In the last hour while riding home (on a segregated bike path) I’ve had two cars and a van slow down to shout abuse. I mean, why?

The first car had four cretins in who decided to throw McDonalds litter at me; the second had a small kid leaning out of the window while his dad encouraged him, and the van… well, I actually have no idea why he slowed down to shout “******* cyclist ******” out of the passenger window.

If I’d been holding them up I could maybe understand their frustration, but pootling along in the snow on a bike lane? Some people just deserve to be stabbed in the eye with a rusty screwdriver.

There are just a lot of w*****s about and more of them seem to be doing stupid stuff in public since Covid kicked off.

Add to this impatient drivers – I mean they’ve got nowhere to go so why are they so intent on squeezing past when there really isn’t the room to do it?

i had a lovely late evening ride tainted in the last few hundred meters by some pillock tooting at me to “get out of the way” (riding normally, in a 30 in town).
he aggressively overtook, immediately stopping at some lights where i was able to ask if he was ok.
Apparently i don’t know what i’m doing, and i shouldn’t be on the road, i should be on the pavement.

Once of those moments i where you are so dumbfounded by the idiocy of their attempt at logic you lose all ability to form any kind of retort.

Seeing as he was playing the hard man, In retrospect i should’ve said something about how is beige 2003 honda jazz was likely “his nan’s car”, but the light hand changed by the time i had thought of it.

I had a pleasant chat with a taxi driver on Friday morning. He pulled out on me and then had to stop at traffic lights. When I pulled alongside and told him there was no need to drive like that I got the usual “didn’t see you mate” before being told “suck your mum” and called a “pussyclart” as he drove away. Not the brightest bulb in the box.

On a related note, I’ve noticed a sudden increase in drivers straying into the opposite lane in the last week or so.

Just my locality or anyone else seen similar since the lockdown was eased? Maybe people have forgotten how to drive?

Similar here. The white lines on our road have faded quite a bit. It seems that circa 80% of drivers need them in order to understand which side of the road they’re supposed to be on. **** idiots.

In retrospect i should’ve said something about how is beige 2003 honda jazz was likely “his nan’s car”, but the light hand changed by the time i had thought of it.

L’esprit de l’escalier.

a couple of weeks ago i was waiting to turn right at a t junction.

a #£%& in a range rover turned right on my side of the road and headed straight for us. he stopped just before touching my front tyre.

a few choice words were said to him by me.

he replied “i said sorry what more do you want?”

a few more choice words were said by me and a generous showing of the bird.

some people really don’t give a #£%& about cyclists.

Angry drivers like that seems to me a good reason to get a camera, and post their idiocy on YouTube for all to see, if it doesn’t reach a threshold to pass it to the Police.

I’ve decided that the public can only deal with one public safety message at a time*. They now seem to know that they must give cyclists 1.5 metres when they overtake, but that piece of knowledge has dislodged the “only overtake when there is nothing coming the other way” bit. One day soon I’m going to get a very close up view of a head on collision.

*see also – “I can only meet 5 other people outdoors” has replaced the “We must stay 2m apart”

You haven’t paid your road tax have you.

Fully deserved.

I wonder if lockdown is having a bit of a 1930s era US prohibition effect.

The government has made news laws, which although well-intentioned have been widely flouted and not enforced. This then undermines other laws as you have just revealed to a large minority of the population that society is held together by sellotape and you can get away with pretty much anything short of tax evasion.

I’ve not had someone shout abuse in ages, what were you doing to get 3 of them in less than an hour?!

More to the point where were you? So I can avoid it at all costs.

The government has made news laws, which although well-intentioned have been widely flouted and not enforced. This then undermines other laws

Thats certainly an valid theory

I’ve not had someone shout abuse in ages, what were you doing to get 3 of them in less than an hour

Although thinking about it, I’ve had my share of dodgy passes etc, but no abuse for ages.

I’ve decided that the public can only deal with one public safety message at a time

I’ve come to the conclusion that some folks brains work like an etch-a-sketch. Any quick head movements and knowledge held within their minds just disappears. Human etch-a-sketches, they’re everywhere!

I’m a coach driver (megabus)
The last thing (generally) that any bus or coach driver wants is to be held up.
If I encounter a cyclist on the road, i simply wait until it’s safe to pass, it’s not rocket science.
The weird thing is, i am rarely late.
Therefore i conclude that waiting for a safe bit before i pass a cyclist doesn’t actually take any significant time.
Am I the only driver who can figure this out? Surely not.

I will say though, i think that driving standards have noticeably reduced in the past year, probably because people are getting less practice.

More to the point where were you? So I can avoid it at all costs.

On the separate bike path beside the A59 out of Knaresborough.

@martymac In town when commuting I start a count when I’m poorly passed. Usually the inattentive driver will turn off between 5 and 10 seconds after the dodgy manoeuvre.

So far (touches wood) I’ve not been hooked yet.

Me and the roadie club got called “cyclist scum” on good Friday whilst pulling up at the coffee stop in Knutsford. It was by a fat motorcyclist and I don’t really know why; I was almost crying laughing at him which didn’t help the situation.

Similar on Sunday in Manchester City Centre. Some one just called me a £*%#ing dickhead as he passed. Again, I’d done nothing wrong. I pulled level at the next set of lights and has this conversation:
“You want to calm your language down with your mum in the car”
“Thats my girlfriend”
“Oh, oops”.

