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.

Last week I had a cyclist holding on to my wing mirror at the lights. I thought he was trying to balance. No he wanted a wee ride and got quite angry when I refused to move until he let go. He wasn't the first cyclist to grab a hold of my car in order to get pulled along.

I can see how cyclists can feel vulnerable on the road. Equally my experience of some cyclists make me want to void them.

Are cyclists any more angry than car drivers?

ShottsFired Very possibly. I don't question the statistics, but that still doesn't alter the fact that the post I mentioned made me laugh out loud.

It is true that women are generally much less aggressive cyclists

Sorry, but that is just tired old gender bollocks. Go down to your local velodrome (Herne Hill if in S London) and watch girls/women race. Walk away from the finish line to the other side and listen to them.

I'm a regular cyclist. Things that annoy me are (i) people who walk out into the road without looking. They haven't heard a vehicle coming so assume it's safe. So they walk out in front of me and look offended when I shout at them; (ii) people in cars who drive into the cycles box at the traffic lights so there's no room in front of them for cyclists; (iii) people who sound their horn when they are behind you. Yes, I am slower, but I will pull in to let you pass as soon as it's safe. I won't jump into a patch of stinging nettles just so you can arrive at your destination three seconds earlier though.

I know it might feel like cyclists are more dangerous to pedestrians, but this is actually not the case. Pedestrians are more likely to be killed by drivers than by cyclists even while on the pavement. Cyclists have a pretty good reason to want to avoid collisions - they'd likely come off almost as badly as the person they hit!

In five years of cycle commuting ive only shouted at one person, a pedestrian who caused me to come off my bike and then laughed at me as I was bleeding on the floor. If they'd said sorry I wouldn't have shouted.

Ive never shouted at anyone else, not any of the cars who squeeze past me and then drive right up against the kerb in slow traffic to try and prevent me getting infront of them again, not even shouted at drivers who pull right out infront of me.

Ive never been shouted at. Id like to think I'm considerate. If im on a single track road and there's a car behind I will pull in at the first gate. I do take primary position on narrow roads or at junctions and people will have to wait a minute, tough. It makes it safer for me. I pull in for every horse rider I pass, i slow down when passing pedestrians, especially ones with dogs. I will stop while someone catches a dog running about the place if necessary and I smile and say thanks. I have a bell and I use it.

Whothe You sound an ideal cyclist I wish EVERY road user were like you.

Thing is though that bikes aren't very dangerous to pedestrians.

That is ABSOLUTELY false. Bikes can be extremely dangerous or even potentially fatal to pedestrians, if ridden illegally.

I have been hospitalised twice due to bikes (ridden on pavements or through red lights) smashing into me. I have witnessed a guidedog smashed into by an illegal cyclist. I witnessed a cyclist decide to speed through a red light even though he couldn't see if there was anyone on the crossing and have to chuck his bike onto the pavement at the last minute to avoid a primary school group.

If a bike smashes into me at speed, due to my medical conditions, there is a very high chance it would kill me.

I have 'near-misses' with illegal cyclists literally nearly every day where I live, and it is absolutely terrifying. There is one crossing right next to my house that I do not use any more unless it's quiet because it is simply too dangerous, due to cyclists darting out across the red light from next to buses (so there's no way to see them coming).

It's one thing for cyclists to point out that the aggressive illegal cyclists are a minority, that's understandable, but please don't defend people who cycle illegally or claim that it's not dangerous because it is. It's illegal for a reason!!

My friends dad was hit and killed by a cyclist. I'd say thats quite dangerous, wouldn't you?

StressedAndConfusedArgh Wow, that link showed me cyclists are vastly more dangerous to pedestrians than I realised.

Cycles accounted for about 2% of all urban, non-motorway vehicular traffic and were involved in just over 1% of pedestrian fatalities and 1.7% of serious injuries to pedestrians;

So, relatively, not much difference in deaths caused by cars and bikes then when you take numbers of each type of vehicle into account (as you should). Especially considering bikes weigh about a 20th of even a small car and generally move much slower.

"Mile-for-mile in urban areas, motor vehicles were about 1.6 times more likely than a cycle to kill a pedestrian;"

Only 1.6x more likely?? When they make up 98% of non-motorway traffic? Bloody hell.

They secretly hate cycling, especially in this heat, but do it anyway for fitness, environment or any other.

