Cycle Rage

Categories: cycling

Tags: Cycling

Date: 18 June 2008 23:46:37

I've been cycling a lot recently. To and from work, to town, to church, to friend's houses, everywhere. Unless its close walking distance or someone is giving me a lift, then I cycle it. And with that comes general annoyance at car drivers. There are a large number of cyclists where I currently live, so you'd think that the car drivers are used to us and give us plenty of space, etc. But no. Not a lot of the time. It bugs me. Its not uncommon for me to get road rage when I'm cycling, even though I never used to when I was driving.

What sparked this little rant was when I nearly got knocked out by a plane of glass this afternoon. I was cycling along slowly because I was trying to find a specific shop along the road, and I wasn't exactly sure where it was. I then spotted it on the other side of the road, so I pulled over and stopped about 1.5 metres behind a parked van. The van was obviously a window fitting business, and it had a rectangular piece of glass attached to the side of the van, sticking out about half a metre behind the end of the van. Before I had chance to dismount my bike, to cross the road to the shop, the van started reserving fairly quickly. The glass and the back of the van was coming straight at me. I frantically tried to move myself and my bike backwards as quickly as possible, but I couldn't keep going backwards at the same speed as he was coming towards me. And I think I must have been in his blind spot. There was a guy over the road who spotted this situation and started shouted 'WOAH!!!' to the van driver. I don't think he noticed, but thankfully he didn't continue reserving, and pulled out forwards, enabling me to breathe a sigh of relief. But as you can guess - it didn't do my general opinion of drivers any favours.