Ffs. Today I had to move for a male cyclist!!!

[MattCauthon]

This takes patriarchy chicken to a whole new level! Walking in the park. Wide path (2-3m wide). I am walking along just off the centre. Admittedly, typing a message to.ds on my phone. Bike rider rings his bell at me. I look up. He's coming straight at me, requiring me to take a couple of steps to the left to get out of his way. There was space for about 3 bicycles to the right of me.

It makes me so angry. He was on a bloody bike- it's a gentle curve and he's past me. Middle aged white guy. Who, in my experience, are the worst for this.

Every time I am in London j am constantly having to move for men. I am so so tired of it. Sometimes I try not to. But I am a small middle aged woman who knows.perfectly well I will just be sent flying.

Right, I've done a diagram. Whiel doing it, I realised that what I hadn't expressed but was particularly annoying is that the entrance/exit to the park was shortly behind me and to my right. So really, he needed to be heading in that direction anyway!

I can’t believe you thought this was relevant to feminism 🙄

You were being a phone zombie. He rang the bell to make you aware of his presence because you were causing a hazard. I would have done exactly the same.

I think it's a london thing - City in particular. I don't find this level of aggression when near home etc. Yes, still expected to move, but less likely to get aggressively bumped into.

@impulsedriven As I said - because, in my experience, the worst for this are middle aged/older white men. Admittedly, I concede that they dominate in the City in London so it's entirely possible that skews my anecdotal findings but then, there's a local waitrose near us where on a Saturday, DH as a (almost) middle aged white man is constantly horrified at the entitlement he sees there from the (significantly) older white men. We've now got to the point where we laugh about if we happen to be int here together.

Ffs i moved out the way for 2 women cyclist today.
I moved to the side let them pass and got on with my life.
On the way back i did the same for a toddler on his bike.
Op in a nice way get over it the world dose not revolve around just you.
Would you have made a thread if it was a woman?

No. Because I am 100% certain that a female cyclist would have simply moved slightly over to the right as it was easy enough, was on the path to the exit anyway and the path is very much for the priority of walkers (many of whom are children or dogs).

You are overthinking this.
It's safer for him to ding his bell so you are aware he's there than you bump into each other. I ding my bell all the time. Better to annoy someone than collide.

I had a walking stick temporarily after my umpteenth operation ( think a condition similar to MS) and was crossing on the pedestrian lights outside my office in the city of London when it changed to flashing then red as I was halfway across. I got verbally abused by a kiwi cyclist who then proceeded to curve around me on his bike. I think I was ruining his track times for the day. It happened frequently but for some reason that one stuck out. Did he / these sort of people seriously think I had a stick and was struggling for fun ? There’s some seriously selfish people out there and sadly 99% of the time in these sort of situations they’re male. Oh and the crossing eventually got made longer on green as even fit people were struggling to get across the very wide road in the allotted time.

OK I live in a road which is VERY popular for 'country walks' At this time of day 3/4 are single people and usually ON THEIR PHONE with headsets on. If I go out I invariably have to ping my bell or beep my horn because they are NOT AWARE of me and not paying any attention to their surroundings. Even then they often go one way and dog on elastic lead the other. Saw a near miss a couple of days ago when this happened and a girl on an electric scooter also on her phone shot past me at over 20mph and very very nearly toppled herself over the dog lead.

I would say he was just 'letting you know cyclist coming past' in case you randomly decide to veer off centre

You didn't till he rang his bell 😂

The excuses women make for male entitlement.

Let it go.

These always remind me when I met the very best and very worse of men on a path. There are signs telling bikes to yield to walkers and runners and we all yield to horses.

I was running down a hill and a cyclist is coming up. He bodily throws himself into a bush while I’m wondering what he’s doing. Turns out he was making room for the Strava-Twat who was barrelling down, didn’t intend to make way, whooshes past so close I can feel it, doing god know what speed. The bush bloke had to make room or he would have hit one of us. Even though we both had right of way Strava-Twat didn’t. I often think kindly of the bush bloke. That’s an ally.

That path is used by commuters and I refuse to move for the packs of arseholes who should cycle single file but don’t want to. If they hit me, I will sue and own their overpriced Twat-Cycles. Bwahahahahaha.

Where I am, it’s small children cycling on the pavement that drives me bonkers, and the women with a pod attached to a bike who are taxi ing children. I loathe having a bell rung behind me as though I should step aside on the pavement. I must admit that where I am the male white cyclists are impeccable and tbh I’ve never seen a non white cyclist!

😂 True. But once he did, it was clear!

