My 1st cycling Road Rage incident

Just when I was starting to wonder whether I lived in some sort of cycling
utopia where none of the tantrums of the tarmac you lot describe seem to
happen, along comes possibly the biggest tosser I have ever met.
There I was minding my business in a quiet street that could easily
accommodate four lanes yet only a single dividing line exists so there is
room a plenty for all. I had just passed (yes, passed) a left hand corner
when I hear the squealing tyres of a car being driven in anger. I swivel
around to see an aged and rusting Tarago screeching into the side street
behind me with a shaved headed, blue singlet wearing git leaning out of the
driver's window yelling a torrent of abuse at me. I must stress that I was
well past the corner so I was not interfering with this person's direction
of preference in any way, shape or form. Nor would I have been in the way
should he have wanted to proceed in the same direction I was pointing. I was
neither breaking the law nor in anyone's way nor engaging in any behaviour
that might have been construed as annoying.
Well, Mr Tarago pulls into a driveway not two houses down into the street
and being mystified as to what I may have done to cause such a commotion I
thought I should perform a U-turn and find out.
"What's your problem mate?"
"You f....ing cyclists shouldn't be on the f....ing road."
"So, you're angry because I was riding my bike on the road? But there's
plenty of room, I'm allowed to ride on the road and I wasn't in your way at
all. What is your problem?"
"You should be on the f...ing footpath. I drive a truck and I'm gonna run
you *******s over one day I tell ya!"
"You f...ing moron!"
"Yeah yeah."
Mr Tarago is a little taken aback at being confronted it seems and has been
steadily retreating to his house the whole while. I guess being confronted
by a 125kg ex Bouncer cyclist may have helped somewhat with his retreat as
sadly that was the last I got to say to him before the door slammed. I was
hoping he'd take a swing at me so I'd at least get the chance to leave an
imprint of an SPD cleat on his forehead. :-(
On a positive note it gave me a great adrenaline rush for the rest of the
ride and also some comfort in knowing that this guy's sole grievance was
with cyclists as a whole so I guess I must be looking the part these days.
;-)

--
www.ozcableguy.com
www.oztechnologies.com

OzCableguy wrote:

Well, Mr Tarago pulls into a driveway not two houses down into the street
and being mystified as to what I may have done to cause such a commotion I
thought I should perform a U-turn and find out.
"What's your problem mate?"
"You f....ing cyclists shouldn't be on the f....ing road."
"So, you're angry because I was riding my bike on the road? But there's
plenty of room, I'm allowed to ride on the road and I wasn't in your way at
all. What is your problem?"
"You should be on the f...ing footpath. I drive a truck and I'm gonna run
you *******s over one day I tell ya!"
"You f...ing moron!"
"Yeah yeah."
Mr Tarago is a little taken aback at being confronted it seems and has been
steadily retreating to his house the whole while. I guess being confronted
by a 125kg ex Bouncer cyclist may have helped somewhat with his retreat as
sadly that was the last I got to say to him before the door slammed. I was
hoping he'd take a swing at me so I'd at least get the chance to leave an
imprint of an SPD cleat on his forehead. :-(

Sooo, you know where he lives....

MUAHAHaha *cough*

Not that I would suggest random ride-bys or other such stuff...
--
Cheers | ~~ __@
Euan | ~~ _-\,
Melbourne, Australia | ~ (*)/ (*)

OzCableguy wrote:
Just when I was starting to wonder whether I lived in some sort of cycling
utopia where none of the tantrums of the tarmac you lot describe seem to
happen,

I haven't been a victim of a road rage incident for some time, and back
then I was driving a delivery truck. On one occasion I was actually
king hit and then dragged out of the cab and beaten some more, which
wouldn't have annoyed me so much except he was found not guilty for
lack of multiple independent witnesses who videotaped it from multiple
angles. (Starting and stopping, as delivery trucks do in normal
operation, tends to annoy the brainless even more than riding along
minding your own business on a bicycle).

I too am a big bloke and was into a lot of martial arts at the time,
but I never did master any self defense techniques to overcome the
surprise blow to the head while restrained by a seatbelt....

I considered sueing the guy in a civil case, given the "balance of
probabilities" level of proof, which isn't so impossible to satisfy in
practice as the "beyond reasonable doubt" level of proof in the
criminal case which failed. I decided it wasn't worth my while though,
he'll be a lowlife thug his whole life with a hopefully guilty
conscience and I figured that people have worse things happen to them
without getting justice, so I should get over it.

Do teenagers leaning out of the back window of a Commodore shouting
something "funny" but incomprehensible as they zoom past count as road
rage? I get that a couple of times a week. :-)

Travis

On 1 May 2006 02:22:06 -0700, Travis wrote:

angles. (Starting and stopping, as delivery trucks do in normal
operation, tends to annoy the brainless even more than riding along
minding your own business on a bicycle).

Well, it /is/ pretty annoying when they do it in No Standing zones
or clearways, bringing entire lanes of traffic to a halt, often including
cyclists, just because it's convenient.

