Morning Road Rage

[J.Primus]

On my way to work this morning and I'm behind a large lorry going slowly. Obviously not going to undertake it because I do enjoy life. It starts indicating left no-where near a turning so I assumed it was about to pull in.
The car behind me has been displaying all signs of MGIF for a while but I hadn't thought too much of it. I move into primary to see if I can overtake it or go around if it stops and then suddenly there is a woman leaning out of the window screaming "F***ing indicate". The driver then starts swearing and hollering as well. Not really in the mood this morning so they get an extended 1 finger salute. He revs past and go's for the left hook but sverves right when he sees me gunning straight for his wing mirror without slowing down. Give him a smile as I go past and they decide to hang back whilst shouting from then on and I don't see them again.
I've said it before and I stand by it that these people are cowards who pick their targets. I'm certain if I wasn't a big ugly hairy rugby player with my head attached directly to my shoulders that he would have tried to force me off the road and got out of his car.
Don't understand why people get so upset they can't occupy the 2 metres of road I'm using when they couldn't have even overtaken the lorry as there wasn't enough room for a car to go around.

That was a bit of a rant there, sorry about that. Road ragers just really get my goat. Expecially when I see all these videos it's always someone skinny getting the aggro.

 

[BSRU]

Some people are very brave when surrounded by a metal cage and they think they can escape(in rush hour traffic) , typical bully mentality shown by some of them.

 

[MarkF]

I'll chip in. Last night 5ish, rush hour, I was cycling down a long 1 mile stretch which has traffic lights and always a long queue at the hill bottom. There are a lot of pinch points where I always take primary, a car overtook just prior to one and he had to swerve a little, naughty but not enough to upset me. But, another car, a black Corsa with young driver decides to follow through,he caused me to swerve to the kerb and despite swerving drastically and squealing his brakes, he hit the pinch point kerb. Not 25m in front of us all is a long static queue..............

I stopped beside his window and hammered on it, he looked right ahead, so I hammered some more, he meddled with radio or something and continued to look straight ahead, tbh I felt sorry for him.

 

[Mile195]

I think we've all been there. I feel fortunate that I don't seem to experience too many particularly bad attitudes from drivers, compared to some riders.

When I do, I spend the next 10 minutes creating a hypothetical situation in my mind about what I might do to their car with a hammer and some spray-paint if I found it parked somewhere. That makes me feel better about it, then I move on with my life.

I pass and am passed by Hundreds, possibly thousands of cars every week. I try not to let one idiot every few months tar all drivers with the same brush. Still annoying when it happens though I agree.

 

[J.Primus]

I think we've all been there. I feel fortunate that I don't seem to experience too many particularly bad attitudes from drivers, compared to some riders.

When I do, I spend the next 10 minutes creating a hypothetical situation in my mind about what I might do to their car with a hammer and some spray-paint if I found it parked somewhere. That makes me feel better about it, then I move on with my life.

I pass and am passed by Hundreds, possibly thousands of cars every week. I try not to let one idiot every few months tar all drivers with the same brush. Still annoying when it happens though I agree.

Absolutely, this was notable for me due to the rarity of it happening. I think it's only the second time it's ever happened and the other time was just a woman shouting who I'm pretty sure wasn't planning on any violence!

 

[StuartG]

Oh dear, reaction meets over reaction meets ... everybody came out of this more pi**ed than necessary. Stereotypes have been reinforced so the next confrontation may be worse.

So let's just leave out the motorist. He/she is all you say and totally in the wrong. Period.

Except they have a point that you did not indicate. You intimated that you had a small but specific uneasy feeling about the vehicle behind. If you are in doubt about their capabilities than you really do need to overcompensate by making your moves clear if at all possible. Survival in cycling is having to do a motorists thinking for them.

OK so you didn't do it and "got in the way". The driver did further wrong to which you presented a finger. What was that supposed to do? Anything like recover and make the situation safer? Nope - if it wasn't deliberately to further inflame someone already inflamed then you are an idiot. And if it was - you are an idiot.

That's not an insult because I and almost every other cyclists has reacted badly. Its just some of us learn it doesn't help and occasionally can be disasterous. Not giving the finger can be really hard - but think again it is the right thing to do. You only have one life and keeping it has to be the bottom line. Temper kills enjoyment and sometimes people.

