I've not commuted much this year, but haveben riding most of my life. In the past few weeks I've been cycling to the office a couple of times a week. On almost every journey somebody tries to squeeze past me inappropriately or causes me to slam on the brakes.
A couple of instances were worse than others.
Last Friday somebody squeezed past me on a section of road that is just wide enough for two cars each way as it passes under a bridge. I'd been slightly over to the left to avoid a pot-hole when the Black 02 Megane saw the ideal & totally unnecessary opportunity to squeeze past me. The wing mirror was ~2cm from my handle-bar. I was so close that I was able to hit the rear passenger window with my knuckles(not finger-tips). I caught the car up at a traffic lights and asked the fairly docile-looking, middle-aged man driver why he'd just done that. He said a half-hearted "oh..sorry" and I, very impolitely, told him that he'd better not do that to anybody else.
This morning something similar happened and again, I was able to tap the window of the car as it squeezed past me (I deliberately wasn't hugging the kerb) and a car coming the other way. I caught this car and tapped on the window, the ~30 year old, docile-looking bloke driving looked like he'd sh*t himslef and drove off.
I was feeling bad for the state of mankind.
On the way home I was riding past the Trafford Centre when a bus loomed closely in my peripheral vision as I approached a roundabout in the left lane. I was a little perturbed and looked around. The driver was visibly gesticulating and mouthing-off at me!
The bus then cut-me up and forced me to stop otherwise I'd have been under its rear wheels. I was a bit disturbed by this.
I caught the bus at the Bus Stop and asked the driver what he was doing. The driver was foreign -Italian or Balkan?- and was shouting that I should not be on the road, but on the "cycle road (sic), as it is safe there!"
I replied something along the lines of: "I'm entitled to be on the road and it's dangerous on the roads because of idiots like you" Incidentally, the cycle path through Trafford Park is crossed by HGVs pulling out and side roads. Near the Trafford Centre it's full of myopic shoppers and it would take an age to cross the roads.
I was really angry.
What is going on?
I ride a motorbike and can honestly say that cycling on the road is worse.
It's not necessarily the aggressive types who are the problem. The problem seems to be with the ignorant, oblivious people:
-women in cars on the phone/doing hair,
-dozy people not paying attention
-People who don't understand that racing to the next queue isn't quicker
-people who don't appreciate that cyclists are entitled to be on the roads
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:lol:.....i draft another letter......and a follow up 
