Abuse

[Slick]

I hardly ever get abuse and most drivers are decent and try to give you room.

However I was involved in a weird situation a few months back Egan our riding with a three other mates.

We were harassed by a middle aged woman who drove up behind us peeping her horn as we were riding two abreast despite it being a wide open road with ample opportunity to pass.

We stopped at traffic lights and one of our group road up beside her and pretty calmly, I wouldn’t have been so nice, asked why she was peeping her horn and explained how her aggressive behaviour made home feel as a vulnerable road user.

Any joe we all road off and she followed us for a bit before we cut off.

Later in the ride we got a message from a club mate telling us to look at Facebook. The silly mare had put a post on, including a photo of us riding saying that my mate had verbally abused her and punched her wing mirror off!!

Did she lose a wing mirror in the exchange?

Well, the majority of cycling I witness happens in London, and I would say they are the worst cyclists in terms of reckless and aggressive riding antics.
Not many people I know have a good word to say about cyclists in general, but they have a particular degree of antipathy towards the lycra-wearing ones. "Nutters on bikes in lycra" or similar is the usual response. Casually-dressed cyclists at least seem to receive some limited tolerance, absolutely zero tolerance for lycra.

Not being funny or anything, but if you've only really witnessed cycling in one city, how do you know Londoners are the worst? How aggressive are the cyclists in Tipton, for example?

 

[Cuchilo]

I get hardly any abuse. Maybe its because most of the time I'm riding a bike I'm dressed more like a workman and less like a stereotypical cyclist? Lycra really seems to get other road users backs up. Maybe they associate a solo lycra wearer with a lycra-clad club group who have taken up half the road and held them up? There is definitely something linked to how you dress and what sort of bike you ride as to whether you are regarded as fair game for abuse or not.

Never get any hassle when wearing club lycra on my very expensive carbon TT bike .

 

[Pumpkin the robot]

I very much doubt those abusive young men just limit their verbals purely to female cyclists. Chances are they also abuse male cyclists, pedestrians of both sexes, other motorists of both sexes, and anyone else they encounter who they take a dislike to.
Just because a woman receives some sort of abuse from a man doesn't automatically mean they got abused purely for being female. There are any number of reasons why one person may decide to dish out some verbal to someone else. Their sex may be totally irrelevant.

Typical masculine white male response.

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

Never get any hassle when wearing club lycra on my very expensive carbon TT bike .

Well, there has got to be some basis as to why some people seem to get loads of abuse and others get little or none. I really doubt it's 100% random.

 

[boydj]

Never get any hassle when wearing club lycra on my very expensive carbon TT bike .

You're probably going too quickly to hear what they're saying when you pass them

 

[vickster]

Well, there has got to be some basis as to why some people seem to get loads of abuse and others get little or none. I really doubt it's 100% random.

Prejudice, ignorance and most of all stupidity

 

[Vapin' Joe]

Nice bit of victim blaming there

It isn't victim blaming,

Typical masculine white male response.

No it isn't. Skipdriver was pointing out that it is not necessarily because they are female that women who are cycling get abuse. The types who do this will pick on anyone they perceive to be an easy target and no threat to them. And when they are in a car and you are on a bike they hold all the cards.

 

[Cuchilo]

It isn't victim blaming,

No it isn't. Skipdriver was pointing out that it is not necessarily because they are female that women who are cycling get abuse. The types who do this will pick on anyone they perceive to be an easy target and no threat to them. And when they are in a car and you are on a bike they hold all the cards.

