I had cause to rant profanely at another road user this morning. Not the normal kpone offhand comparing him with female genitalia I normally reserve for those who transgress my perceived concept of how everybody should interact with me during my commute, but a full on, window down, reaching for my seat belt and restrained by my passenger rant. It wasn't the result of particularly bad driving or a badly taken decision resulting in an increased pucker factor. It was just simple, dumb ignorance towards those around him. On a main arterial route into the city with solid lines of traffic in each direction, punctuated by gaps created by the changeover of priorities created by traffic lights at either end, I was proceeding with a bikers eye on the 15 or 20 metre gap I was maintaining with the car infront. The victim of my displeasure was waiting for one of the afore mentioned gaps in order for him to turn right across both lanes. He considered the space between me and the car ahead of me to be such a gap and pulled into it. However, there was no corresponding gap in the oncoming line of traffic so that's where he stopped, perpendicular to my direction of travel. ABS. Now despite the many, many threads regarding the issue in this hallowed place (I know the search engine isn't that good lads but give it a try), I'm still not 100% convinced of its efficacy on a road bike. However, it's presence on a car should well be made mandatory. After the post emergency stop check list was over and I had taken sufficient stock that all was well within the confines of my dinky little car, I looked up, directly into the right ear of the invader of my personal space while he continued to stare hard at the line of traffic impeding his progress further as if the intensity of his stare alone would cause it to part to allow him to continue. At no point since his first awareness of a larger than normal space between cars did he even as much as glance right at the traffic he had embedded himself into. So unaware was he that once I'd noticed the fact he wasn't aware of my presence and leaned on the horn to attract his attention, he jumped so much as to stall his engine, he was that oblivious. This was where adrenalin gave way to red mist and I vented my accumulated rush hour spleen. So. SMIDSY. I've read, here and elsewhere, with interest, the reasons, psychological, physical, environmental and otherwise that can lead to this phenomenon and also the techniques, mindsets and riding skills you can adopt to reduce your risk of succumbing to it, but they boil down to a series of excuses. Make yourself more visible by doing this, be much more aware of that. Pretty much every single one of those articles fails to pick up on the fact that if your particular nemesis is in a hurry, has waited for longer than their attention span warrants to join the traffic flow and, quite frankly, couldn't give a flying fuck whether you are there or not, you are going to end as a statistic. Sorry Mate But I Didn't See You Or Sorry Mate But I Really Needed To Get These Kids Dropped At The Child Minder And I'm Already Late For A 7:30 Meeting. Of course it can't be true. It doesn't make a snappy acronym.
Yup, when riding to work yesterday I stopped as my spidey sense was tingling and lo and behold a car was pulling in front of much the same direction as your story, except I was on my bike in the middle of the road. Not wanting to shift my hand to sound the horn, I revved the bike while braking, because I could see the numpty was looking the otehr direction, all I could see was the back of his head. He was in a big van, visibly JUMPED when I revved, I was that close to him without him knowing... Wanker then gave me the finger. Time like those I HATE being on a bike. If I was in a truck I'd just lift my foot off the clutch and T-bone him, and say oops, driver error. Sorry if that is not Politically correct, but tough!! After that I was very horn happy because if an accident were to occur, I am sure that the revving of the engine will have witnesses etc saying that the rider was riding fast and reckless... Anyway, good on you for making him jump... I love doing that to people who have no clue what is going on around them.
Must be the weather ,i was out on the bike on sat avvo just riding down a standard town back street cars all parked on my side for half of the street a small gap in the middle the cars parked on the other side for the other half, anyway met a girl coming the otherway in a car she stopped reversed 2 feet into the gap and let me into the space, i put my hand up said thanks and waved her through at which point she opened up on me with a tyraid of abuse for makeing her reverse and told me that if i cant ride it properly i should f off then on sunday im going around a round a bout and a loony in a volvo has a go at me ,he hadn even entered the roundabout and he started to enter it and was approaching so fast he was about to t bone me . i no the roads are a bit hectic but i draw the line at getting a load of shit from a women in a citroen window licker and an old git in a volvo F F S !!! RANT OVER THANKS FOR BEING THERE
thats nowt , i had 2 separate events today where cars pulled directly out in front of me and i had to slam on the brakes to avoid crushing the cars and killing the occupants. How can you kill people with a bike ? i hear you ask... well i was not on a bike i was driving a bloody 18 tonne truck . if i hadnt had my bike training i.e dont trust any knobhead approaching a junction in a car , they would have been pushing up daisies.
def the weather, the wife came in shaking with out daughter. when leaving tesco a woman pulled out of one of the rows into the main road leading out of the shopping complex where my wife already was then proceeded to drive side by side with the wife forcing oncoming traffic to stop and trying to force my wife onto the footpath.after this the wife had then reached the next roundabout and when halfway round a car came up to the roundabout with no intention of stopping and pulled out on the wife.only for the traction control in my car the wife said the car near spun out as she tried to get stopped before she T-boned the offending car.
I don’t think comparing him with female genitalia would have cut it with me, I think I would have more likely been out my car and torn him a new one. But that’s just me, got to run, I have my anger management class test this morning, or as its officially called 'Your Performance Appraisal'.
The SMIDSY is a real issue on these frosty mornings. Dropping my son of at school a couple of weeks ago and no more than 2 minutes from home, I had to pull out to pass a parked car. I wasn't travelling fast (less than 5mph) and saw a car coming so stopped and engaged reverse as the other vehicle had right of way. Unfortunately as I was reversing, the car heading towards me didn't even slow down. I was reversing and turing back into my own lane, probably 90% there, and this car just ran right into me!!!! When I got out, the girl driver just said she didn't see me. No bloody wonder, she had made NO effort to clear her windows from frost. It gets worse though. I took some photos with the phone to send to my insurers. Which turned out to be a complete waste of time because they still reckoned I was still at fault. They argued that part of my vehicle must still have been on the opposite side of the road, also the photos didn't prove anything as I could not prove that they were taken at the same time as the accident and I also couldn't prove I was reversing at the time of the collision. This is my own insurers arguing that despite all the evidence I was going to have to stump up my excess. Turns out the other driver has had another recent accident and when pressed the insurers admitted that she was also insured by them. Her excess was probably less than mine! Despite all this I remained calm and did not raise my voice. Driving a car you see. On the other hand, if someone even looks like they are going to invade my safety zone when on my bike, I want to rip their throat out! Go figure!
It's odd that they gave you the proof of time excuse Black as the image files will contain an EXIF header with all the details of the camera, settings, exact time and, in some cases latitude and longitude. That would definitely be worth an appeal mate.
Your right kpone and when I pointed this out they reckon they had never heard of this software (exifdata) and it could probably be manipulated anyway. They couldn't understand that I had already emailed them the digital image which was taken by a mobile phone equipped with GPS and they could extract the information themselves. How could I manipulate that? Another interesting point he made was that I'm better off having a "fault" accident rather than a "non fault" on my record! He explained that there would be an increase to the premium regardless of who was at fault. However as a fault accident which had already occurred was a known quantity and that the law of averages the next accident would be my fault with an unknown value, the premium would go higher with the mon fault accident. Talk about trying to soften the blow eh! Sorry didn't mean to go off topic but I feel a lot better now! Lol
I believe you have been, what we call in the digital imaging business, fobbed off mate. The metadata integrally embedded in the image file is the whole reason digital image files can be used for evidential reasons. I was involved in the original swap over from film to digital with Devon & Cornwall Constabulary and this was the deal breaker before any of the country's forces could change.
