Do some cyclists seek confrontation?

These days I try to avoid heated exchanges with other road users, but
judging by an incident I witnessed last night, some riders are always
up for it. Even when they're completely in the wrong.

I was riding in the bike lane, approaching red traffic lights. There
were a couple of cars stopped at the lights, with the one in the
adjacent lane indicating for a left turn. There was another rider a few
lengths ahead of me.

As the other rider was almost level with the car indicating a turn, the
lights changed to green and the car started to move to make it's turn.
The bike rider, clearly intending to go straight ahead, continued his
pace unchanged--swerving with the car as it cornered, shouting at the
driver and bashing repeatedly on the car.

-*Q. Was he justified in his rage and aggression?*-

Let's go to the road rules, specifically 'Rule 141'
(http://tinyurl.com/22ssmq):


(1) A driver (except the rider of a bicycle) must not overtake a
vehicle to the left of the vehicle...


So far, so good: cyclists are allowed to pass on the inside. However:


(2) The rider of a bicycle must not ride past, or overtake, to the
left of a vehicle that is turning left and is giving a left change of
direction signal.


-*A. No.*-

So the rider couldn't have been more wrong and his ignorance of the
road rules makes his self-righteous pounding on the innocent driver's
car somewhat pathetic.

I was well aware of the rule that prohibits overtaking to the left of
another vehicle turning left, but I'll admit that I had to come away
and check that there were no subtleties in the rules that give priority
to traffic in a bike lane. And under rules '153'
(http://tinyurl.com/22ssmq) and '158' (http://tinyurl.com/22ssmq) the
existence of a bike lane bestows no special rights in this situation.

Regardless of the legalities, I'd have thought the rational action
would be to avoid trouble to begin with. Indeed, driving/riding in a
way that avoids collisions is a key concept underlying the road rules.
But this rider totally ignored that, preferring to ride in a manner
that -guaranteed- a collision.

Let me be clear here, this was not an emergency situation: the driver
hadn't suddenly and unexpectedly turned in front of the bike. On the
contrary, the car was stationary and indicating a turn well before we
arrived. There was time and space for the rider to slow or stop to
avoid the car but he chose to continue, seemingly with the intent of
escalating a confrontation. (Come to think of it, did he actually
-speed-up-? Hmm, not sure about that...)

Anyway, it looked a lot like the action of someone who deliberately
wanted to engage in a bit of argy-bargy. And it left me wondering, why?


--
treadly&me

Small question, big answer.

Why does anyone look for confrontation in any sphere of their life?


--
byron27

On 2007-05-01, treadly&amp me (aka Bruce)
was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea:

These days I try to avoid heated exchanges with other road users, but
judging by an incident I witnessed last night, some riders are always
up for it. Even when they're completely in the wrong.

I was riding in the bike lane, approaching red traffic lights. There
were a couple of cars stopped at the lights, with the one in the
adjacent lane indicating for a left turn. There was another rider a few
lengths ahead of me.

As the other rider was almost level with the car indicating a turn, the
lights changed to green and the car started to move to make it's turn.
The bike rider, clearly intending to go straight ahead, continued his
pace unchanged--swerving with the car as it cornered, shouting at the
driver and bashing repeatedly on the car.

-*Q. Was he justified in his rage and aggression?*-

Snip ARR 141.1 and 141.2

-*A. No.*-

So the rider couldn't have been more wrong and his ignorance of the
road rules makes his self-righteous pounding on the innocent driver's
car somewhat pathetic.

I was well aware of the rule that prohibits overtaking to the left of
another vehicle turning left, but I'll admit that I had to come away
and check that there were no subtleties in the rules that give priority
to traffic in a bike lane. And under rules '153'
(http://tinyurl.com/22ssmq) and '158' (http://tinyurl.com/22ssmq) the
existence of a bike lane bestows no special rights in this situation.

However.


I agree with you, mostly. However, I think there is something
fundamentally flawed about cycle lanes in such situations. As much as
I think it's impractical to require driver to look to the left and
behind them everytime turning left, I think there is something wrong
here.

A cycle lane is a lane. When it goes through an intersection, the
right hand side of that lane is marked a broken white line. It's
identical to a normal lane, just thinner. Drivers are required to
check they are not about to cause a collision when switching or
crossing lanes. Why should this be any fundamentally different to
bike lanes? Sure, drivers aren't usually held responsible for things
behind them -- rear enders are deemed to be the fault of the party
doing the colliding in all situations (all but the exceptions that
prove the rule -- except when your lane merges into someone elses.

