Why are cyclists so angry?

[YoJesse]

lighthearted

It's only Tuesday and already I've had 'get out of the road' and 'wake up you dozy cow' thrown at me. But I should count myself lucky because yesterday a cyclist shouted I'm gonna stab you in the fucking neck' at a bloke he almost ran over!

Shouldn't all the endorphins make them really happy? It's worse than road rage round here.

Moving very soon to somewhere more rural so hoping cyclists will be more your 'call the midwife, big wicker baskets filled with flowers' types than your 'neck stabbing' types.

[YoJesse]

scarednoob I'm hoping it's just London too. Haven't come across any hot topless guys this morning

[HooseRice]

Shouty cyclists tend to angry-men-of-a-certain-age types who feel it is okay to shout at women.

IME most cyclists are lovely.

I don't cycle any more but would get ranty if a bad driver nearly wiped me out.

[gasman]

I stopped cycling to work as it was turning me into a rangy horrible person.

The reason - constan vigilance - cars being moronic, pedestrians waltzing out in front of you. I never run red lights and a very law abiding but install feared for my life every day.

[TinklyLittleLaugh]

My friend complained about a horrid cyclist who had kicked her car

I suggested perhaps she was a bit too close.

[CelticPromise]

If you cycle in traffic you have to be aggressive to a degree or you'll never get anywhere. There is no excuse for being rude for no reason but you have to be loud sometimes, because cycle paths are full of idiotic pedestrians slowly wandering about. It's good manners to tell someone you are going to pass them too.

[t4gnut]

When I ride I make sure there's no way my intentions are ambiguous - I will position myself so you see me and take up road space so you can't try and squeeze past me. However in past month I've had:

• dozy fuckwit car owner parked on 'no parking' single yellows open car door in front of me causing much screeching of brakes and choice words fired at them - completely oblivious to checking something was coming before opening.

• bus driver I made sure could see me in rear mirror start to pull out of bus stop and then suddenly realise there was something there

• completely oblivious pram pushed out into road in front of me whilst mum was on phone looking in opposite direction from which no cars would come

• BMW driver - naturally - thinking he could squeeze past me and overtake on the inside at a roundabout

Grumble as much as you like but I've told my kids in no uncertain terms if out on bikes they stay on pavements.

I am very much in favour of retaking driving tests on a regular basis.

[dodobookends]

Ordinarily I would agree with you OP, but they probably do have cause to be angry at the moment.

Olympic cyclist Chris Boardman's mother was run over and killed by a truck while out cycling the other day.

[ppeatfruit]

I'm generally on the side of cyclists BUT in London, they can be horrendous; I was crossing the road with my small GD, we were on a lighted pedestrian crossing in our favour. Luckily I'm streetwise I never take them for granted, A cyclist rode right across it in front of us . I shouted at him and got a V sign and he swore at us. Great eh?

[VeryPunny]

Good Lord, I am appauled that cyclists are shouting at you - we get enough abuse from car drivers as it is! I cycle to work and got a load htis morning for not apparently cycling in the gutter. I cycle on some country roads and you bet I'm not cycling in the gutter. If you can't get past me when I'm in the middle of the lane, you can't get past safely, simple as. Cyclists have as much right to use the road as cars.

The irritating thing this morning was, that there was nothing coming the other way and there was nothing stopping the oik in the car overtaking safely in the opposite lane.

[HooseRice]

There was a guy I saw every morning in a bike like contraption that he sat low to the ground in. A cross between a bike and a go kart. Every day he'd be shouting at drivers and other cyclists. He often banged on cars. He was killed when a lorry ran right over the top of him. It was a shame but I wasn't one bit surprised. He was hard to spot on the road.

[Ellybellyboo]

Shouty cyclists tend to angry-men-of-a-certain-age types who feel it is okay to shout at women.

Yes, I agree.

On all the occasions I've been shouted at by a cyclist it's been been a MAMIL type, who seem to think the local cycle paths are their own race tracks, and woe betide anyone who gets in the way of them breaking their personal best.

I cycle to and from work every day and use a cycle path which goes along by the river, no traffic or anything. It is supposed to be a shared use path (people walking their dogs, toddlers on trikes, etc,) and most of us are all very polite, get out of each other's way while saying good morning, but at least once each way I'll get shouted at

[YoJesse]

docobookends oh that's so sad, I didn't know

[BertPuttocks]

This week alone (as a pedestrian) I've seen:

• Woman with child step straight out into the path of a cyclist. By a miracle he managed to stop just in time. The woman was so busy shouting at him as she continued across the road that a car on the opposite side also had to screech to a halt to avoid her.
  

• A driver parked on the yellow zigzags outside the school at pick-up time flung open his door, narrowly missing a man with a child on a bike.
  

• Two cyclists being overtaken by a van when they were on a roundabout.
  

I think they were all too shocked to shout but I wouldn't have blamed them if they'd been angry.

[MetalMidget]

I only get angry when cycling when I've nearly been murdered by drivers who have no respect for the fact they're driving several tonnes of metal around. Ones who pass far too close (top tip - if a cyclist can hit your car, you're passing too close), do dangerous overtakes (on blind bends, on traffic calming pinch points), ones who don't give way when they should on junctions or roundabouts (because they 'haven't seen you', or have completely misjudged your speed, or are so woefully stupid they actually believe that cars automatically have right of way), or ones that are just being random because they're on their phone/shouting at their kids in the back, etc.