@sandwich
Yep I’ve noticed that.
Exactly the same when i notice someone 2 inches off my rear bumper, same thing happens.
It’s weird eh

It does seem to have gotten worse in the past few weeks.

I’ve not had someone shout abuse in ages, what were you doing to get 3 of them in less than an hour?!

Probably riding through all the red lights that 90% of all cyclists I see do.

“You want to calm your language down with your mum in the car”
“Thats my girlfriend”
“Oh, oops”.

Oh how I wish I had that kind of quick wit.

I do, however know how apostrophes work.

Sometimes you’ve just got to laugh at what is thrown out of windows. Got called a fat bastard last summer whilst weighing the least in my adult life thanks to furlough and just last week got called a nonce by a set of teenagers as I arrived at lady cannings. Thought that one had died out years ago. Weirdest assault was getting sprayed with deodorant as a car passed about 20mph faster than me

Is jim25 daft or pretending to be daft? It’s hard to tell.

I’m a coach driver (megabus)
The last thing (generally) that any bus or coach driver wants is to be held up.
If I encounter a cyclist on the road, i simply wait until it’s safe to pass, it’s not rocket science.
The weird thing is, i am rarely late.
Therefore i conclude that waiting for a safe bit before i pass a cyclist doesn’t actually take any significant time.
Am I the only driver who can figure this out? Surely not.

I will say though, i think that driving standards have noticeably reduced in the past year, probably because people are getting less practice

Not just you, spend most of my day driving. It’ll be the car/van/truck/bus down the road that holds me up. Can be past a cyclist very easily and safely or if they’re going well they’re keeping up with traffic anyway.

I drive a lot in London and there’s a lot of drivers out of their depth. You can spot it a mile away. I assume they would normally be on a bus or on the train.

They’re just ****.

Can’t ignore them, more’s the pity/danger.

“You want to calm your language down with your mum in the car”
“Thats my girlfriend”
“Oh, oops”.

🤣🤣 Was it a burgundy Picasso and did he offer you a bare-knuckle fight?

Re Jim25

Bloody hell. Even the trolls can’t be bothered any more. Sheesh…

Got close passed twice on Saturday. Country roads so a fair amount of speed involved. The second one was on the brow of a dip and he nearly ran into an oncoming car. He was turning right 200m later and I nearly caught up with him. He practically ran into the back of the car before him as he struggled to get away.

He was driving a pickup (round my way aka a ‘Toerag Wagon’).

I think a lot of it is down to two things.

1. Furloughed people having to go back to work and having the arse as a result.

2. A determination over the first weekend out of ‘lockdown’ to go around to every single relative and friend’s house for ‘a cup of tea in the garden’.

And a third, thinking about it…

3. A lot of people are just ****s, plain and simple.

“You want to calm your language down with your mum in the car”
“That’s my girlfriend”
“Oh, oops”
Thanks @mcnultycop, made me lol and almost choke on my morning coffee.
Must remember that one.

@tthew, apostrophe corrected 🙂

dannyh, I think your No. 3 is probably closest to the mark. Sadly I don’t know how to change people’s attitudes.

Are Jim25 and Larry lamb bots/ trolls?

A few years ago, I was stopped next to the road to fix a puncture, in the rain, when some knuckledragger in a van slowed down, lowered the window and shouted “w****r!” at me. I sometimes wonder how the brains of people like this work, but then remember that some people are just ****s.

Jim25 makes a valid point as cyclists blowing red lights pisses people off. All people on bikes are classed as the same by angry people jumping lights or not.

Jim25 makes a valid point as cyclists blowing red lights pisses people off. All people on bikes are classed as the same by angry people jumping lights or not.

The same people who drive through red lights probably ride through red lights as well.

My Mums women’s British cycling group gets loads of abuse from angry drivers, they think due to being a slightly slower group of females (and last weekend an angry female cyclist yelling at them for riding 2 abreast in a group!)! The ‘highlight’ being a guy slowing down in his car to aggressively shout at them ‘you women should be at home cooking the Sunday lunch’

WTA*!

In my experience, there’s a direct correlation between people’s poor attitude to other road users and their driving ability/experience or lack thereof.
As I said before, a fair few new car commuters and obviously the usual smattering of ****, including the bitter Covid fun police. Bloody cyclists getting in the way of my important essential work, probably not local etc.
I see stuff like that on social media, sort of person that moans about the queues outside McDonald’s during a pandemic, whilst they’re in the queue because they’re ‘an essential worker’ or in fact a sparky.

I feel bad for motorists. They were sold a dream of motoring freedom where their car gives them entry to some exclusive club. The reality is the taxman bends them over 365 days a year, and shitty and congested roads are the antithesis of the glossy car ads. No wonder some research I read a while ago showed that normal driving elicits measurable stress responses in motorists.

Sadly all this pent up rage seems to be displaced onto cyclists; we’re an easy scapegoat because we contribute very slightly to traffic being held up.

The jumping the red light thing is just a red herring. Most motorists speed so clearly they aren’t really bothered by road traffic laws.

Jim25 makes a valid point as cyclists blowing red lights pisses people off. All people on bikes are classed as the same by angry people jumping lights or not.

@marin makes a good point, I class all car drivers as speeding, murderous, insurance fraudsters, you know because some are….

The main issue is that so many people are just ****s. In person they can usually be ignored/ridiculed etc. Unfortunately if you put them in charge of a couple of tonnes of heavy machinery with scant (if any) aptitude testing, then the result can be fatal.