Not sure on this one, certainly not clear cut all the way:-
both cyclist and driver seemed to proceed from lights with a must pass mentality
looked like she was doing the cyclist version of the slow lorry overtake on a motorway, she didn't exactly zip by
not a lot of looking about from her either, gave the impression of someone that was target orientated and impatient
I'd guess the driver was also target orientated and I didn't think the overtake was that close, not for heavy traffic and the cyclist did wobble out a bit at the overtake point
Personally I wouldn't have overtaken at that point, had I been the driver, but I may have muttered to myself about the level of cycling
The afters were just that, unpredictable and potentially dangerous, I thought Gaz handled that pretty well
If I'd been the cyclist, after calming down, I might have been wondering to myself why I felt such a need to get by at that point. Whether driving or cycling I've never regretted a decision to sit back behind someone. In both cases I've had reason to regret a decision to pass, thankfully never with serious consequences.
Agreed, I have the distinct impression that we have been watching not very careful cyclist meets somewhat less careful motorist, with latent aggressive streak in at least one of them.
This seems to be some sort of cycle race track with lots of "roadies" including the overtaken cyclist, so I guess that the overtaken cyclist did not mind the rather close overtake, but in his place I find it unnerving to have other cyclists come past so close. As cyclist's often tell motorists, a certain amount of wobble room is desirable, and if he had wobbled right there could have been a collision, which would have been the overtakers fault, but could have brought both of them down in front of a car.
One of the unfortunate things about cycle lanes, is that they are lanes, and you should signal and observe before changing lane, and in this case do the job properly by allowing proper clearance on the overtaken vehicle. There is no point telling motorists to give 1.5 m clearance if we are going to cut each other up.
Just as bad are the cyclists who will overtake on the left just as you reach a point where the road widens on the left, at the end of a row of parked cars for example, and are obviously going to move left, without it even being necessary to change lane. In this country overtaking is done on the right. (Left filtering in slow moving traffic is another matter, and cannot apply here since both bicycle vehicles were obviously moving at their full speed.)
Nevertheless the guilty cyclist does seem to have been in that position for long enough for the driver to have no basis to claim that she wobbled out in front of him, so he should not have passed that close, although traffic in general seems to be passing fairly close, in fact the general lesson from the whole thing seems to be what ghastly environments cycle commuting takes you into.
WJH