You never did that, did you? :-)

--
Home page: http://members.westnet.com.au/mvw

Travis wrote:
....

Do teenagers leaning out of the back window of a Commodore shouting
something "funny" but incomprehensible as they zoom past count as road
rage? I get that a couple of times a week. :-)

No, that's just teenagers beeing teenagers. They yell at other cars too,
and anything else of passing interest. I recall an incident where I was
in a car with 3 other guys from school. Stopped at some lights. Leaned
out the window, asked an old guy standing on the footpath:
"Excuse me, do you know the time?".
"No, sorry."
"Well, it's exactly 10.45pm".

Dunno why we thought that was funny. Cracked us up, then.

--
beerwolf (remove numbers from email address)

beerwolf Wrote:
I recall an incident where I was
in a car with 3 other guys from school. Stopped at some lights. Leaned
out the window, asked an old guy standing on the footpath:
"Excuse me, do you know the time?".
"No, sorry."
"Well, it's exactly 10.45pm".

Dunno why we thought that was funny. Cracked us up, then.

--
beerwolf (remove numbers from email address)

I actually like that

wit will always win over the witless


--
flyingdutch

"Travis" wrote in message
oups.com...
I too am a big bloke and was into a lot of martial arts at the time,
but I never did master any self defense techniques to overcome the
surprise blow to the head while restrained by a seatbelt....

Damn there's some arseholes in the world.
I've got to say though now that I've had this encounter, I'm a little
unnerved that there's actually people out there that have a pathological
hatred of cyclists and will quite happily go out of their way to threaten
and intimidate them with a few tons of moving metal just because they're
there. I mean, they don't even need an incident to get their blood boiling.
They just see spoked wheels and lycra and they're going to try to "teach you
a lesson". Even if they accidently killed someone in the process I don't
think they'd feel bad about it for a second. They actually believe that the
cyclist shouldn't have been there in the first place so it was suicide and
not their fault at all. That's pretty scary stuff...

OzCableguy wrote:

Damn there's some arseholes in the world.
I've got to say though now that I've had this encounter, I'm a little
unnerved that there's actually people out there that have a pathological
hatred of cyclists and will quite happily go out of their way to threaten
and intimidate them with a few tons of moving metal just because they're
there. I mean, they don't even need an incident to get their blood boiling.
They just see spoked wheels and lycra and they're going to try to "teach you
a lesson". Even if they accidently killed someone in the process I don't
think they'd feel bad about it for a second. They actually believe that the
cyclist shouldn't have been there in the first place so it was suicide and
not their fault at all. That's pretty scary stuff...

Very scary indeed. At least the guy you had a run-in with seemed a
little shy about continuing the confrontation. This might make him
think before acting on his threat to run over a cyclist with his truck.
Mind you, you have the advantage of being a big ex-bouncer. My guess
is that you are probably close to twice my size and any attempt at angry
taunts from someone like me at a bloke like that are likely to end a
little differently. I usually take the other approach... ride like the
wind!!


--
Bean

Remove "yourfinger" before replying

cfsmtb wrote:
SteveA Wrote:

Of course, there is the 1% that really will go through with the threat
to run over you. Therefore it is best to assume that the ar5eh0le you
are dealing with is part of that 1%.


As much as I believe in civil society, rule of law, due process
blahblahblah, when I'm on the bike, every other road user is possibly
blind and/or a dickhead until proven otherwise. Anecdotally most road
users are fine, just *some* tend to be a little naive.


Simple rule - assume all other road users are idiots. 99.5 per cent of
the time you'll be wrong. The other 0.5 per cent of the time, you'll
f---ing well want to be wrong.
All road users including cyclists make mistakes, sometimes with nasty
consequences. But 1.5 tonnes of metal seems to imbue a degree of malice
for some reason towards anyone who dares to travel via other means.
Exhibit A at my favourite local death-trap yesterday lunch-time. I was
crossing within the intersection and therefore had right of way. This in
no way impeded the XF Falcon on Pillock Plates who bored straight
through anyway and abused me when I screamed at him. If I was in the car
he wouldn't have dared, but on two wheels I'm a second class citizen.
`Naive' is putting it too mildly for motorised turds.

Michael Warner wrote:
On 1 May 2006 02:22:06 -0700, Travis wrote:

angles. (Starting and stopping, as delivery trucks do in normal
operation, tends to annoy the brainless even more than riding along
minding your own business on a bicycle).

Well, it /is/ pretty annoying when they do it in No Standing zones
or clearways, bringing entire lanes of traffic to a halt, often including
cyclists, just because it's convenient.

You never did that, did you? :-)

Actually no. I was doing door to door deliveries to houses (milkman),
mostly in quiet suburban backstreets. I didn't have any customers on
busy roads and always tried to be as considerate as possible to other
drivers.

Its just like cycling, we cause at most minor inconvenience to someone
for a few seconds at most. Usually they are quite able to go around,
but some idiots decide to sit behind yelling abuse instead of
overtaking.

The root cause is idiots in cars, not anything we're doing.

Travis