"I'm going to knock your head off with a baseball bat"

This for riding my bike in traffic today. I was riding down the street
that runs from my home to the intersection of the main artery towards the
light rail. I was in the right lane, waiting for cars to pass, then
signaled to get into the left lane to turn onto the main artery. Pretty
mundane stuff. I look behind me with my mirror, then over my shoulder to
make sure the car behind me (which is moving back and forth aggressively)
isn't going to pass me on the left as I get into the left lane. He doesn't
and I get into the left lane.

This is where it gets weird. He starts yelling at me to "f***ing get on
the sidewalk". This, also, is typical. I'm used to hearing this on an
almost bi-weekly basis from the citizens of Beaverton, Oregon. We live in
a bicycle friendly community. Right. I guess that's relative (i.e. they
don't throw things at us, they only threaten to kill us). Anyway, he's
yelling at me to get on the sidewalk calling me an "f***ing idiot" (with
no hint of irony). Finally I try to explain to him (and I seriously mean
explain, I'll be the first to admit that I've given the finger or shouted
back at someone before who was road raging) that bikes are allowed on the
road. Then he says "I'm going to knock your head off with a baseball bat".
Of course, I shout back that I'm going to call the police and he'll go to
jail for assault, I pull my cell phone out and start to dial, he starts
cussing loudly to himself in the car staring forward.

In the end he drove off, I road off, but I'm really starting to get tired
of this garbage. This happens far too often and I do everything you're
supposed to do when it comes to riding. And yet still it happens. And it's
never "damn you for passing me" or "how dare you take the lane". The road
raging is always because I'm on the road period. Period! Nothing more.
Nothing less. You don't deserve to be on the road, so I'm going to
threaten to kill you. What can you do when faced with this? I'm so sick of
it. I want to carry a camera with me and just photograph the hell out of
these people and take them to court. I wonder if I should carry mace with
me at all times. I don't want to. I'm not a fighter. But at a certain
point when not only are you being threatened by their vehicles, but
they're threatening to wield weapons, what do you do? I'm at a loss.

Preston

Preston Crawford wrote:

[story of flagrant automotive bullying snipped]

Of course, I shout back that I'm going to call the police and he'll go to
jail for assault, I pull my cell phone out and start to dial, he starts
cussing loudly to himself in the car staring forward.

Preston,

I'm sorry you had this experience. Many of us have. If you started
the dialing process on your phone, that (IMHO) is the best and only
thing you should have done.

Cyclists taking on cars is a high risk, low reward proposition. If
you have a camera in that phone of yours, take a pic of him, his car,
and his license plate if you can, then go to the Police station with
all of that.

Here's one received on the ListServ for San Diego County Bicycle
Coalition:

"On Tuesday, 3/22 around 3pm, I was biking along Nobel, past Lebon,
toward Genessee, when a passenger from a passing car leaned halfway
out the window and bashed me over the head with a baseball bat, then
sped away. I did not crash. The license plate started with "3P" and
I think the 3rd character was "W." I could not get the make or model
of the car, but it was a color about pink. I have reported the
incident to the police."

Be careful out there.

On 2005-04-06, Neil Brooks wrote:
Preston Crawford wrote:

[story of flagrant automotive bullying snipped]

Of course, I shout back that I'm going to call the police and he'll go to
jail for assault, I pull my cell phone out and start to dial, he starts
cussing loudly to himself in the car staring forward.

Preston,

I'm sorry you had this experience. Many of us have. If you started
the dialing process on your phone, that (IMHO) is the best and only
thing you should have done.

Cyclists taking on cars is a high risk, low reward proposition. If
you have a camera in that phone of yours, take a pic of him, his car,
and his license plate if you can, then go to the Police station with
all of that.

Here's one received on the ListServ for San Diego County Bicycle
Coalition:

"On Tuesday, 3/22 around 3pm, I was biking along Nobel, past Lebon,
toward Genessee, when a passenger from a passing car leaned halfway
out the window and bashed me over the head with a baseball bat, then
sped away. I did not crash. The license plate started with "3P" and
I think the 3rd character was "W." I could not get the make or model
of the car, but it was a color about pink. I have reported the
incident to the police."

