I got road raged today, was I in the wrong?

[VivaLeBeaver]

I'm waiting to come out the supermarket carpark onto a fairly busy road. In the left hand turn lane and indicating left. A woman on a cycle with a kid on a tag along tried undertaking me. Managed to shove between my car and the pavement but couldn't get any further then level with me due to the nose of my car been a bit further to the left. Now I thought undertaking in this manner as a cyclist is dangerous if to illegal. I think she thought when the car infront of me moved I'd let her in - well I didn't I carried on,in a slow and safe manner. I was in no danger of hitting her at all but I did make her stop. As far as I was concerned she could wait her turn rather than trying to undertake a car which is clearly turning left.

So I'm now on the road, the cyclist and her cyclist husband are following. I come to amino roundabout, fairly big one for a mini roundabout and went right round it so I was double backed on myself. Fairly standard I'd have thought to save trying to turn right out the supermarket. Enough room and I was indicating.

As I went round the roundabout the bloke cyclist swore at me and told me I needed to have a P on me. I assume he means a P plate rather than a golden shower.

I know I could have let them undertake me and push infront but I don't have to. She's lucky to be honest I saw her. I think a lot of cars wouldn't and she and her kid could have been squished. Strangely he seemed more annoyed at me going all the way round the roundabout. That's not wrong is it?

If you have to pick on the language of a post to undermine it then there is really no point in the discussion.

Not really, Boney - it undermines itself, does it not? IN my experience/personal survey of one, I have been hit approx 7-8 times - nothing serious re injuries, am the most defensive of riders, and none of the incidents were my fault.

Not a scientific wide-ranging study I know.

This could be completely wrong, but perhaps it happened here:

maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=NR27+9SW&hl=en&ll=52.929939,1.293648&spn=0.001259,0.002414&sll=52.931448,1.301866&sspn=0.040302,0.077248&t=h&hnear=NR27+9SW,+United+Kingdom&z=19&layer=c&cbll=52.929892,1.293443&panoid=gHvFlz5hlEu81wh2pJ7kzw&cbp=12,37.53,,0,7.28

?

As a cyclist I would tend to wait tbh, but it's a difficult situation really, you get some motorists who whine and moan if cyclists ride in the middle of the lane (which is where I would be in this situation), and you get others who complain if they go up your inside. So whatever you do you can't win really.

I have had situations like me situated on the right of the lane, obviously turning right, and car drivers pulling up on my left and turning right across me so I cannot turn. Basically the best option is to take control of the lane when turning, which is to sit in the middle.

Sometimes you get a situation at a T-junction where there might be say five cars ahead, some turning left and some turning right, but with insufficient room for each to get in position to turn, so you have a car turning left waiting in the queue because the lane is blocked by a right-turning car. So I'm not going to wait for this to resolve itself, I'll just make my way to the front.

In this situation (my streetview link above) there's really no sense in the cyclist jumping in front of one or two left turning cars, the potential benefit (since the cars are turning left, which is much easier/quicker than turning right) is very small relative to the extra risk and it's crap riding really. But again it's difficult to say, it could be there were more cars behind you in which case she was just continuing to pass the stationary queue, which is more logical, and to be honest, as I said, positioning yourself behind the lead car is not really risky - you are not going to get squished going up the left-side of a car that is already turning left at a T-junction

Whether or not the riding was poor or ok, it sounds like you deliberately cut them up, which is not good driving, and then perhaps cut them up at the roundabout as well?

deliberately cut them off, even.

ThePan

the post was undermined by the use of term accident, taking away the relationship between accident and the thread. If we are going to just discuss accidents then we can talk about how the handle on my mug broke, but it won't relate to the topic posted by the OP.

In the case of the OP a cyclist tried to undertake a stationary vehicle, there was no space and the cyclist was wrong to perform the manoeuvre, if the cyclist had tried that with a bus turning left she and her child would be dead.

I admit that my use of the term majority is wrong, current stats do show that the mojority of accidents are caused by motorists but in the uk using the first set of data given by pirate your SMIDSY is 57% Motorist 43% cyclist not (IMO) as wide a gap as most cyclists would presume.

In the case of deaths by bus or lorry 75% are caused (if I read it right) by cyclists undertaking the bus or lorry whilst it is turning left. Only 25% by cyclists getting squeezed by the bus.

My point in all this is that both cyclists and motorists are to blame, motorists may be more to blame but not by much.

There's no point in saying that in saying things like 'if it had been a bus she would be dead'. You might as well say 'if it had been an angry elephant she would be dead'.

It wasn't, and I think people can tell the difference.

Of course the burning issue which hasn't been addressed is whether the OP had parked in a Parent and Child space at the supermarket...

Themap stunningcunt linked to is the right location. I'm not sure if the roundabout is actually a mini roundabout or just a small one.
It's not painted on, it's properly raised up, there's enough space to get round it.

StunningCunt
"It wasn't, and I think people can tell the difference. "

Some posters here can't tell the difference between a stationary car and one that deliberately blocked someone.