Admittedly, I also see a lot of the above when I'm in my car, but it's not quite as blood curdling when you know that the outcome of any impact is likely to be a crumpled panel and an insurance claim, rather than broken bones or death. The standard of driving in this country is appalling, I wish they'd start bringing in mandatory re-testing and Dutch laws of liability.

[ExConstance]

Not all on road matters. Cyclists seem to be very "entitled " in their attitude. A couple of weeks back there were two small groups of cyclists in my DM's local small town. As I was browsing in a shop window one lot crowded round and shouted over me as some of them stood one side and the others went off down an alley. 20 minutes later they wer standing their cycles against a little barrier around the Costa Coffee place - it was only cloth and aluminium poles and not strong enough, they didn't even go in to Costa. The following day took my mother out to a rather smart gastro pub for her lunch, a group of them, quite sweaty and wearing log covered bright lycra sat on the next table, it was the sort of place people celebrate birthdays etc. and I'm surprised they weren't asked to sit outside. To cap it all on the way home down a narrow country lane we came upon two lycra clad cyclists, one deliberately weave backwards and forwards in the road to stop be going past with his knees sticking out as a gesture. I'm middle aged, I drive a tiny Fiat quite slowly, I found this incomprehensibly rude. I'm sure they are motorists too, probably drive Audis.

[wavingnow]

Everyone gets more angry when they get tired, just look at toddlers plus all the car/winter chimney/country manure etc fumes that are breathed in must have an affect.

[JudyCoolibar]

There is no such thing as car tax.

There is, or at least there is Vehicle Excise Duty. I suspect what you mean is that there is no such thing as road tax, which is absolutely correct.

[StayAtHomeNotMum]

yojesse as a rural dweller, sadly I have to report that cyclists are no better in the countryside.

We get mass groups racing (either speed or distance), and lots of lycra clad "pleasure" cyclists out from towns. The locals are all in their cars as there are no longer any village shops to cycle to, a la Miss Marple, for the daily groceries

I have to admit to a pathological hatred of nearly all cyclists, as examples of the sub species have endangered my life (and my horse's life) on several occasions. I now tend to tar them all with the same brush, unless proved otherwise.

[JudyCoolibar]

I don't think being scared really excuses dangerous conduct on the part of cyclists. Within the last week I've seen a cyclist swear at a driver because the cyclist tried to overtake the driver on the inside and then cut straight across in front of him to turn right, only the driver wouldn't let him - and a minute later I saw the same cyclist go straight across a pedestrian crossing without stopping causing the people already on it to have to jump back. I've also seen another cyclist approaching another crossing at speed shouting "I'm not stopping" only to have to think again when a woman pushed her case out in front of her and said "Oh, I think you are".

I'm also slightly cynical about the ecology/fitness credentials of the cyclists concerned. I regularly walk in a nearby park. It's very noticeable that at this time of year the roads in the park are teeming with lycra-clad types on state-of-the-art bikes with go-faster stripes, but as soon as it gets colder and wetter somehow they melt away and the only cyclists to be seen are the commuters doggedly pushing on whatever the weather. They're the ones I respect.

[Ifailed]

StayAtHomeNotMum
I'm a cyclist (& driver), but must agree with your position as a Rider. Far too many cyclists don't know how to pass a horse. I think it's primarily an education thing as when I've been out with others and met rider(s), I inevitably have to tell them to slow down, warn the rider etc. It's quite odd, because we are both at risk from bad drivers!

[PanGalaticGargleBlaster]

When you have had car doors opened up on you, cars pull out of side roads without looking, cars suddenly change lanes without looking or indicating, verbal abuse for no reason whatsoever or generally had your life endangered because someone really needs to send that text/eat their breakfast or look for something in the backseat while driving you tend to get a a bit twitchy the moment a driver starts to display twattish behaviour. And yes, I know there is a sizeable minority of awful cyclists who ignore red lights, ride on pavements and ignore one way streets but the key difference is a cyclists way more likely to get badly hurt or killed from someone else's stupidity.

[Sonders]

I think motorists are as angry as cyclists on average, just they have their own little metal box to muffle the screams!

I occasionally cycle to work and hate it. It's only 15 mins through the city centre but I get overtaken for no reason (we're all in traffic), cut off, squeezed into the kerb and once a teenager made fun of my helmet.

I do also see a lot of cyclists that are total dicks too, giving us all a bad rep!

[LucilleBluth]

I've never really had a problem with cyclists until one day last week when three Lycra clad men went so fast over a zebra crossing that they nearly killed a woman and two children on their way to school. I came across them further up the road, rolled my window down and said that they'd been totally irresponsible......to be told to fuck off, shouted at and given the finger.

[ppeatfruit]

The heat does make everyone mad on the roads though. Cycling in this heat at midday is lunacy IMO.

[Ilovetea82]

Perhaps their Lycra is too tight (I'm assuming they are men btw) around the bottom and squeezing their brains.

Honestly some really do think they are in an Olympic time trial and it is their right to thunder along as fast as they can. Others are much better and aware of their surroundings (perhaps these are the ones who have invested in a larger size of Lycra leotard)

I used to cycle all the time when I lived in Holland and there there was a much more relaxed attitude to things