Commuters – what type of driver and vehicle will inevitably squish you?

Lets all have a jolly little prediction session about our limited mortality

Given that commuting by bike is a willfully semi-suicidal pastime, theres definitely one of them out there with your name on. So what is it? which type of big metal box is going to become your premature coffin? And what type of personal reaper will be behind the wheel?

After (another) scarily close call this morning, (I’d lit myself up like a christmas tree, but must have inadvertently left some type of cloaking device on) I noted that the thing that brushed my arm was starting to get depressingly familiar….

Invariably driven by an ageing, self-absorbed WAG wannabe, iPhone clamped permenently to her ear. Oblivious, or passive/aggressive to other road users, who are apparently required to get out of her way, without question. As despite doing eff all of any significance with her life, it is imperative that she gets there to do it (hair appointment? gym? Liaison in a Travel Lodge? lunch?) without any obstruction from mere mortals

As delusional about her own beauty, inside and out, as she is about her importance in the world, this is who is going to finish me off. Without a doubt. Possibly without even noticing. And even when doing so, actually more concerned about her paintwork. And what will she be driving? My body will be crushed under the over-sized wheels of, my blood splattered across the private plate of one of these monstrously ugly ego-chariots, I reckon…..

So who, and what, has got your number?

I’ve not commuted ‘properly’ for a while, but I swear that the people who most often nearly caused me to shuffle off this mortal coil were on two feet, not four wheels.

In my experience BMW drivers live up to the stereotype and Audi drivers are rapidly joining them…

One of these, in fact one got pretty close recently when the driver decided it was fine to drive the spinning reel straight into a bridleway. I could have been brown bread! Only around 400 meters of road on my commute so hopefully a reasonable chance of avoiding too many murderous drivers

For me, it’s either skip lorries/scaffolding lorries or doddering Peugeot drivers……

Lately, white van man, BMW/Audi drivers and HGV drivers have been remarkably patient and accommodating.

I alway like to give a thank you wave to the really patient drivers.

white transit van.

i’ll be travelling downhill, at about 20ish mph, matching speed with the vehicles in front of me.

WVM will overtake (too close), then pull left hard, smashing me into the pinch point i’d been in primary to avoid. before immediately braking hard, and turning left/right – making his overtake pointless anyway.

i’ll die a slow painful death just so ****ing wvm can get to the porn and crisps shop 3 seconds earlier.

either that or i’ll get pushed into the path of a tram by a taxi pulling out without signalling.

i wish i could afford a car.

binners – are you stalking me? I had a run in last week with a white freelander, she (yes peroxide she) decided in a slow queue of traffic to suddenly cross the solid white line of the cycle lane at a 50 degree angle as I was riding. thank fully I was looking out and squeezed past just. I stopped and put my bike down in the road in front of her and had a …. rant . lol.

one of the many incredibly badly driven private hire taxi’s in hudds

I flinch whenever i see a skoda octavia or toyota avensis now

Probably one of these fellas, Huddersfield taxi drivers:

General tendencies: total lack of awareness of anyone else on the road. Speeding, but only on long straights, then going *really* slowly through those tricky bendy bits. Gormlessly staring into space at traffic lights after they’ve changed. Tailgating. Driving knackered diesels spewing out filthy smoke. Stopping randomly in the middle of traffic to look at house numbers or street signs.
Special skill: arsing about with his GPS or smartphone whilst doing 60mph in a 30.

[Edit: Ha! Snap! 😀 ]

ti_pin_man – I’m not stalking you, honest. But I reckon what we’ve both witnessed is some kind of weird cloning experiment. One for murderous peroxide automatons engaged in some kind of Death Race 2000 scenario. They do all look the bloody same!

One of these electric TNT box trucks:

Saw one as a ped, only heard it by the wind noise it made. ****ing terrifying.

I alway like to give a thank you wave to the really patient drivers.

+1, even if they didnt wait out of consideration/patience a bit of positive re-inforcement is going to do more good tham flipping a “bad” driver the bird, which is just a negative feedback loop.

At the risk of going off-topic or being positive, I’ve had several really good experiences with negative archetypes recently. On the stretch of busy single carriageway A-road I have to ride to get to the nice B-roads HGVs always give me loads of room, usually most of our lane, I’ve had a Range Rover approaching from behind anticipate that my over-the-shoulder was for an upcoming right turn and slow and flash me out, and a Disco wait patiently on a narrow section, then give me the whole lane and a wave as he finally went passed.

Maybe Oxfordshire is full of nice drivers, lots of people here are also cyclists, or I look awesome in lycra 😀

There’s a black Freelander that obviously has the same commute as me, 3 times she’s nearly caused an accident while either passing/trying to pass dangerously on a blind bend, or just driving up behind me at full speed and stomping the brakes. So, that.

