I don’t normally get involved in these cycle chats as the two sides argue and insult for the sake of it, lets hope this one can stay polite.
So two road users managed to work around each other, as happens a million times every day, someone used mirrors someone looked out, each was aware, someone remembered to pip a thankyou even if they were slightly in the wrong that pip of thanks diffused the situation.
I can’t recall ever having a single anger situation with a cyclist in all my years.
Part of the reason for the annoyance of cyclists is the aggression of some road users, and with lorries in particular the noise of revving engines and the repeated operation of brakes…in order to noisily intimidate IMO in many cases…only adds fuel to the fire.
Reality.
You come up behind a cyclist on a two way road, there’s a constant stream of traffic coming the other way interspersed with obastacles, so you stay well back from the cyclist and select manually as high a gear as is reasonable in order to maintain speed and distance, be in the right gear for an overtake if the opportunity presents itself and you immediately cut the noise and any intimidation down by spades…invariably a little courtesy shown to most cyclists will result in them helping you to overtake them when the time is right…everyones happy, a wave often from cyclist and little toot on horn after you’ve gone well past as a courtesy.
Contrast with too many of our brethren, who charge up and make a big scene of braking heavily and then going up and down the gears alternately accelerating and braking without the remotest possibility of overtaking well, A, because they’re too close and in the wrong and can’t get any speed up as the safe overtake presents itself, and B, they’ve ■■■■■■ off the cyclist who realises the bloke in the lorry is an idiot and then goes out their way to make him wait even longer before overtaking, or is praying for a path to nip up onto so the incompetent can go by.
Course there’s idiot aggressive cyclists, probably wearing too tight lycra cutting off the blood supply to their vitals, but they should be viewed with the same pity and caution as you would an idiot behind the wheel of the lorry, in other words let them go first and then if their idiocy causes mayhem you won’t be involved.
We’ve all got to rub along together, in another 15 years there’ll be another 6+ million people in the country, the days of open roads except in a few rural areas are gone, we’ve all got to live with that.
