Temper + ebike != safe

[tostino]

First off, I would like to point out that I have a pretty bad temper, and this may seem like I made some dumb moves. Rather than avoiding a confrontation, I went head on into it.
Secondly, it was raining so hard! A normal florida rain storm. And this was the first time I tried my bike in the rain.

I was heading to my girlfriends from work today, I had just gotten on the road, and was making a right hand turn at the light. It was a red light so I was waiting for an opening to go. Than a Cadillac CTS pulls up, and nearly clips me with his mirror which ticked me off a little bit. An opening comes, and I hit the throttle and go. He goes right after me, and is right on my a** for about 500 ft. The road I was on had a speed limit of 30mph, I was going 35mph. This guy than puts the pedal to the floor, and passes me in the oncoming lane of traffic (two lane road), yells at me to "get on the frocking sidewalk or i'll frocking kill you", and than slams on his brakes as soon as he is in front of me, trying to get me to slam into the back of him, but i avoided. He than speeds up and goes probably 55mph down the road the rest of the way.

I lost sight of him, and about a mile later at the next light, I catch up to him, I am irate at this point. I wanted to do nothing more than take a crow bar to his car (luckily for me I didn't have one available).
I flick him off, he than opens his door and starts to get out, so I tell him to go **** him self. He than proceeds to curse at me too, and tell me he is going to kill me again. The light turns green, and I pull right in front of him, and stay in wye, so my speed limit is 20mph. He keeps revving his engine and speeding up and hitting my brakes about a foot away from me. The road widened to 4 lane at that point and he passes me. I than speed up since my turn is coming up. I hand signal i'm making a right turn, and he hits his brakes hard and makes a quick turn into where I was signaling I was going. He had to back up to make the turn because he missed where I was going, so I passed him giving him the jerk off motion. He than floors it, and I get off the road and go into the grass so he doesn't hit me, and went into a gated neighborhood off the road that he couldn't get into. He sat out there cursing at me (and me yelling back) for a few minutes, and than turned around and drove off. I was pretty shaken when I got to my girl friends house to say the least.


I know I didn't handle that situation in the way that would keep me safe, considering I was on a bike. I handled it more like if I was in a car. I know I could have been road kill a few times in that ordeal. I NEED to watch my temper, and let the a** hole drivers that want nothing more than to see me laying there on the side of the road have their way.

 

[fifthmass]

Please don't ever take anything like that personally as crazy as it may seem at the moment. Never do anything to escalate the situation. On the lighter side I wonder if that boob realized that he was behind a bicycle that was doing 35 mph? Probably not.

Be safe,
Bill

 

[johnrobholmes]

Here in my town you can grab the plate and put a criminal action against them for any harassing or threatening actions or words. It is a new law protecting bikers.

I would certainly say you didn't handle that the best way. Even if you don't have laws against people that stupid, you could still grab a plate number and see what your rights are against him instead of egging it on with hand gestures.


But boy I would have been fired up too, especially keeping that kind of speed on a 30mph road.

 

[tostino]

Please don't ever take anything like that personally as crazy as it may seem at the moment. Never do anything to escalate the situation. On the lighter side I wonder if that boob realized that he was behind a bicycle that was doing 35 mph? Probably not.

Be safe,
Bill

No he didn't. When I caught up to him I was like I was going 35 in a 30, and you still tried to kill me. He was like "**** you no you weren't. Stay on the sidewalk with your toy *** hole".

I did have the plate in my head after he tried to make me crash into him, but I forgot it after our exchange of words at the light. Would be nice to have some action taken against him.

And yes, egging him on was a bad move on my part. I should have just taken his plate and let it be, but you know how it can be when you feel like someone was out to do you harm for no reason what so ever. Doesn't make me feel very nice at least lol.

Edit: On the plus side, the bike works great in the rain! My water proofing throttle + controller seems to have worked.

 

[gogo]

I have a theory that adrenaline explains a lot of questionable behavior. In this case it may have been true for both of you. The world is full of people doing wrong things, and you are not getting compensated to point it out to them. Unless you count the adrenaline rush you got as compensation. :wink:

I was an adrenaline junky and got my fix at the dragstrip until I figured out I was an adrenaline junky. My addiction is happily under control and satiated by video games and roller coasters now.

 

[vanilla ice]

Accidently scratch his door with your pedal..

 

[heathyoung]

Heard of one or two of the road bikers around here use a sparkplug base @ rear window. Very effective!

