Commuting in this morning and just approaching a blind bend at the top of a long straight that drops down to the village<span style=”font-size: 0.8rem;”> and a car pushes past at speed. The car coming the other way had to take evasive action and gave his horn a workout.</span>

Unfortunately for the driver there’s some roadworks on the edge of the village with three way lights so I pulled up alongside and slapped the roof of the car rather hard and had a word or two. I think hammering on the car gave him such a shock that he meekly wound down the window when I told him to and he hardly got a word in edgeways! I won’t repeat what I said as it would put the swear filter into overdrive 🙂

Mister P

Some drivers almost seem to have a reflex action of just having to overtake a cyclist, like a cat pouncing on a reflected point of light.

You can almost hear their brain screaming “MUST. PASS. CYCLIST.” as they perform their idiotic manoeuvre.

Yeah, I think this is part of what somebody described this as “reactive driving” to me once, and when you’ve seen it, it’s then all you see all the **** time. There is no anticipation going on, they’re just on autopilot until something happens which means they can’t continue.

E.g. Approaching a roundabout with two cars already on it, then nothing.
Now, if you look ahead you can lift off the gas or brake slightly then roll onto the roundabout with minimal loss of speed, keeping traffic flowing behind you. But a lot of reactive drivers don’t look at the traffic on the roundabout before they reach it, they just carry on at the same exact speed until the last possible second, then have to brake hard to a complete stop, wait for the two cars, then set off again.

Through Ash on the way in earlier; cars parked down one side, we have r.o.w as such, but the road is very potholed in the left gutter so i’m riding about a metre out, and 20mph.

Mr Executive German Saloon obviously doesn’t like this so is about 3 feet off my back wheel. Not actually beeping, but definitely intimidating me to move over.

Why?  As soon as the road opens up he guns it past shaking his head, and promptly joins a queue of traffic for the A331 roundabout having wasted half a litre of fuel and 1/4 of an inch of brake pad!!

I merrily pass again.

He passed me for a second time about 2 miles further on, at speed, and close as he could while shouting out of his window at me.

Apparently it was me holding him up, not everyone else in their cars that he sat behind.

Oxygen thieves.