Had an epic tantrum last night

BigLights

Check this out...on my way home after work, in a nice part of London, in a cycle lane, all good. Bus pulls in, which is fair enough, there's a bus stop, he was signalling, all fine. We're talking stop & go traffic here, so I indicated that I was going right, to go round the bus, there was still a good 1m wide space there. People carrier starts jumping forwards and LEFT, towards me....his windows were open. Respectable looking middle aged couple, wife in the passenger seat is screeching at the driver 'what are you doing, stop,' etc (wife and husband I'm certain). As he gets within an inch of me he says to his missus 'don't worry, it's only a cyclist'.

eh. ONLY A CYCLIST?

I comprehensively lost the plot for the first time in my 8 year, daily commute, cycling career. For real.

moarspeed

Forget tigers and dragons, it'd be "Angry cyclist, flying wing mirror".

Gallywomack

I always feel a huge sense of regret after losing my shoot like that. There's always that wish that you could go back and respond with something like 'I may be only a cyclist, but tomorrow I'll be off my bike and you'll still be a cnut' as opposed to the incoherent screaming that is my usual stock-in-trade.

My big flashpoint is being beeped when I've taken the lane for obvious to me reasons.

rjsterry

BigLights wrote:

Check this out...on my way home after work, in a nice part of London, in a cycle lane, all good. Bus pulls in, which is fair enough, there's a bus stop, he was signalling, all fine. We're talking stop & go traffic here, so I indicated that I was going right, to go round the bus, there was still a good 1m wide space there. People carrier starts jumping forwards and LEFT, towards me....his windows were open. Respectable looking middle aged couple, wife in the passenger seat is screeching at the driver 'what are you doing, stop,' etc (wife and husband I'm certain). As he gets within an inch of me he says to his missus 'don't worry, it's only a cyclist'.

eh. ONLY A CYCLIST?

I comprehensively lost the plot for the first time in my 8 year, daily commute, cycling career. For real.

You can't just leave it like that, we need details. Preferably a complete transcript

The Little Onion

with headcam video

Ben6899

I hope you D-locked the cnut.

Mikey23

Might have meant its ok to ride over him because he's sub human and it doesn't matter, or that he isn't very wide so there's enough room to pass safely... Discuss in about 1500 words

BigLights

nono he very definitely meant to ....we're talking about 1 inch left on either side of my front wheel - back of the bus on the left, his front left bumper on my right, and it was clearly intentional.

Suffice to say my new friend was on the receiving end of more than just a few polite words and will most certainly be thinking about his Monday evening for a while. I hope. I was absolutely not prepared to do the meek little smirk thing, and he refused to converse with me initially, so I felt compelled to be a bit more, um, insistent. We are not talking body physical, but I may have accidentally bumped a couple of things.

I actually am glad I didn't have a camera as that would probably have worked against me.....

In my defense, I was gracious enough to apologise on both our behalf to his missus as she didnt' seem so unreasonable.

I am quite sure there will be split opinion as to responses to this kind of thing but I feel no moral regrets.

veronese68

There will be plenty of split opinion as it's plainly too quiet in Bottom Bracket at the moment.
http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=30005&t=12934419&start=40

rjsterry

Veronese68 wrote:

There will be plenty of split opinion as it's plainly too quiet in Bottom Bracket at the moment.
http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=30005&t=12934419&start=40

Quick, someone post some boobs or something to distract them!

veronese68

rjsterry wrote:

Veronese68 wrote:

There will be plenty of split opinion as it's plainly too quiet in Bottom Bracket at the moment.
http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=30005&t=12934419&start=40

Quick, someone post some boobs or something to distract them!

Will boobys do?

rjsterry

Veronese68 wrote:

rjsterry wrote:

Veronese68 wrote:

There will be plenty of split opinion as it's plainly too quiet in Bottom Bracket at the moment.
http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=30005&t=12934419&start=40

Quick, someone post some boobs or something to distract them!

Will boobys do?

Those birds make me smile every time I see them.

veronese68

Indeed. Though to be fair the other kind make me smile too.

Kieran_Burns

Initialised

Going to have to bear with the numptys for a few weeks, traffic volume seems to have doubled this week so there's twice as many idiots about now the School holidays are over. Had to educate a blond this morning, she overtook me round a corner only to get stuck in queueing traffic in after the bend. Banged on her window, said "Don't do that again, you don't want me on your insurance renewal" and rode off full of vitriol!

davis

Initialised wrote:

Going to have to bear with the numptys for a few weeks, traffic volume seems to have doubled this week so there's twice as many idiots about now the School holidays are over. Had to educate a blond this morning, she overtook me round a corner only to get stuck in queueing traffic in after the bend. Banged on her window, said "Don't do that again, you don't want me on your insurance renewal" and rode off full of vitriol!

Unfortunately she's only going to remember an angry cyclist banging on her window...

moarspeed

davis wrote:

Initialised wrote:

Going to have to bear with the numptys for a few weeks, traffic volume seems to have doubled this week so there's twice as many idiots about now the School holidays are over. Had to educate a blond this morning, she overtook me round a corner only to get stuck in queueing traffic in after the bend. Banged on her window, said "Don't do that again, you don't want me on your insurance renewal" and rode off full of vitriol!

Unfortunately she's only going to remember an angry cyclist banging on her window...

Yep, unfortunately she'll go away, tell her friends what happened, they'll all take her side and she'll just hate cyclists even more, under this delusion that she was 100% right.

Kerguelen

BigLights wrote:

Check this out...on my way home after work, in a nice part of London, in a cycle lane, all good. Bus pulls in, which is fair enough, there's a bus stop, he was signalling, all fine. We're talking stop & go traffic here, so I indicated that I was going right, to go round the bus, there was still a good 1m wide space there. People carrier starts jumping forwards and LEFT, towards me....his windows were open. Respectable looking middle aged couple, wife in the passenger seat is screeching at the driver 'what are you doing, stop,' etc (wife and husband I'm certain). As he gets within an inch of me he says to his missus 'don't worry, it's only a cyclist'.

Well hooray for you. Feel like the big man now?

C***.
eh. ONLY A CYCLIST?

I comprehensively lost the plot for the first time in my 8 year, daily commute, cycling career. For real.

anewman

MOARspeed wrote:

davis wrote:

Initialised wrote:

Going to have to bear with the numptys for a few weeks, traffic volume seems to have doubled this week so there's twice as many idiots about now the School holidays are over. Had to educate a blond this morning, she overtook me round a corner only to get stuck in queueing traffic in after the bend. Banged on her window, said "Don't do that again, you don't want me on your insurance renewal" and rode off full of vitriol!

Unfortunately she's only going to remember an angry cyclist banging on her window...

Yep, unfortunately she'll go away, tell her friends what happened, they'll all take her side and she'll just hate cyclists even more, under this delusion that she was 100% right.

Yep people tend to ignore or fail to recognise their mistakes. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2 ... ger_effect