i once had a milkshake thrown from a distinctive white ford orion ghia 1.6i with bodykit.
the guy shat himself when i turned up at his house 20 mins later, i went past the car every single day . . .
i ended up phoning the police because he threatened me, and (genuinely) by an amazing coincidence the copper who turned up was a regular in the shop where i worked.
saw the orion driver loads of times after that, never had any trouble though.

There seems to be a lot of anger out there. I guess it’s the price society pays for making “progress”……

Sorry for the thread hijack…
I don’t think it’s ‘progress’ I think it’s realising that our future will be less secure and less wealthy than before and than we expected. Our current lifestyles and ‘wealth’ are based on an unsustainable mountain of debt – at government level, at corporate level and personal level. 2008 was not the start of this, but the problem making itself known. As we continue to fail to produce any real growth or jobs its’s becoming clearer and clearer that our reality is a whole lot less pleasant than we expected it to be and our future is likely to continue down this trajectory. Fundamentally I think people are just scared about the future…

I don’t think it’s ‘progress’ I think it’s realising that our future will be less secure and less wealthy than before and than we expected. Our current lifestyles and ‘wealth’ are based on an unsustainable mountain of debt – at government level, at corporate level and personal level. 2008 was not the start of this, but the problem making itself known. As we continue to fail to produce any real growth or jobs its’s becoming clearer and clearer that our reality is a whole lot less pleasant than we expected it to be and our future is likely to continue down this trajectory. Fundamentally I think people are just scared about the future…

Or some people are just dicks

Not had one for ages, but had one tonight, while coming back through town after my nightride.

“Your chain’s gone flat!” Was a new one on me…

Earlier this year while riding at a speed of Mach-1, a taxi came buzzing past with a fellow leaning out the passenger side (of his best friend’s ride?), yelling “JABAJABAJABAJABAJABA…”

Next day I was riding the same road and I saw the same fellow at a bus stop. He had a bleached white hair mini Mohawk thing so quite distinctive. Anyway, in the short period of time I had to formulate my options, these were:

1. In a show of willingness to make a new friend, do I shout “JABAJABAJABAJABA…” at him while I ride by; or,
2. Do I ride by without shouting anything; or,
3. Do I stop next to him and ask wtf was he jabbering about and did he realise that it’s liable to cause a cyclist to get a bit of a shock and how would he like it and what lower class attitude did he have that gave him the right to be so inconsiderate…

I opted for ‘2’ as I had important cycling to do. But in my mind he was suitably reprimanded

If cyclists are getting more abuse at the moment I suspect it’s because society as a whole has moved on from abusing women, racial minorities, Jews and homosexuals and those who need to abuse people have very few groups left to take their issues out on…

Yes we definitely have it tougher than them 🙂

^. Agreed. .

Let’s break it down –

There are three types of people. (Sciencey eh?)

Sit them in a test environment and show them the same clip pictured above. Three types = three different reactions. The reactions of the three types will differ as follows:

Type 1 – Laugh at the (ironic, harmless) youthful folly on display. Understand the concept of satire (Viz)
Type 2 – Think the boys are being cool and that bus users really are sad ****. Do not really understand satire (Nuts/Zoo/Hatchback Monthly etc)
Type 3 – Don’t really get any of it so react with a blank expression or else tut-tut and shake their heads. Do not understand satire. (The Daily Express/People’s Friend etc)

Type two will usually be the ones most likely lob the remains of their Happy Meal at your be-helmeted bonce as you cycle harmlessly along.

Passive aggressive, surprise them, they really need it!

doordonot I favour option one. Made me laugh.

I also need some sleep as just realised that the format of my prior comment almost identically matches yours, and I swear I only just now read yours, or so I thought. Latent subliminal weirdness, night all.

I avoid road riding as much as possible, but even so I’ve had someone hiff a near empty Jim Beam bottle out of a sunroof at me. There was the fickwut that threw a beer bottle at a German cycle tourer on the open road (100kmph) – smashed on her bike frame and opened her leg up, she nearly died of blood loss on the side of the road.
On the not nearly so serious side – some dorks in a 4WD (seems to be a common theme around here) slowed down and smacked a mate’s arse on a long rural road climb – unfortunately for them he’s a copper so he just rang the nearest plod station who sent out a car to stop the ship of fools and presented them with a hefty fine.

Used to happen quite a lot, not much recently, maybe I look angrier these days.

Some reference to Chris Hoy was quite common (I’ll take the compliment…), random abuse, random noises (“waaaaaaaagh”) and the strangest “your back wheel’s following your front wheel”.

I don’t think it’s a new thing since there have been dickheads in society throughout history.