Indeed, does the law truly not have a couple of hidden hard to find
clause somewhere that would put the driver at fault by basically
saying "cross lane+collision && bike lane==lane = your fault" if you
hired an expensive enough lawyer?


As to your question "do some look for confrontation". Dunno. What I
suspect is that anyone who thinks their life was just placed at risk
is going to go off their heads just a little -- adrenaline does that.
People just differ in their threshold of what consitutes a risk to
their life, and what proportion of the risk lies on their own head.
Even though it was only a low speed colision, there is still a tiny
choice he could bounce off, into a firehydrant, hitting his head on
it, dying. He might have been going hard and not seen the blinkers
(but seen the green light?), hence may have mentally assigned 100% of
the blame on an apparently non indicating motorist. I can't remember
-- was this during the day? Lots of cars have extremely hard to see
indicators, that I could easily imagine being completely invisible
from certain angles.

--
TimC
"Indicators: There are controls in each vehicle that cause little bits
of coloured plastic to flash on and off at the corners of your vehicle.
Pretty, aren't they?" -- friend of Richard Sherratt in aus.bicycle

TimC Wrote:
A cycle lane is a lane. When it goes through an intersection, the right
hand side of that lane is marked a broken white line. It's identical to
a normal lane, just thinner.

Except where there is no broken line, in which case the bike lane is
deemed to end at the start of the intersection (paraphrasing ARR
153(4)(b)).

TimC Wrote:
Drivers are required to check they are not about to cause a collision
when switching or crossing lanes. Why should this be any fundamentally
different to bike lanes?

It's not and shouldn't be. But this wasn't a lane merge, it was a turn
and rule 141(2) is clear: you can't ride past on the left of another
vehicle that's indicating a left turn. (Despite the fact that this
appears to make speed-up-to-turn-left-in-front-of-the-cyclist move
"legal"--although I'm sure I've seen something that prohibits that
somewhere.)

TimC Wrote:
Indeed, does the law truly not have a couple of hidden hard to find
clause somewhere that would put the driver at fault by basically saying
"cross lane+collision && bike lane==lane = your fault" if you hired an
expensive enough lawyer?

Agreed, but let's not get started on lawyers! They love it when we talk
about them...

TimC Wrote:
As to your question "do some look for confrontation". Dunno. What I
suspect is that anyone who thinks their life was just placed at risk is
going to go off their heads just a little -- adrenaline does that.

Yes, I know the feeling. And I've certainly let fly the odd
adrenaline-charged spray when I've felt unduly threatened.

TimC Wrote:
People just differ in their threshold of what consitutes a risk to their
life, and what proportion of the risk lies on their own head.

You're dead right, but in this case the rider had a lot of control over
the level of risk. It may have got lost a bit in the telling but I did
say:

There was time and space for the rider to slow or stop to avoid the car
but he chose to continue

And that's basically the crux of my pondering: given the choice to back
off or escalate a potentially risky encounter (that could've included
things like bouncing off and sustaining a head injury), why would any
rational person choose the latter? This guy increased the risk,
apparently so that he could act the aggrieved victim--not a
particularly pleasant way to carry on.

TimC Wrote:
He might have been going hard and not seen the blinkers (but seen the
green light?), hence may have mentally assigned 100% of the blame on an
apparently non indicating motorist. I can't remember -- was this during
the day? Lots of cars have extremely hard to see indicators, that I
could easily imagine being completely invisiblefrom certain angles.

I could easily keep up with him, so he wasn't exactly flogging it. :-)

It was fully dark but raining, so I'll grant that there might have been
-some- visibility issues. But we were approaching straight from behind
with the cars stationary at the lights through to the end of a red
light cycle, so I really can't imagine that he didn't see the
indicators.

The rain was a detail I didn't mention, but it adds texture to the
story. And another question: why would you go thundering in when your
ability to stop and/or manoeuvre is compromised by the wet conditions?

TimC Wrote:
"Indicators: There are controls in each vehicle that cause little bits
of coloured plastic to flash on and off at the corners of your vehicle.
Pretty, aren't they?" -- friend of Richard Sherratt in aus.bicycle

Apposite. One to you, sir.

byron27 Wrote:
Why does anyone look for confrontation in any sphere of their life?

Hoo, philosophy! And I was only looking for pragmatism. I think that's
taking it out into deep water...


