Cycling to work this morning, in the greenway on Gorgie Road - a greenway being a lane of the road painted green and marked as only for buses, cycles, taxis and motorbikes between certain hours. This particular stretch is buses, bikes, motorbikes and taxis only between 7.30am-6.30pm.
The right hand lane had a queue of slowly moving traffic and I was whizzing past it all in the left hand greenway. I was quite far over to the right of my lane because I was looking to see if there was a gap where I could get in to that queue so as to be able to turn right across the other side of the road into our car park. All of a sudden I could hear a car behind me in the greenway, revving its engine repeatedly. There wasn't much I could do about it, and it shouldn't have been there anyway, so I ignored it and carried on. I realised I wasn't going to be able to get into the right hand lane, so decided to pull into the kerb, get off, and cross the road at the island. I started to move left and once the car behind saw what I was doing, he absolutely floored it and sped past me, missing me by about 6".
If I had hit a rut in the road, or had to swerve round a hole, or been caught by a gust of wind, I'd have been under the car. He was so close.
I got the number and went into work, got showered and changed and phoned the police. Reported it as a complaint of dangerous driving and was given an incident number and asked to present at a police station to make a formal statement at my leisure. Went tonight - the police station being just outside my door - and the desk officer just told me that without witnesses they can't take it any further, which I suppose makes sense, and they can't do anything. But she did say they'd go round and talk to him about it. I doubt it'll do any good, he'll just deny it, but maybe he'll rethink his driving a little bit. Cretin.
The right hand lane had a queue of slowly moving traffic and I was whizzing past it all in the left hand greenway. I was quite far over to the right of my lane because I was looking to see if there was a gap where I could get in to that queue so as to be able to turn right across the other side of the road into our car park. All of a sudden I could hear a car behind me in the greenway, revving its engine repeatedly. There wasn't much I could do about it, and it shouldn't have been there anyway, so I ignored it and carried on. I realised I wasn't going to be able to get into the right hand lane, so decided to pull into the kerb, get off, and cross the road at the island. I started to move left and once the car behind saw what I was doing, he absolutely floored it and sped past me, missing me by about 6".
If I had hit a rut in the road, or had to swerve round a hole, or been caught by a gust of wind, I'd have been under the car. He was so close.
I got the number and went into work, got showered and changed and phoned the police. Reported it as a complaint of dangerous driving and was given an incident number and asked to present at a police station to make a formal statement at my leisure. Went tonight - the police station being just outside my door - and the desk officer just told me that without witnesses they can't take it any further, which I suppose makes sense, and they can't do anything. But she did say they'd go round and talk to him about it. I doubt it'll do any good, he'll just deny it, but maybe he'll rethink his driving a little bit. Cretin.