Indeed they can:

"I carried on,in a slow and safe manner. I was in no danger of hitting her at all but I did make her stop. As far as I was concerned she could wait her turn rather than trying to undertake a car which is clearly turning left."

Point made but there was still not enough space for her to undertake.

I don't overtake cyclists just before a roundabout.

Alternatively, if I'm in a particularly slow moving queue of cars at a roundabout, I leave room for cyclists to come up the inside. I don't have an exclusive right to the road simply because I'm driving, and I have no wish to hold up other people's journeys unnecessarily.

And I don't do that pig stupid thing of overtaking a cyclist and then immediately turning left...

Likewise, I wouldn't start wailing and whining about motorcyclists who come up the middle of two lines of near stationery traffic.

Neither do I go right round the roundabout to beat traffic jams, on the basic logic that if everyone did it, the traffic jam would be even worse.

What makes you think you have the right to be the only road user who can take measures to avoid being held up, OP?

sorry it has dropped the second half of the post should be:

Point made but there was still not enough space for her to undertake. as the car in front was stationary.

In this case it sounds like the cyclist was in the wrong through.

The OP's car was already stationary behind another car when the cyclist came along and tried to pass her but found she didn't have enough room.

When the car in front moved the OP would have had to set off first in order for anyone to get anywhere and so she carried on at the angle she was already at and in the direction she was already going.

It makes no sense that she should turn back out to the right and stop to let the cyclist pass, right on the corner she was turning left at and then turn back to the left again.

Surely as the OP had to move first it makes sense for her to carry on while the cyclist who had tried to push passed her waited for her to move out of the way, in this case by completing her left turn.

The map above is the location where it happened and it doesn't look like there is a great deal of room for a bike to pass a car or for the OP to straighten up from her left turn position and then back into it safely, just to let someone by her who had already misjudged the room she had to pass the OP's car while it was stationary.

No, the more I read it, the more the OP worries me. I wouldn't even describe what the father said as road rage. Of course we only have the OP's viewpoint, and her responses have been fairly aggressive, although that may not be relevant to her style of driving.

The alternative of course is that she was not driving as safely as she describes, the cyclists avoided her the first time but the second time she went round the roundabout although her intention was to turn right, and narrowly avoided being hit by her for the second time in a couple of minutes.

This is what she wrote:

I know I could have let them undertake me and push infront but I don't have to. She's lucky to be honest I saw her. I think a lot of cars wouldn't and she and her kid could have been squished.

Seriously, how fast should you be driving coming out of a supermarket? Why on earth would you be lucky not to see an entire family of cyclists, and why should they consider themselves lucky not be hit by a car?

geegee888
"I don't overtake cyclists just before a roundabout."
I agree, it shouldn't be done ever

"Alternatively, if I'm in a particularly slow moving queue of cars at a roundabout, I leave room for cyclists to come up the inside. I don't have an exclusive right to the road simply because I'm driving, and I have no wish to hold up other people's journeys unnecessarily."
Again I agree but sometimes due to road layout or the width of the road it is not always poossible to leave a gap

"And I don't do that pig stupid thing of overtaking a cyclist and then immediately turning left..."
See first reply

"Likewise, I wouldn't start wailing and whining about motorcyclists who come up the middle of two lines of near stationery traffic."
Its a legal manoeuvre, as long as it is done safely, although in moving traffic it is not filtering it is an overtaking manoeuvre and I have seen bikers stopped for unsafe overtaking in traffic

"Neither do I go right round the roundabout to beat traffic jams, on the basic logic that if everyone did it, the traffic jam would be even worse."
It is legal though and can be safer than turning right at a junction and it is also not as annoying as when motorists exit the road up the exit ramp only to appear on the entry road on the other side

I'm not convinced, OP...

Point being: the cyclist was probably in the wrong in the first place, but it would have been better to let them through rather try and force them to queue.

But she couldn't let them through without first manoeuvring her car back out of the left turn position it was already in before the cyclist came along and misjudged the space she had to pass, and then moving back into that position, on a tight bend which joins a busy road.

And the OP says the position she would have been left it might have meant that as she turned she was on the wrong side of the road to some degree. That sounds far more dangerous than moving out of the way but on the same course she was already positioned to take while the cyclist waited.

It really does sound like the cyclist put herself and her child at risk and forced the OP to make the decision to either continue her course while the cyclist waited when she was able to move or put herself into a more dangerous turning position for other road users by manoeuvring to allow her to pass.

I would have let the bikes go. It doesn't really matter who is right or wrong. I would not want to move my car knowing there were bikes there, or worrying that they were in my blind spot.

If her car was second in the queue, looking at the streetview above, turning left, when moving forward she could either position herself immediately to the right of the white line separating the lanes, or follow the line of the kerb round to the left.

A bicycle doesn't that much room, and you can clearly see that from second to first position the amount of available space nearly doubles. So she must have seen the bike and chosen not to allow it through.

Letting the bike through would depend on the position of the car and how "stuck" the cyclist was. It is possible that in turning in a way to get out would cause the back of the car to pivot in causing more issues.

The street view and the overhead view from the map give two different shapes of exit road. I can only see this happening if the OP is at the start of the curve.