I saw this story via the Streetsblog Network last week, posted by Livable Streets for West Palm Beach. I think we can all relate to the author’s stories of being intimidated and threatened by drivers who just couldn’t stand to slow down for a few seconds; the kind who think they really do own the road and it seems like your life is meaningless to them.
Excerpt:
As I traveled north along Flagler Drive I had a guy in a van tailgating me about 12 inches from my rear wheel for two blocks through a contruction zone where there simply was no room for him to pass. His reaction was to try to scare me into either getting off the road or going faster. As I approached my turn he blasted the horn and went hurtling past me, angry because he was caught behind a slow moving vehicle for all of 30 seconds.
Despite being somewhat hardened to this sort of treatment after years of bicycling it still caused me to feel a small amount of fear about the “what if” scenario you read about in the newspapers every now and then where someone doing everything right gets run down by a nutcase or road rager. Lying on the asphalt broken and bleeding is seemingly what the driver of the van wanted me to be thinking as he crept ever closer to my rear wheel.
Read the rest here.
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on Mar 24th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Excellent article! I was very impressed with his discussion of the “I didn’t see you” aspect of the cyclist/motorist interaction. Nice discussion of the statistical assessments of cycling danger.