 

[Zoot Katz]

The scariest shit about raging cagers is that they can kill cyclists with impunity.
All they have to say is the magic words "he swerved in front of me" and they're not likely even to have to go to traffic court.
That's why we the living should report every aggressive driver deliberately menacing and threatening cyclists. Give some future murderer a paper trail because there's seldom witnesses.

What's even scarier is that a driver asleep at the wheel can recite the same magic words and walk free.

Just today some twit wanted to start something. I was coming home from the store when the driver of a parked BMW SUV checked his mirror and then pulled out right in front of me. No panic, I suspected as much so was ready but looked at him like you'd view a chronically overflowing toilet bowl.
I was about a half block behind when he ran a stop sign. I kinda chuckled to myself, gave him the eye again, shook my head and spit.
He travelled about another block when he stopped. I hung back when I saw him looking over his shoulder and the back up lights come on.
"oh boy, we've hooked a pepper" is what I said to myself when the passenger got out.
The driver backed into another parking space but stayed in the car.
I was out of door range and never paid either of them any acknowledgement. Passenger dude says as I'm riding by, "Something wrong?"
I just looked at him like he was stupid and kept going.

That's not the first time drivers have over reacted to "the eye". Mostly it serves to keep them in line.

 

[spinningmagnets]

"Being right" is no protection in court or or especially in a wild west situation. Imagine that in trying to scare you, the drivers foot slips off the brake and onto the gas so he actually bumps you hard. You go down, and he finally manages to bring his car to a stop...on top of you.

In his world YOU were being a dick, and this was just an accident, but he panics. He has visions of going to jail for something thats (in his mind) not his fault. He loses his job, his wife leaves him, he loses his house, his wife remarries a guy who's not in jail and has a job and a house, so his kid is calling someone else "daddy".

So he jumps in and drives away, on top of you, figuring on a dark, cold, rainy night, there's no way you would've lived even if a paramedic had been called. And after all, nobody else saw anything.

Best case scenario, he bumps you and stops on top of you...breaking your legs. You have him arrested for road rage, and he gets off for lack of evidence. He claims the road was slippery and you fell in front of him (did you REALLY think someone as much of a dick as him would confess?). As he's leaving the courtroom he says to you "Tough luck, buddy. get well soon [snicker]" then...you snap because the system let you down, and you whack him upside the head with one of your crutches...and then YOU get arrested for felony assault.

You're not going to change him, so don't bring a knife to a gunfight. Either change direction, ride away, and let it go...or ride away and burn him later, but do ride away.

 

[swbluto]

I happily serve as a legal watchdog among the public and keep a pen and paper handy whenever something happens (I keep my receipts in my left pocket and my pen in the right). I know memory is faulty, especially mine, so I make sure I record whatever identifiable data I can when I perceive an infraction. I know that the police are supposed to ensure legality in "the people" but they can't enforce everywhere all the time (It's lucky if they can enforce 1/100th of the total time-space entity!), so it's my legal duty as a citizen to help the public when I can. In this case, I would be helping the cycling segment's rights.

I'm starting to think, though, if you're going to be biking for the "long haul", a camera is a definitely worth it. Sufficient-quality ones seem to be pretty cheap and the capacity plentiful nowadays.

And, oh yeah, I think Temper(or anger) + Higher-speed transportation != safe. The accident I was at fault for was caused by anger, but it wasn't against the driver in question. It was just the whole situation, I guess. Superficially, it the was the fact I couldn't even leave my driveway and then the rare opening appears and a pedestrian snatches it away as they walk on my left (to be truthful, if I were her, I would've walked on the right just for my own safety). It wasn't her fault that my stupid city didn't have a sidewalk for this busy street, but I was angry at the whole living situation and so I floored it as soon as she passed taking a 180 onto the street. As soon as the tire touches the road way, *wham* an SUV's right bumper is now buried in my sub-compact's left tire. Leaving half a second earlier would've surely been my life since it would've been a side impact on the driver's side - Now, like Hitler, I had survived a situation where split second timing meant the difference between life and death and thus I've been destined to do awesome things like persuade the nation to commit genocide on the jews. Well, ok, my ideology isn't quite as anti-semitic or belligerent, but for some reason, I now feel like I must do something magnificent with my life as reality has given me a second chance and I would be a fool to not take advantage of it.

 

[mrgarci1]

I've definitely had a similar experience (although not quite as extreme), which was actually completely a result of me being a a** on the road.

