Recently while out on a ride, our friends Yehuda Moon and Joe got yelled at by a passing motorist. Yehuda wondered, “can you ever make out what they say?”
At one time or another, all of us have had the same experience as Yehuda and Joe. Some motorist who hates us simply for being on two wheels careens past us at an uncomfortably close distance while screaming some profanity-laced invective intended to send us crawling behind the wheel of the largest SUV we can find, never to darken a bike lane again.
Whenever I have an experience like this, I spend the next 10 or 15 miles wondering why the motorist was so angry. Did I veer from my lane? Did I hold them up as they were rushing a pregnant woman to the hospital? Did their mother run off with a middle-aged lycra-clad cyclist?
More often than not I conclude that the problem was simply my mere existence. I hadn’t veered from my lane. I hadn’t inadvertently splashed their car with Cytomax when I opened my water bottle on the last downhill. I hadn’t even run a stop sign. No, they just hate me because I’m a cyclist and I am using a small portion of their precious roadway. No matter your race, color, creed or religion, you are finally a minority; you are a cyclist.
(cue the scary music)
If you think I’m wrong or that I am overreacting, I urge you to take a look at this web site (note: do not click this link if you are under 18 or easily offended by bad language and/or idiotic forum posts) where people (and I use that term loosely) discuss the recent incident in Australia as discussed on last week’s show.
In a nutshell, it is alleged that a driver felt that he was inconvenienced by a group of cyclists on a training ride, so he pulled in front of the pack and slammed on his brakes, causing 50 cyclists to go down. Thankfully nobody sustained serious or life-threatening injuries.
The comments related to this incident are both scary and enlightening. Samples of some of the worst include:
God, I hate cyclists. They dress up in their jester costumes and make the life of every motorist a nightmare.
Love biking but hate cyclists. Would have loved to see the video.
I think they should pay for any damage to the bumper.
I would have paid good money to see cyclists biting the dust.
This guy’s my hero. I don’t know how many times I’ve had to resist the urge to plow right through a herd of sprocket heads taking up the entire lane of a 60 mile an hour road.
. . . and even a little vitriol from a fellow cyclist:
I ride in the street, I ride on sidewalks, and when tough guys honk at me or scream about how I shouldn’t be on the street, I juke their car with my New York-style chain lock. It does serious damage and I ride away since they’re stuck in traffic and can’t catch me.
It should be noted that there are a larger number of posts supporting the cyclists and skewering the driver than comments filled with anti-cyclist hate speech. Perhaps this is indicative of the proportion of tolerant to intolerant drivers in general, but I think it behooves every one of us to understand that this hatred exists, even if only in a small number of motorists, and to be ever more cautious, courteous, and on our guard at all times.
By the way, if you want to see what this road looks like, click here to see a Google Maps satellite view. It is 3 lanes in each direction, plus a bike lane on each side. You mean to tell me that this guy couldn’t have gone around the cyclists and gone about his life without causing all this pain and suffering?
