roads, you should expect to be held up by cyclists, walkers or even the local hunt...

*let the bugger wait

 

[coffeejo]

I thought I was going to be beaten up last summer following a similar incident, and yes, I hold my hands up, my behaviour didn't help calm the situation. Narrow road, ditches both sides, no room for two cars to pass one another without the aid of a passing place, of which there were many. A van came up behind me, revving the engine, driving too close etc, so I decided against stopping at the side and getting on the verge to let him past and instead got in the middle of the lane so he couldn't overtake and carried on to the next passing place.

However, when we got there, a car was coming in the opposite direction so I kept going and he had to pull in to let the other car past. He caught up with me shortly before the next passing place and again sat right on my back wheel, being an arse ... only there was yet another car coming in the opposite direction, so I once again I kept going. Believe it or not, this happened again and again at every passing place on this lengthy narrow stretch and by the time the road was wide enough for him to safely pass, he was using his horn and I'd given up looking back over my shoulder to see if he was going to run me over.

When I finally let him overtake, he drove alongside me and his passenger gave me a whole load of abuse out of the window, which is when I began to wonder what would happen next. Yet another car approached from the opposite direction so he zoomed off in a cloud of exhaust smoke. If he'd driven patiently behind me at the very beginning, none of it would have happened, and I kept being stubborn because he kept being an arse, but in retrospect, I should have just let the bleeper past.

 

[sidevalve]

As it's you, I'll maybe concede that you may have a point. It can happen to all of us.... But last week 3 of us pulled over in a farm entrance to let a car go by without a word of dissent. Sometimes it is just the right thing to do. You only have to have a modicum of decency to do it ... and the absence of a huge chip on your shoulder. I imagine the vast majority of adult leisure cyclists in this country are also car drivers. Live and let live.

Dream on.

 

[snorri]

Went out in the car today to do a reccie for a route for my first ever 100 miler.

.
B#@#@# cyclists clogging up our roads with their cars as they recce a route to cycle at a later date. Wtf is wrong with a bike for that task? If I had known what you were up to, I'd have held you back too.

Edited to say I can't do Smiley's when using current device.

 

[MrGrumpy]

This thread has lost the plot now ! its confirming my own beliefs that there are some right moaning gits on bikes :/ let's share the road and let's not hog space when we don't have to.

 

[glenn forger]

You and your wife sound like horrible people. Which road was it?

 

[Foghat]

What a bizarre display of "I'm going to go driving a big noisy antisocial vehicle down some narrow lanes which are to a large number of walkers, cyclists and horse riders a refuge from the rest of the god-awful traffic-laden road network in this country (and which if I bother to think about it are of course far too narrow for me to expect to be able to make rapid or easy progress among other road users in my inappropriately wide choice of conveyance), yet complain that other people don't bloody vacate the road by actually completely stopping for me, and for every other big wide noisy antisocial pollution dispenser that comes up behind them in the middle of their really quite decent 15-20mph progress, and getting off MY BLOODY ROAD onto the grass so that I DON'T GET HELD UP while undertaking my enormously important against-the-clock leisure drive; don't these people realise that the fact I'm in a bigger and dangerous vehicle with several hundred times as much power means I HAVE PRIORITY even though they were there first and are actually going quite fast for a narrow country lane. I'm going to damned well complain about it on my own cycling forum (I'm a cyclist too you know) as I HAVE TO GET IN FRONT and I can't possibly wait a few minutes until the road's actually wide enough to get my inappropriately wide mode of transport past without turning into a seething snarling foul-mouthed potentially aggressive yob and so is my wife".

Jesus Christ.

 

[fossyant]

The cyclist probably thought you were a considerate driver.

Don't overtake unless it's safe..

Just about everybody forgets this.

As a driver and cyclist (I now ride more than driving) you have to expect idiots. Chill.

 

[Cyclist33]

Or the cyclist in question could at any point simply have indicated to the side and then pulled in to let the vehicle past, which is what I would have done, rightly or wrongly. I haven't seen the road in question but I'd be very surprised if there were literally nowhere I could have pulled up and to the side. It would have created a much happier situation all round.

 

[theclaud]

That anyone could turn both me and my wife of all people, into seething, snarling, foul-mouthed and potentially aggressive yobs is quite an achievement.

Not really. In these cases the seething, snarling, foul-mouthed, aggressive yob has generally been there all along, just waiting for the chance to get out.