And Micras obviously, nobody who can drive ever bought a Micra.

Yeah, I reckon it will probably be a Taxi too (I’m in Brighouse, must be something in the water round here)

arsing about with his GPS or smartphone whilst doing 60mph in a 30

Funny that, my last really close call was a Jetta taxi, he was fannying around with his phone on the dash. Tried to catch him to get his plate number but as he was doing about 50 in a 30 I failed.

hahaha… we need a Terminator. Squads of these tracking down rogue blonde cyborgs will do nicely:

It’s gonna be a brizzle park and ride bendy bus… they just pretend the whole back section doesn’t exist and pull back in.

@avdave2 has got my squish vehicle already posted – i’ll be in many little boxes at the funeral 🙁

If I’m to meet my maker on the bike, I confidently predict that it will be at the hands of a driving zombie. The sort of driver who stares into space and sees nothing, even if it’s right in front of them, yet probably thinks there’s absolutely nothing wrong with how they’re driving.

Local council transit vans for me, I’d get buzzed by one every morning like clockwork.

I changed my route (for other reasons) and I don’t miss them one bit.

I find drivers are like sheep, if you get one bad pass from the head of the group, the rest will follow with similar road positioning.

Likewise if you get a good pass with lots of space, following cars will also pass nicely.

That said, some Vauxhall Vectra has my name on it I reckon.

Both of these

Back2basics – no need for loads of boxes – you can be the food at your own wake.

One of these:

Or one of these:

or one of these:

The bus is a new one, overtook me going up hill, then while i was still halfway along it, it decided to pull into a bus stop. 👿

My commute is 20 miles across the Essex countryside.

bus drivers
taxi drivers
knobs in bmw’s
even bigger knobs in audis
gold digging wannabe wags in 4×4’s

and pretty much every other driver mentioned by everyone else…
i think its a case of pot luck who will be the one to end your days as a rider…they’re all capable of it
1 ton (the bare minimum weight) of metal on wheels versus a couple of hundred pounds of meat and bone….metal will inevitably win

Probably one of these…

…driven by a chap that was more than likely 75 years of age when he purchased it…NEW! He’s now trundling around at the ripe old age of 104, totally oblivious to anything that isn’t directly in front of his completely shagged vision. Add-in the reaction time of a sloth on Tramadol and you have a lethal cocktail.

Definite +1

The number of times I see these drifting aimlessly in and out of the cycle lane up Scotswood Road terrifies me.

I have more potential collisions with pedestrians than anything else, but I doubt an ‘accident’ with one of them will end me.

I’d go with private hire taxis as they consistently driven by utter bellends who think they’re on a race track.

From regular experience, it’ll be a corsa VXR

If I look behind me and see a corsa VXR I ready myself for a dangerous pass.

There’s a big BMW with a personalised reg plate that’s passed me way too close and way too fast several times on my way home – I’m just waiting till I see it parked up somewhere because I WILL put a massive scratch down the side of it when I get the chance. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow but ONE DAY. Hopefully before he kills me.

Not sure what they’ll be driving or how old they’ll be, but I’d say better than evens the driver will be wearing a hat.

Never trust a driver wearing a hat.

Old biddie in a Suzuki small hatch. If I had been five seconds earlier at the roundabout yesterday morning she would have squished me. The first she looked was when I shouted.
Actually it will be them Saccades that get me, but they are everywhere!

In my experience BMW drivers live up to the stereotype and Audi drivers are rapidly joining them

I find that Audis are the new BMW and (new) Minis are the new Nissan Micra (But they’re BMWs anyway)

It’s quite reassuring that people who posted on this thread have problems with the same types of drivers as me – notably Addison Lee minicabs and 4×4 drivers – removing the feeling that I was beginning to imagine things.

The really scary thing, though, is that these types of drivers all manage to make me fear for my life, despite the fact that I commute by car. (Wish I worked nearer to work, so I could commute more often, but 26 miles each way is just not practical)

I’ve never seen any pattern in bad driving. It’s independent of age, gender, race, creed or car type.

This, note it’s in the Bus Lane…

To be honest all this “us and them” talk is a bit boring now. In reality I never seem to have any issues, and I think people often exaggerate the issues, but that’s just my opinion.

Depends what you mean by ‘issues’ I guess. Near-misses and near-death incidents are thankfully very rare (about 1 or two a year), but I daily see driving that would be incredibly dangerous if it were not for my own ability to see it and avoid it. I suppose you just learn to accept the incredibly poor standard of driving and get on with it. The alternative is to get very angry all the time which removes the point of riding a bike in my opinion.