Basically I was riding with my gf and we had to pull out of the bike lane to get around a parked car. She doesn't ride like i do, and she doesn't get treated like i do when she's riding. So her instinct is to look at the people in the car that was coming up in the lane behind us, pull in front of them & around the car, and keep going. We were near her house, in the campus area; where she rides, and the street where we were in particular, that was a perfectly acceptable move (especially because it's hard to be so evil as to run over a pretty redhead on an old schwinn cruiser :wink: ). I however, I was a few yards behind, and normally would have slowed to let the car pass me, rather than trust them to not clip me on the narrow street - I have come to distrust drivers and now err on the side of safety nearly always.

So the car essentially stops behind me, expecting me to go around the car & follow my gf. Me, not expecting this, waved them on angrily and yelled something like "What the f*** are you doing?" - not particularly perjorative, but enough to enrage the drunken passenger to the point of an extended verbal exchange as they drove next to me for the next couple hundred yards.

Not gonna lie, have been somewhat more courteous since then, especially in the areas that I'm likely to run into intoxicated individuals.

 

[jag]

If a citizen reports a car for aggressive road behaviour, is the police required to make at least a traceable report?

Another issue: the only identification would be the vehicle licence plate. At least in Sweden, you can't do much unless you can prove (e.g. using a photo) who was the person driving. (Car owners get off by just saying silly things like they lent it to someone else theu don't remember, it was stolen or whatever.)

While biking I was struck by a driver ignoring my right of way in a roundabout in Sweden, and while driving I was hit by a car running a redlight in Canada. In neither case was the police particularly interested in taking action against the assailant, but thankfully the insurance companies of the drivers in each case paid for my bike and car without trouble. Amazingly I managed to live ten years in the US without any traffic accident whatsoever. Only episode was getting soaked while biking by some teenagers with a supersoaker watergun driving a pickup truck in Newhaven.

 

[Zoot Katz]

If a citizen reports a car for aggressive road behaviour, is the police required to make at least a traceable report?
. . .

In one instance, when a driver didn't like my look after his over accelerating brush pass, it escalated to gestures before he pulled over, jumped out of the car and punched me in the back after I'd avoided hitting him with the bike.
I knew then that he wanted to talk so I turned around and started riding back, very, very slowly, while weighing my options and causing him anxiety. He wasn't running toward me. I decided against the U-Lock and just started reciting his license plate number aloud when I got within ear shot.
When the distance closed to about twenty feet, he bolted for his coffin (blue Benz SUV) and took off.

I reported an assault though I had only a red mark where he'd punched me. My interest was in reporting a whacko on wheels.
Two police constables came to interview me that afternoon. The plate number didn't match the description of the vehicle so they wanted a description of the driver. Later that evening I got a call saying that since there were no witnesses, an assault charge likely wouldn't stick. But, the plate was off his beater Cheby. The insurance on the Benz had expired. Both cars were towed, impounded and he faced hefty fines before he could get them back.
I felt justice had been served.

 

[Takemehome]

Zoot wrote "That's why we the living should report every aggressive driver deliberately menacing and threatening cyclists. Give some future murderer a paper trail because there's seldom witnesses."

Yes sir, report every aggressive driver.

The pen is mightier than "the finger", like his car is mightier than your bike.

 

[Zoot Katz]

Zoot wrote "That's why we the living should report every aggressive driver deliberately menacing and threatening cyclists. Give some future murderer a paper trail because there's seldom witnesses."

Yes sir, report every aggressive driver.

The pen is mightier than "the finger", like his car is mightier than your bike.

I started carrying a pen and note pad (and mounted an AirZound) after being backed into at a stop light by a stunned scud jockey in a van.
It looked like he was going to turn right so I got to the left part of the lane. That's when he changed his mind and decided to back up instead. Looked right through me and kept coming as I started kick scootering the bike backward and yelling "HEEEEEEEYYYY!"
He stopped after I went down and just before his truck crushed my front wheel, frame and left calf. He asked if I wanted an ambulance. I was screaming and doing the pepper dance using fighting words hoping he'd hit me so I had an excuse to choke him to death. I'd lost it.
I told him I didn't need and ambulance but to call a cop. That's when he fukt off but I'd memorised his plate number.

As I was picking up my bike from the street a white Ford Taurus wagon started up, pulled out of its parking space, and hastily evaded and ignored me as it turned right at the light with me chasing it and yelling STOP.
I got the plate number of a likely witness but couldn't remember them both while I got to a phone.

Van dude told ICBC I ran into him.
I didn't have a witness except the chicken-shit punk in the white Taurus that got away because I didn't have a pen.

It happened July 4th, 2004 and that wrist still hurts occasionally. The bike was okay except for the front mud flap that was able to be repaired.
I still carry the notepad and pen but gave up on the AirZound. They're really lame at less than 80 psi and then you only get a few blasts.

