On my usual Saturday morning route I ride down a bit of road that I dread. Single carriage way, straight-ish but with close-in verges/trees/walls and a blind crest. I have come within a wafer of being killed along there before.

Anyhow, dickhead number one comes up behind me, slows right down then close passes me just as an oncoming car is perfectly alongside. I lost it and yelled my best Anglo Saxon epithet. He made some kind of gesture, might have been conciliatory, might not.

A bit further on you come to a t junction with lights. Oncoming traffic again, about 70 yards from the junction. This time it’s one of those Fiat 500 things that squeezes past. In no mood for being a doormat, the epithet is repeated. Turns out to be a learner with what looks like her mother doing the ‘teaching’. The lights are on red. She has to stop anyway (what was she trying to gain by pushing past)? As I get to the lights they turn green, I am going left, she is going right. Then as I’ve gone around the corner I hear ‘crunch’ from behind. She’s stalled it and the equally inattentive dickhead behind has gone into the back of her. I didn’t exactly laugh out loud. Grim satisfaction is what I’d call it.

So, hopefully she will have learned a valuable lesson. I doubt it, though, she’ll probably spend the rest of her life trying to run cyclists off the road because one ‘caused her to have an accident when she was a nervous learner’ or some such bullshit.

It is just a bit of metal and plastic this time, what would she prefer, a messy insurance claim or a prosecution for causing death by dangerous driving?