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My point I guess was "reflective practice" ie although no doubt at all you were legally in the right is there anything you could have done to avoid the situation? Maybe no / maybe yes but IME (and most of my riding is in town or on quiet roads) but I find the only times I have had close passes is when I have not been paying attention and ridden too close to the kerb. Riding out from the kerb / road edge I find helps enourmously
Exactly. I ride pretty much on the white line in the centre of the roads before many of the blind corners I ride around yet cars will still overtake me. There is nothing else I can do in those scenarios
On LH corners by hanging out in the outer half of the lane you enable drivers who do not comprehend line of sight to see alot further round the corner making their overtake safer. On RH bends you are shortening the VP making it way more dangerous for them , yet they still overtake anyway - using the force to see round the blind corner .
No hope. The ironing is if you asked them if they would let their kids ride to school , or wife cycle to work they would say " no chance too many idiots out there "
Riding out from the kerb / road edge I find helps enourmously
whereas I have found it makes little to no difference. The drivers that would overtake on a blind bend still overtake yet more aggressively as they somehow think you are trying to hold them up. They simply don't get that it is a dangerous place to overtake. The few I have managed to 'flag' down confirm that and the argument starts with them saying "what the hell are you doing riding in the middle of the road, I could hardly get past"
Aye - but even if twonks still attempt dangerous overtakes it means if they clip you you have somewhere to go other than hitting roadside furniture. Even if it only prevents some dangerous overtakes then its worth it
Lots of good sense on here. BTW, it wasn't a road ride, it's just that part of my local XC loop uses this particular stretch of road.
The ironing is if you asked them if they would let their kids ride to school , or wife cycle to work they would say " no chance too many idiots out there "
Never a truer word.
Bad, negligent, dangerous driving is so rife it's almost the rule rather than the exception. I don't think I can actually complete a car journey anywhere of more than 15 minutes and not witness several examples.
After my brush with death yesterday morning, I did my usual taxi service for my kids to and from their tennis lessons. This involves a drive through a long stretched out village that rightly has a 30 limit all the way through. On two of the three journeys through I was tailgated whilst driving at the speed limit. I was also forced to stop by someone barging through past parked cars, twice. I'm often overtaken in that village when I'm driving at the speed limit.
I would estimate that on 75% of my commutes I see at least one driver clearly using a phone or iPad. You can see the furtive glances up and down and the erratic last minute corrections as they crawl through the traffic.
I think a lot of people have basically cottoned on to the fact that there just aren't any coppers around any more due to the austerity cuts and so behave just how they want.
I even see cars duck off the motorway to drive through the services and gain about five places in the queue in the morning. Sadly, it seems a lot of people are dickheads and getting behind the wheel makes them even more so as they perceive themselves as 'immune'.
Can sympathise with you, i live in the sticks and had a large farm indicate and start to come around me on a country road and which time a lady in a BMX X5 decided it was a good time to overtake both, but as the tractor moved across she was forced ride and had to drive along a verge and scratched all of her paint in the hedge on the offside. At which point, and having wrecked the grass verge and the hedge, she stops gets out and proceeds to shout at everyone involved for the damage to her paintwork!! Thankfully the farmer jumped out of the tractor and in no uncertain terms told her she was lucky to be alive and she was an idiot