--
treadly&me

On Tue, 1 May 2007 18:33:42 +1000, treadly&me wrote:

-*Q. Was he justified in his rage and aggression?*-

No, he was definitely in the wrong, since the car was indicating.

But sometimes when you slow down and wait for a car to turn,
the driver decides to wait for you, and everyone grinds to a halt.
Drivers trying to give way when you're clearly waiting for them
to take their right of way are a major irritant IMHO.

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

On Wed, 2 May 2007 00:21:07 +0930, Michael Warner
wrote:

But sometimes when you slow down and wait for a car to turn,
the driver decides to wait for you, and everyone grinds to a halt.

Which is why I often pull out of the bike lane and slot in behind.
--
Andre ==================== Speed Thrills!

On Wed, 02 May 2007 01:01:29 +1000, Aeek wrote:

Which is why I often pull out of the bike lane and slot in behind.

That's definitely better if there's room to push in.

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

TimC Wrote:
A cycle lane is a lane. When it goes through an intersection, the
right hand side of that lane is marked a broken white line. It's
identical to a normal lane, just thinner. Drivers are required to
check they are not about to cause a collision when switching or
crossing lanes. Why should this be any fundamentally different to
bike lanes? Sure, drivers aren't usually held responsible for things
behind them -- rear enders are deemed to be the fault of the party
doing the colliding in all situations (all but the exceptions that
prove the rule -- except when your lane merges into someone elses.
Let's not forget that all drivers can use the bike lane 50M prior to
the junction. I believe it would be better if left turning drivers
were required to move in to the lane, remove the ambiguity from the
situation.

A few months ago I had a driver pull out of a side street in to
traffic, travel approximately 20 meters and then without indicating
turn left down the following side street. It was peak hour and even
uphill I was going a fair bit faster than him and had to brake rather
hard to avoid a collision.

If the driver had stayed in the bike lane, as he was legally able to
do, there would have been no ambiguity.


--
EuanB

me wrote:

I was riding in the bike lane, approaching red traffic lights. There
were a couple of cars stopped at the lights, with the one in the
adjacent lane indicating for a left turn. There was another rider a
few lengths ahead of me.

As the other rider was almost level with the car indicating a turn,
the lights changed to green and the car started to move to make it's
turn. The bike rider, clearly intending to go straight ahead,
continued his pace unchanged--swerving with the car as it cornered,
shouting at the driver and bashing repeatedly on the car.

Let's go to the road rules, specifically 'Rule 141'
(http://tinyurl.com/22ssmq):


(1) A driver (except the rider of a bicycle) must not overtake a
vehicle to the left of the vehicle...


So far, so good: cyclists are allowed to pass on the inside. However:


(2) The rider of a bicycle must not ride past, or overtake, to the
left of a vehicle that is turning left and is giving a left change of
direction signal.


-*A. No.*-

So the rider couldn't have been more wrong and his ignorance of the
road rules makes his self-righteous pounding on the innocent driver's
car somewhat pathetic.

A valid question would be "Is the bicycle lane a lane?" If it is then the
car was clearly in the wrong. If it isn't, why mark it as one. I think the
cyclist was in the right. Still not a good reason to bash the car.

Theo

Theo Bekkers Wrote:


A valid question would be "Is the bicycle lane a lane?" If it is then
the
car was clearly in the wrong. If it isn't, why mark it as one. I think
the
cyclist was in the right. Still not a good reason to bash the car.

Theo
If on approaching the intersection the car driver signalled an
intention to turn left, he/she had the right (when it is safe to do
so)to move into the bicycle lane within 50m of the intersection, and
quoted R. 141 (2) clearly requires bicycles behind that left turn
signalling car not to pass it on the left. It seems the car did not
enter the bicycle lane for what ever reason... we dont know (already
full of bikes, nothing there, just changed mind about the
turn..whatever) , so the car was stopped in the full traffic lane ,
prior to stopping it may or may not have been indicating a left turn,
but it was in a place that conceivebaly allowed riders to pass on the
left physically, (and legally if not signalling). It is also possible
after stopping the driver decided to turn left and then signalled, and
the signal could not be seen be a rider positioned to the left in the
bicycle lane. This wouldnt excuse the driver from just turning into the
bike lane and in that instance the driver should wait till the vehicle
to its left, ( the bicycle/s beside it) cleared the lane.

We are speculating here of course , but this seems a likely scenario
that may have also raised the angst of the rider. The driver *may* have
signalled late.

It just goes to show that you always have to keep your wits and be
observant and expect the worse.


--
rooman