You can't win (road cycling and angry drivers content)

Riding on the road here, as I now tend to do I rode over the diagonal striped bit and carried on in the lane after that to give cars a chance to overtake – it’s uphill there and I’d only normally be doing ~15mph (probably rather less today!) When I got to about level with where the furthest car is in that picture I moved over to the right lane as I was going to the right at the junction just past there. I’d checked behind several times and there was a decent gap, I didn’t cut anybody up. For which I got hooted and gestured at by both the drivers behind me at that point – the one going left (in the lane I had been in) and the one going right (in the lane I’d moved into). I didn’t force either car to brake – well not beyond what they’d have had to to avoid running into me because I happened to be on the road, whatever I’d done (which only applies to the car turning right, I don’t think the car going left had to slow at all).

What exactly did they expect me to do? Would they have preferred it if I’d sat in the middle of the right lane all the way up as I used to, and so prevented 3 or 4 cars from overtaking, resulting in them being further back? Was it just that they weren’t paying attention and didn’t expect what I did? I did take primary at that point to stop the car immediately behind overtaking, which might have been what irritated them – I don’t believe it is safe for a car to overtake as we go round the corner, and as always I moved left as soon as I was round the corner to let it past.

Any thoughts? I promise I won’t argue (that much 😉 ), as I’m genuinely interested to know what I should have done.

Drivers wereknobs, end of.

short of carrying bombers at every opportunity not really sure. Perhaps standing in the middle of the road making them stop and asking what their problem was?

What you should have done is left the bike in the garage and gone for a drive.

wereknobs

is it a full moon? 🙂

Based on the facts presented I would say two out of three legitimate road users were behaving like complete tossers.

Their problem was that you were there. Nothing more.
Someone commented on this forum a few weeks ago on one of these discussions that the underlying issue many people have with cyclists is that the recent growth forces drivers to accept a new power hierarchy on the road. I think this is quite likely a big reason for the extent of ill-treatment we receive when riding. People are very sensitive to status and anything which threatens or in some way reduces it.
You only have to look at your average anti-cycling rant online or in real life and hear the sheer number of invalid arguments they put out (helmets, 2-abreast, ride in the gutter, RLJ etc etc) to see that the real issue is something they’re unable or unwilling to articulate…

I can only hope that once they get used to more cyclists they’ll just chill out. We had way too many near misses on our club ride today

to be fair they were probably rushing to get home to watch their troll king on his new series of Top Gear tonight

From your description, possibly the ONLY thing you didn’t do was indicate.

If the gap was indeed large enough, then there’s probably practically little need to do so, but if you do everything technically correct, you may get a bit more courtesy from car drivers. (longshot!)

Beeping and gesticulating over a 5 – 10 second(?) delay to a journey, is still a **** reaction that you shouldn’t get too stressed about. You had a nice ride. They had a stressful car trip, who’s the winner here?

edit – I saw that post that about the shifting balance of power that brooess refers to also. Very interesting. If that’s the case, then I don’t think this apparent, current blip of twattery will last.

I got beeped at when I indicated right and moved into the middle of the lane for a right hand turn I was intending to take.
The car that beeped me was a long way back when I made the manoeuvre, but caught up with me before I actually turned.
Had it been a car slowing for the turn the following car would have had to slow as well, but obviously because I was a cyclist not a car driver I got beeped at.

You can’t win in these situations. You can’t reason with these people. They just think ‘Cyclist is in my way. Cyclist shouldn’t be there’.

Wrong thread 😳

Well spotted. I did wonder that, but in the same situation again I wouldn’t indicate – not taking my hands of the bars in a situation where I want to be in full control, not to mention that I was probably honking up the hill there.