IME of riding about in That London (yes it’s true!), I find that the very worst drivers are often young men, zooming about to impress their mates/girls. They can often be quite aggressive and I’ve had many run-ins with this type of driver. The next has to be mums with a car full of kids, on the ‘phone, just no clue about what’s going on around them.
In the centre of town, the worst are black taxi drivers. Driving in heavy traffic all the time means they are very aware of the size of gap they can get through, but consequently leave you bugger all ‘wobble space’, and can clip your bars/wheels. Also, many of them seem to think they have a God-given right to be able to drive and everyone else is in their way. Incredibly selfish a lot of them. Most trips into town see me having to shout at a taxi driver cos they’ve bin a knob.
Then it’s White Vayn Mayn. Under pressure to get from place to place quickly, and in a vehicle that often don’t belong to them personally, they can be a right menace.
A far less obvious but equally deadly menace is the ‘don’t quite know where I’m going’ out-of-towner who is way out of their depth in the chaos of London traffic. Totally unpredictable and prone to sudden lethal movements. Invariably terrified and therefore even more dangerous.
But what unites them all, is that none of them give us cyclists ‘enough’ space….