Be careful out there.

Interesting. Wonder if Portland has anything of the sort.

Preston

On Tue, 05 Apr 2005 20:42:47 -0500, Preston Crawford
wrote:

In the end he drove off, I road off, but I'm really starting to get tired
of this garbage. This happens far too often and I do everything you're
supposed to do when it comes to riding. And yet still it happens. And it's
never "damn you for passing me" or "how dare you take the lane". The road
raging is always because I'm on the road period. Period! Nothing more.
Nothing less. You don't deserve to be on the road, so I'm going to
threaten to kill you. What can you do when faced with this? I'm so sick of
it. I want to carry a camera with me and just photograph the hell out of
these people and take them to court. I wonder if I should carry mace with
me at all times. I don't want to. I'm not a fighter. But at a certain
point when not only are you being threatened by their vehicles, but
they're threatening to wield weapons, what do you do? I'm at a loss.

Preston

Preston, also accept my sympathy and empathy for what happened to you. If
these people knew what a kind and wonderful person you were they would
never think of talking to you like that. We need more great guys like you
in the world.

I think you did the right thing. Get the phone out, get out of this guy's
way and be prepared to call it in with the license number. A camera phone
that could resolve a license number would be ideal. No need to actually
complete the call, though if there is an online 'bad driver' dB it could
help if they get other road rage calls.

Once you got the cell out, this mere fact caused the guy to realize he was
out-smarted and thus was thwarted.

As far as carrying mace. You only really need to have mace if you think
that someone will confront you and this is very unlikely. The chances that
you could get it out and spray them are very small. You're vulnerable on
the bike and by getting out mace you might risk escalation. However there
have been instances where people got out of cars and walked up to cyclists.

In that event the first thing you want to do if you can't immediately
escape and ride off down a side street is get off the bike. (Sitting on the
bike makes you a sitting duck for getting punched with one foot clipped
in.)

Put the bike between you and them and at the first opportunity get out of
there. It's really not a personal attack. It's actually an anonymous thing
- they don't know you. It's best to avoid, because it's extremely unlikely
that you will ever see this person again.

What worries me about these kinds of guys is that if you provoke them then
the next guy that has to confront them on a bike might have a much harder
time with them. Who knows you might have been a victim of such an event
where he had a minor encounter with a biker and the guy flipped him off and
rode away before he could say something.

But don't let it get to you, man. Come on rbm and tell your buds and we'll
give you hugs and props and then blow it off. Keep riding.

In fact you helped me today with your post to appreciate how nice (in
comparison) everybody is in my town... ;-)

jj

"jj" wrote: (clip) In that event the first thing you want to do if you
can't immediately escape and ride off down a side street is get off the
bike. (clip)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
However, keep in mind that if he starts to get out of the car, you may be
able to position yourself to ride off. That's going to leave him looking
pretty stupid. This is one circumstance where I believe everyone will agree
that riding on the sidewalk or against traffic would be justified.

On 2005-04-06, Leo Lichtman wrote:

"jj" wrote: (clip) In that event the first thing you want to do if you
can't immediately escape and ride off down a side street is get off the
bike. (clip)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
However, keep in mind that if he starts to get out of the car, you may be
able to position yourself to ride off. That's going to leave him looking
pretty stupid. This is one circumstance where I believe everyone will agree
that riding on the sidewalk or against traffic would be justified.

I've replayed this over and over again and I thought of the above
scenario. And the first thought that popped into my head was that I'd head
for his car, pull the keys and call the cops. Don't know why. Maybe I just
haven't gotten over it yet.