IceRoadDucker

There were 19 pedestrian deaths involving cyclists in that five year period, out of 2122 total. Risk is made up of both severity and likelihood, and the likelihood of a cyclist being in a collision with a pedestrian is much less than that of a car. (And also note that this statistic doesn't state who was at fault in the collision. I'd guess it is split pretty 50/50.)

There are a steady stream of threads on here complaining about dangerous cyclists. They are missing the point. If you want to reduce the number of people being killed/injured then you need to focus on motor vehicles. If you cut down the deaths involving cyclists by half, that's about 2 lives saved a year. If you do the same with motor vehicles it's over 200 lives.

I am angry on my bike because I'm fed up of cars passing me who are utterly incapable of moving fully across the white line and insist on giving me 3mm of room. I felt one motorist's wing mirror whoosh past my elbow last week. Not fun. Also not fun is when cars try to pass me when there's something coming! Being beside 2 cars going head to head, each doing 60mph in enough to blow a gasket on anyone, if you ask me.

Source for the 19 deaths in 5 years claim? Any figures I've seen have been of the order of 1 or 2 per decade.

(Incidentally, as a cyclist, I get the rage at adults cycling on narrow, busy pavements where they're not marked as shared. But really compared to being in control of half a tonne of metal, teh risks are pretty miniscule.)

Ah, sorry, found the link upthread. The 1.6 X figure seems quite unlikely to be borne out by the statistics they quote, so I'm not sure they've checked the arithmetic correctly.

If you want to reduce the number of people being killed/injured then you need to focus on motor vehicles. If you cut down the deaths involving cyclists by half, that's about 2 lives saved a year. If you do the same with motor vehicles it's over 200 lives.

Why is it an either/or situation??

I PERSONALLY have been and am at much greater risk from cyclists than I am from cars. Illegal cyclists endanger me on a daily basis and have forced me to make significant changes to my daily life in order to keep myself safe.

I am honestly in shock that anyone is defending illegal dangerous cyclists!

Who's defending them?

It's a depressingly common trope on here and elsewhere that the supposed homogenous group called 'cyclists' are particularly bad, dangerous etc. This is not borne out by any statistics. Indeed cyclists are one of the most at risk road users (and before anyone says it's their own fault for cycling stupidly, 2/3 of the time in a collision with a car/lorry it is the driver at fault). So, yes we get fed up at being demonised. That is not defending dangerous cycling. I too get frustrated at cyclists who go through red lights, are without lights etc. But the rhetoric around 'cyclists behaving badly' only serves to reinforce preconceived negativity that a substantial number of people have towards cyclists. And that is dangerous for cyclists.

I'm sorry to hear about your accidents, and I can completely understand why you are angry about it. It isn't fair on you to have to alter what you want to do through no fault of your own. I'm sure you've tried things already, but is there any way you can raise a stink with highways, get the police to do spot checks at the lights and fine some cyclists to hopefully send them a message?

It's difficult getting accurate statistics too. This article implies an average of 2 pedestrians killed in collisions with bicycles per year, not 4. And making up 1.8% of urban traffic but 0.25% of deaths.

I can't get my head around being more afraid of cyclists than cars. Cars really scare me as a pedestrian.

I've been riding a bike for 70years and with a happy smile until last year I was hit by a car . The driver was charged by the police and pled guilty in court , then the next day almost hit me again. I am not smiling when I ride my bike any more.
Drivers hate cyclists and some of them wd be happy to hit us and do so.

To be honest a lot of drivers drive like they have completely forgotten they are in charge of a ton or two of lethal metal. Speeding, accelerating when you cross the road, driving through red lights, not indicating... genuinely not giving a fuck if they cause the death of another person.

You have to assume every road user is a myopic fuckwit with no concept of highway code or peripheral awareness all the time.

Fixed it for you. :)

aamrmal That is a terrible story, but I don't hate the average cyclist only the dangerous ones, I also hate stupid pedestrians who cross the road on their mobiles and drivers who drive dangerously, and there do seem to be a lot of lunatic speeding cyclists in London. Iam a driver please don't generalise.

It's interesting the things that people notice. Cyclists going through red lights in particular seems to be an issue. But vehicles ignoring rule 170 of the highway code (give way to a pedestrian if they're crossing a road you're turning into) is almost the default. We've all been brainwashed to assume that cars have priority even when they don't.