 

[liveforphysics]

Took a bullet right through the windshield last night, and the bullet bounced around in the back of my car.

I've been shot towards before a few times, but never actaully shot at with intent to kill. Kinda an uncomfortable feeling. Also, very very loud when the bullet hits the glass, and then it sprays glass bits in your face. In movies and things, bullets just seem to poke through glass with hardly any noise. Now I know how fake that is, as it sounded like a bomb went off in the car when the bullet struck the glass.

What did I do to provoke getting my windshield shot? I was rolling along nice and easy minding my own business, and glanced over a group of guys standing on the corner. That's it. The bullet struck, I took off as fast as possible, no further shots hit my car.

Doing ANYTHING to escalate a situation between car/car, car/bike, car/pedestrian, pedestrian/bike is ALWAYS the most dumb choice. Always. Even a dirty glance can be enough for someone to pull a gun and shoot you down. I remember a time years ago when I worked as a car audio installer, and a co-worker reacted by yelling back at a customer that was yelling and running his mouth. The guy waited outside the back exit for 2 hours until this guy went to take a load of boxes to the dumpster, and then stabbed him 3 times in the side before running away. These were all just highschool kids. Snitches are always the number 1 targets for violance, followed by people who are such fools that they try to escalate a situation by bringing there own anger/emotion to mix with the other persons.

Pics of my poor car.

This picture is just because pics of street cars on wrinkle-wall slicks are so sexy

 

[swbluto]

(A single shock face seems too mild to accurately convey my feeling.)

Jesus, do you deal drugs or is Renton really that dangerous? I mean, sure, the statistics say violent crime is 4x in Renton/Auburn/Kent/Southern-Seattle-area as common as it is for the national average but I didn't think it was *that* common.

Man, I'm starting to think the population density of Seattle really ups the likelihood of death and injury. I saw this guy taking the 358 bus who was shot in the jaw near "The Ave" (A street near the main UW campus, downtown seattle) while participating in a Juggalo event of some sort. According to the guy, it just came out of nowhere. Those kinds of random happenings are very much unheard of in Spokane.

 

[Zoot Katz]

. . .
Pics of my poor car. . . .

Sheeet. I did worse to my own windshield with my fist.
It was a hot day in traffic and wanted out of the cage.
ooops!

 

[Lock]

These were all just highschool kids.

High school kids with guns. Wholly crap Physics... glad yer OK. Not sure I'd stick around in the situation either but another example of how a cheap camera might come in handy these daze... No chance there're any security cameras around the area that might have "captured" the shooter?
tks
lock

 

[liveforphysics]

These were all just highschool kids.

High school kids with guns. Wholly crap Physics... glad yer OK. Not sure I'd stick around in the situation either but another example of how a cheap camera might come in handy these daze... No chance there're any security cameras around the area that might have "captured" the shooter?
tks
lock

I wouldn't want to know Lock. I didn't even call the police. Snitch once on anything for any reason, and not only would my raceing career/income be forever destroyed, but I've noticed over the years that snitches seem to be bullet magnets. I will be much happier just paying the $250 for a new windshield and making a little detour to avoid those blocks of Lakewood.

 

[Lock]

good point. Though I am reminded of the Edmund Burke quote "All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing."... If this had happened to me then next week the same kid w/gun killed someone, I would regret not having done something (eg check whether there were any security/traffic cams in the area...)
tks

 

[Toorbough ULL-Zeveigh]

What did I do to provoke getting my windshield shot?

musta known u work for microsoft.
u really ought to remove those bumper stickers.

makes anything i was gonna add extremely lame by comparison.
at least u've helped me make to up my mind to spend the $ on a full face kevlar helmet.

 

[vanilla ice]

To the OP definitely not the way to handle it, but you came out of it alright. And wiser.

Phys- Dang just for turning your neck? I would at least let the cops know there is a shooter in that area so mebbe some poor shmuck doesn't get a bullet in them. OT: Btw nice eg, those oe honda ball seat lug nuts on a conical seat lenso? If so, careful.

 

[dogman dan]

 

[John in CR]

Damn, you guys all need to move to Costa Rica. That stuff just doesn't happen here, other than some car on car aggression...never toward a pedestrian or cyclist. Tostino, I've got a worse temper than you and most times I have the chain I use to lock my bike hanging around my neck with the lock on one end, so that confrontation would have gotten really ugly. Luke just cash out and come on down. After a close call like that you've gotta be thinking the same. I'll even volunteer to help catch some fish for your tanks.

John