 

[J.Primus]

Oh dear, reaction meets over reaction meets ... everybody came out of this more pi**ed than necessary. Stereotypes have been reinforced so the next confrontation may be worse.

So let's just leave out the motorist. He/she is all you say and totally in the wrong. Period.

Except they have a point that you did not indicate. You intimated that you had a small but specific uneasy feeling about the vehicle behind. If you are in doubt about their capabilities than you really do need to overcompensate by making your moves clear if at all possible. Survival in cycling is having to do a motorists thinking for them.

OK so you didn't do it and "got in the way". The driver did further wrong to which you presented a finger. What was that supposed to do? Anything like recover and make the situation safer? Nope - if it wasn't deliberately to further inflame someone already inflamed then you are an idiot. And if it was - you are an idiot.

That's not an insult because I and almost every other cyclists has reacted badly. Its just some of us learn it doesn't help and occasionally can be disasterous. Not giving the finger can be really hard - but think again it is the right thing to do. You only have one life and keeping it has to be the bottom line. Temper kills enjoyment and sometimes people.

That's an absolutely valid point of view but I personally disagree. I didn't start any confrontation and I don't feel obliged to meekly take it when someone gets verbal and threatening. Not on my bike and not off it. I agree that it would be a bad idea if your only option is to leg it if the driver does want to get out of his car but I would have been quite happy for him to do so and he knew it which is why he left it. I agree that there is an outside chance you get Brock Lesnar on a bad day inside a car but you can't negate all risks in life and frankly it's too short to sit there and take crap off idiots. Not an approach I'd recommend to someone else but each to their own.

 

[Glow worm]

What's with all this giving the finger business? What happened to the good old fasioned two fingers? I blame Europe. I reckon we need to go back to abusing eachother like decent civilised Brits

 

[J.Primus]

What's with all this giving the finger business? What happened to the good old fasioned two fingers? I blame Europe. I reckon we need to go back to abusing eachother like decent civilised Brits

That's very true. Terrible isn't it. I blame all the american TV when I was growing up

 

[martinclive]

Had to put my hand out and lean on a Mondeo this morning as he tried to get past me and @MisterStan coming into a mini roundabout
I actually put the palm of my right hand on the rear window he was that close
He hit a queue for the next junction 200 yards later and we passed him and he did not catch us up all the way into Cambridge
We all make mistakes, but when it is dangerous, thoughtless and pointless - I do get pretty annoyed - but to some of the points above and in prior threads - afterwards I was really pleased that we just went on our way and did not escalate the situation (we could easily have done while he was stopped when we caught him up - but arguing who was right and wrong in those circumstances rarely bring much joy to anyone)
I am no saint - but on this occasion feel glad the way we reacted
In the end, hopefully he got the message (as he looked as I touched his window), but has nothing to reprimand us for - so maybe he will be nicer to the next cyclist
Note: this may seem optimistic - but when he was in the queue for the next junction his car was giving us by far the most room to filter!

 

[glenn forger]

Drivers don't realise how scary it is to be side swiped. I bet the chances of a cyclist being a driver are greater than the other way round.

 

[kedab]

Temper kills enjoyment and sometimes people.

i like that

 

[dodd82]

I can see both sides of this, and I only get angry when I know someone is purposely driving close etc.

For cars that just pass me closely, I have to relate to my own experiences before I started cycling last August. No one had ever taught me the correct way to pass cyclists - how was I to know?

Yeh sure, it's common sense to give someone room, but I don't think it's something you give much thought to if you've never discussed it, never been shown the dangers, never experienced it.

For those people that pass too closely without realising what they're doing is wrong, I think a polite education is better than abusing them.

 

[gambatte]

What's with all this giving the finger business? What happened to the good old fasioned two fingers? I blame Europe.

Austerity measures....

 

[BSRU]

What's with all this giving the finger business? What happened to the good old fasioned two fingers? I blame Europe. I reckon we need to go back to abusing eachother like decent civilised Brits

The number of fingers I use varies depending on how many brain cells I think they have, in a range of 0 to 2