No they dont , you can always drag them out of the windows

 

[JPBoothy]

I've had two incidents of things being thrown at me, one was an egg when running (luckily it missed) and the other was a liquid, which didn't miss, the passenger was killing himself with laughter as he did it, I was hoping the vehicle would get caught at the traffic calming chicane, but naturally he ignored the "give way" and pushed through the oncoming traffic.
The worst incidents were attempts, or threats of physical violence. The first was climbing a hill on my commute to work, lovely sunny evening (going in for a night shift), got that "tingly" feeling and looked over my shoulder to see the male passenger about to smack my arse, he quickly withdrew his arm back in to the car.
The second incident involved the occupants of a "Taliban Taxi" (as the A&S Police describe old 4x4 pick ups) coming up alongside me to enable the passenger to threaten me with violence. To this day I do not know what caused it (other than they appeared to have pulled out of the pub I had just passed), I ignored them and turned off as they carried on, however they decided that that was not good enough and reversed back and headed towards me again. I cycled across to the other side of the road and jumped off the bike and they crossed the carriageway to come up alongside me. The passenger then leaned across the driver and continued to shout and swear at me. The driver realised that I was speaking to the operator on a 999 call and decided to leg it, narrowly missing a car as he did so! Unfortunately, being Somerset, I was informed there was only 2 mobile units available that evening and neither were in the area.
That was the reason I decided to get a headcam!!

Bloody hell, that is scary! I'm pretty sure that those particular #####rs were just looking for trouble regardless of you being on a bike. You just can't tell what sort of nutter you are going to encounter these days so if a confrontation can be avoided it should be.

 

[bladesman73]

Typical masculine white male response.

Oh the irony of your racist and sexist response. Disgrace. I'd delete your message to avoid any further embarassment.

 

[bladesman73]

I've had men and women of all ages either shout, gesticulate or drive aggressively in my direction over the years. No demographic comes out smelling of roses. Nobheadedness knows no age, sex, race boundaries.

 

[Jimidh]

Ofcourse she didn’t - we wouldn’t have stood up for one of our group doing that. Her issue was that a very eloquent and intelligent cyclist stood up to her and explained how badly her behaviour was which quite incensed her.[/QUOTE]

 

[Slick]

Ofcourse she didn’t - we wouldn’t have stood up for one of our group doing that. Her issue was that a very eloquent and intelligent cyclist stood up to her and explained how badly her behaviour was which quite incensed her.

[/QUOTE]
How of course? Your initial post wasn't clear and I was wondering if you or your club had any defence like a camera maybe?

 

[loopybike]

Well, this has got a little heated!

So here's a story from my youth from the other side of the car door. Bare with me, it's a long story, but light hearted!

I was 18, at uni in bradford. My mate from school was up visiting me for the weekend. He was a punk rocker and had done a yts in car mechanics. We saw a guy in a carpark trying, and failing to start his mk1 escort. Being two helpful chaps we offered to buy it off him for £50. He excepted and we owned a car!! We actually got it going and decided to drive back to his mums house in Stoke.
(stay with me we're getting to the point of the story!)
So there we were, full of youthful excitement, feeling very pleased with ourselves, driving up the long hill just after Holmes Chapel. As we approached a group of around 10 cyclists wagging their bums climbing the hill, my mate (in the passenger seat) wound his window down.
As we passed them he leaned out and shouted "get a car!!" I looked at him and asked why he'd done that? He replied "I dunno!" and we both burst out laughing.

As we reached the top of the hill there was an odd noise from the engine, a sort of twang bang and the battery light came on. Bugger.
I stopped the car and we checked the engine, it had thrown the fan belt. We found it when I noticed the cyclists were almost at the top of the hill! We frantically tried to refit the belt before they caught us up. It was no good, we were too slow, convinced we were going to get a good kicking.

Well the cyclists just went by without a word. Except the one at the back. He looked at us over his shoulder and said calmly, if a little out of breath, "get a bike"

Yes youngsters can be idiots!

 

[classic33]

Followed by a female driver for over two miles. Sometimes too close for comfort, in slow moving traffic.

She was eventually lost thanks to a larger vehicle than what she was driving, joining Chain Bar roundabout from the M606 slip road. She'd already run one set of lights on the roundabout trying to keep up. All with her kids on board.