Preston

On Wed, 06 Apr 2005 02:41:50 -0500, Preston Crawford
wrote:

On 2005-04-06, Leo Lichtman wrote:

"jj" wrote: (clip) In that event the first thing you want to do if you
can't immediately escape and ride off down a side street is get off the
bike. (clip)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
However, keep in mind that if he starts to get out of the car, you may be
able to position yourself to ride off. That's going to leave him looking
pretty stupid. This is one circumstance where I believe everyone will agree
that riding on the sidewalk or against traffic would be justified.

I've replayed this over and over again and I thought of the above
scenario. And the first thought that popped into my head was that I'd head
for his car, pull the keys and call the cops. Don't know why. Maybe I just
haven't gotten over it yet.

Preston

No, no, no...you do -not- want to do something pre-emptive like that. Trust
me. Think about it. Do you really want your life intertwined with this
a-hole? It then becomes a 'he said, she said' incident and you risk further
escalation.

It started as anonymous, keep it that way, de-escalate, calm him down, but
first get the hell out of there, ride off.

Of course if the guy hits you or runs you off the road then there's reason
to get a license number and report it.

You are already a winner by avoiding the confrontation. You ride off and he
can't touch you - you win, baybee. Believe me I understand the desire to
put these guys in their place, but it never works. You absolutely did the
right thing.

(I say this as a big guy who has trained in three martial arts, and can
squat 300lbs for reps and could crush most people like a twig, btw. g)

jj

On Wed, 06 Apr 2005 02:41:50 -0500, Preston Crawford
wrote:

On 2005-04-06, Leo Lichtman wrote:

"jj" wrote: (clip) In that event the first thing you want to do if you
can't immediately escape and ride off down a side street is get off the
bike. (clip)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
However, keep in mind that if he starts to get out of the car, you may be
able to position yourself to ride off. That's going to leave him looking
pretty stupid. This is one circumstance where I believe everyone will agree
that riding on the sidewalk or against traffic would be justified.

I've replayed this over and over again and I thought of the above
scenario. And the first thought that popped into my head was that I'd head
for his car, pull the keys and call the cops. Don't know why. Maybe I just
haven't gotten over it yet.

Preston

This is prime opportunity to write a "community view" in your local newspaper
about this and other road morons you've encountered.
Trying to argue with a car is, at best, futile. The best thing you can do is
save your vocal cords and just shake your head. To me, this says, your such an
idiot I'm not even going to try and explain it to you. And he know that all of
the other cagers see it too. :-)

On Wed, 06 Apr 2005 00:01:32 -0400, jj wrote:

In that event the first thing you want to do if you can't immediately
escape and ride off down a side street is get off the bike. (Sitting on the
bike makes you a sitting duck for getting punched with one foot clipped
in.)

Put the bike between you and them

This advise works better for dogs than for rednecks. But then, the dogs
are less belligerent, and smarter.

--

David L. Johnson

__o | Some people used to claim that, if enough monkeys sat in front
_`\(,_ | of enough typewriters and typed long enough, eventually one of
(_)/ (_) | them would reproduce the collected works of Shakespeare. The
internet has proven this not to be the case.

On Wed, 06 Apr 2005 01:25:30 -0400, "David L. Johnson"
wrote:

On Wed, 06 Apr 2005 00:01:32 -0400, jj wrote:

In that event the first thing you want to do if you can't immediately
escape and ride off down a side street is get off the bike. (Sitting on the
bike makes you a sitting duck for getting punched with one foot clipped
in.)

Put the bike between you and them

This advise works better for dogs than for rednecks. But then, the dogs
are less belligerent, and smarter.

Right, but I was speaking from experience, and only if you are trapped and
can't get out of there...if it escalates from there you are in a great
position off the bike with it between you to defend. Straddling on the bike
holding the handlebars is the worst place to be when people come up to you,
iow.

If you suddenly get stuck like that still on the bike and there's an
imminent confrontation quickly unclip and then you can post both feet on
the ground and raise up the front wheel and ward them off if necessary.

What I'm getting at is it's easy to be taken unawares and people can be up
upon you before you realize it. Also beware of people coming up behind you
while someone in front of you distracts you. 360degree as it were. Again,
speaking from experience.

jj