In the mid 1970s I was riding along the old A590 when I heard an approaching car behind me (lots less traffic back then) but then there was no noise but it hadn’t passed me. I carried on pedalling, the car then drew up beside me out of gear, coasting along. A kid in the passenger seat leant out of the window and screamed in my ear, at this point the driver (presumably the kid’s dad) hit the power and the car sped off. I did jump quite a bit 😳

There’s a BMW driver (always has to be one doesn’t it?) that I see fairly regularly on my commute who shouts abuse at cyclists, usually when he’s being a traffic jam.

I’m not so sure about the “insecurity” theory posited above. It seems more like an attitude of “I’m paying lots of money for this car and I’m stuck in traffic unable to fill the car’s potential on my way to work a mile away from home while some hippy layabout who doesn’t pay road tax goes sailing through. I’ll have a word“.

The copper story reminds me of a tale from a work colleague who used to ride semi-professionally for the armed forces. They were out for a training ride with another team when a car crashed in to them. The driver got all antsy and demanded that the police be called. “Not a problem, we are already here” – the other team was the police’s own cycling team.

I get this alot.
There is a bridge approx 400m long with a shared use footpath alongside.
If I ride primary, every time there will be hooting or verbals or a punishment pass. Its a 40mph limit and not overly wide. With a tail wind I can sit at around 24ish so the delay is minimal, just 20 secs or so.

I have had apples hit me before, a woman in a yellow Boxster jesturing at the kerb. Last week a blue Vito DGX plate pulled up next to me incessant with rage and spent 10 secs maybe hurling abuse, before pulling just past and aiming at the kerb.

Going north I usually nearly catch up with the perps at the lights , coming south not so often.

The shared use path is sometimes occupied by fisherman ( estuary ) and alot of joggers and puschairs . I do use it in cross wind as the road become very dangerous. Its badly designed with dodgy entrance ( on 23c tyres ) and then you have to come to a complete standstill to re- join.

Its rubbish , and you become the target of peoples fustration . They may have spent 10mins getting through a traffic jam cauused by 100 cars, But if 1 cyclist hold them up for an extra 20 seconds they loose the plot and boil over.

The best part is 1 mile from the bridge the roa goes from 40mph to 30 mph , for 3miles. which will always hold them up for longer than the 20 seconds it delays them . But they dont seek out the highways planners and local coucil who instiagated the speed limit change and yell at them in an apoplectic rage do they?

You need one of these 😉

I was once offered a drink of McDonald’s coke. At the next red light I thanked the driver and passenger for their offer profusely.

Four of us in Kent.

Car comes past, passenger shouts ‘C***’, ‘A***h***’, ‘W*****’.

Gets to me but he has run out of vocabulary so all he can do is make a ‘grrnwarrg’ noise and appears to convulse in fury.

Still makes me chuckle…

That said I’ve just done a 25m loop and got absolutely no abuse at all, which was nice

A whole 25 metres? You should have been abused for not riding further 😉

I’ve been shouted at a few times, as has our club on group rides. Occasionally we get someone leaning on their car horn, which I really hate. The last time it happened to me, I was riding alone and as a carful of blokes in a boy racer-type car went past, 2 stuck their heads out of the window and yelled “raaahh!” at me. I almost fell off my bike, then tried to catch up with them as they approached a junction but they got away. Probably just as well, as I probably would have kicked a dent in their car.

Wry smile at whitestone – I was riding along a road close to the A590 earlier this year when a kid screamed in my ear – his dad thought this was very amusing as he sped off. Maybe the dad was that kid who yelled at you at all those years ago and he is passing his skills on like an ancient hunter-gatherer 🙂 Or maybe some people are just arses….

Glad this has been brought up, I’m not alone. I’ve never had motorists shout abuse, but there is one old pit village I ride though from time to time that I can almost guarantee I’ll get some incoherent ramble shouted at me by chav youths or half cut gap toothed grannies. I’ve never understood what they said, maybe nextime I’ll stop and ask. Must be a lot of **** out there

It’s much more civilised off road. Only shouting you get is “Straaaaavaaaa!”

This happens to me or us when group riding occasionally. I think the sight of men in Lycra must just really wind some idiots up! Just the sight of us!
Plus there’s the whole underlying attitude of cars being the only acceptable form of transport on roads, bikes just being for recreation and in some way not valid.
I always respond/react which will get me in trouble some day!

Had a clown in a builders truck scream at me very close up,nearly hit the kerb.Scared the bejesus out of me at the time.The ubiquitous “Mr, your back wheel is going round” and my personal fave of the summer was a young boy ,maybe 10/11y/o ,who angrily screamed “you’re not brilliant you know”!
I’m not proud of this ,but I told him “correct , but I’m not as fat as your dad” as I rode away from them in traffic.

Who?