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by notl4wy3r 3148 days ago
One time I was biking behind a man who flipped off a pickup truck after it did something inconsiderate on the road. Then driver of the truck tried to ram him and almost succeeded. That really brought home to me that there are contexts where expressing your anger can be really counter productive, no matter how justified it is.
1 comments
Theodores 3147 days ago
Yes actually that was kind of how I learned, a van driver angry at me cutting up a learner driver. I had merely scooted down the inside of the learner driver's car at the lights, but I had actively thought beforehand about whether to do so and I thought it better the driver cope with real world cyclists and we do get to the 'bike box' at the front (UK roads).

So van driver took offence and chased me at high speed down a dual carriageway and on the bike/pedestrian path. I had to swap to the fast lane to get traffic between myself and the van, plus I pulled a calf muscle and had to put my feet up for a fortnight. Oh, I also had to take a different route to work.

I hadn't been the one with 'road rage', however I was riding quickly and I had put myself before a more needy road user when I could have held back. Why Mr Van Driver decided to boil over about it I will never know, but he had quite a posse in the van and they were having great fun throwing things at me. Maybe they routinely got a kick out of beating up cyclists, making a sport of it.

It is extraordinary what moves you consider safe to make on a bicycle in fast moving traffic when there is a van trying to kill you. The game of 'Frogger' seemed to offer greater life expectancy.

Having seen the darkside of confrontation I really saw no reason why anyone would want to do anything at all that could incite a genuine road rage incident such as what I had been subjected to. Absolute terror, but at the same time extremely thrilling as I did manage to deftly manoeuvre my bike to get bollards or vehicles between myself and the van of doom in ways you really need the adrenaline for.

Incidentally I escaped by doing a last minute 'cyclist only move' at a roundabout - a sharp right going against traffic to enter an industrial park. I took a few moments to collect myself and gingerly made my journey to work to find myself there very early!

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