Or, just a thought, instead of me having to move out of HIS way when he rang his bell.... he could have just gently done a slight turn and got out of mine?!

We have like a short road we have to go down to get to school (well, don't have to, but it cuts off about 4 miles off the journey!). Its full of craters because its an unadopted road and there's a couple of blind bends and only space for one car to go round.

I always alow right down to crawling and beep approaching both bends. You can guess whether irs male or female drivers who mostly bomb it round and then sit there expecting you to reverse back round a blind bend...

Once you're past thr bends it's about 20 metres until the end of the single vehicle bit which then opens onto a wide, quiet toad with a waiting area. If you're coming onto the single track road, you can clearly see if there is a vehicle coming.

The number of men who are too impatient to wait the ten seconds or so for someone to come off the road and just push through anyway, expecting the other cars to bump up thr grass verge so they can get past.

I've been known to turn off my ignition and wait for them to reverse because I'm not risking my car.

It's always the men as well, in 5 years of driving this road, I can't even remember a woman doing it.

It's not a London thing, it's a cyclist thing - and particularly a male cyclist thing. Up here, the Scottish Outdoor Access Code is very clear about who has priority on shared paths but no, a ding of the bell (if you're lucky - sometimes it's a "bike behind" or something which may or may not be heard) whilst not adjusting speed downwards to take account of pedestrians on the path = get out of my way immediately as I cycle as close to you as I can at speed. Mostly men, mostly of a certain age. It's like they're getting a rush from their last remaining drops of testosterone.

We have a new thing in London where joggers (men) run in the road as the pavement is too slow for them, with headphones in so can’t hear the car behind them. I’ve been polite twice… I might run the unfortunate ones over next time.

It's spread from London - we have this too. Why??

I have the same problem swimming
I go every week day it's always the same ladies and a lovely swim
I used to go on a Sunday
But there's 3 males that just plough up and down not caring who is in their way ,I've been kicked a few times they swim so close ,and if I wasn't watching where they were ,and moving out of their way I'd of been head on hit many times
So rude and entitled

I was on a narrow track, dog each side, both on leads, a woman rang her bell from behind to get me to move. I have started being assertive and said she would have to wait until the track widened. She whined that she had rung her bell. I told her that when cyclists showed me the same courtesy when I was driving, I would move out of the way of cyclists. It's a shared use track and pedestrians have right of way.

I have done this several times now, but only the second time to a woman. The previous one was on a footpath through a small estate of old people's bungalows, with vast 'no cycling' signs at each end!

We have a multi-use path with cyclists like this. If I get ‘dinged’ when running and they slow as though to make me move yet further aside so they don’t have to turn their handlebars, I will call out “go round me” and proceed on.

It’s ace if you have headphones on because you can nonchalantly turn and ignore them.

As they’re mostly clipped in on road bikes, they will have slowed to the point of wobbling and will have to start pedalling so they don’t fall off. 😌 it’s a good game.

Mostly it’s nice people, women, kids flying past on balance bikes and on one occasion, a chatty old fella on an electric mountain bike who managed to cycle at my running pace for a good mile while we randomly shot the breeze.

I'm a London cyclist. I used to ding my bell at phone zombies in the middle of paths to warn them to pay attention because they often suddenly veer off.
But after a few aggressive reactions from both men and women I now shout 'careful there'.
I also got a bell that goes 'ding dong' as people perceive that as less aggressive.

No winners. Fwiw in other countries it's normal to ring your bell to warn others. Here it's interpreted as FUCK YOUUUU FUCK OFFFFF.

The worst people are those with noise cancelling headphones in the middle of more narrow paths (but still enough space for pedestrian + bike). They can't hear any bells or calls or shouting.

The amount of adjusting my behaviour while cycling compared to other countries is insane. And don't get me started on the absolute cunt drivers still unaware of the recent updates & clarifications to the Highway Code around cycle safety/distance.

I cycle a lot in London, though I tend to avoid shared use paths if possible. I come across people walking and looking at their phones all the time. Annoying but normal.

The safe thing to do is slow down and go round the person, no aggressive bell ringing. That's what I do. But then I am not an entitled man.

No winners. Fwiw in other countries it's normal to ring your bell to warn others. Here it's interpreted as FUCK YOUUUU FUCK OFFFFF.

No, the bit I interpreted as "FUCK YOUUUUUU FUCK OFFFFF" was the part where he continued to ride straight at me after I looked up, and I had to take two quick steps to the side to get out of his way......

If he'd rung his bell as he moved over so that we could pass each other, I'd have assumed he just wanted to be sure that I realised he was there so that I didn't lunge INTO his path or something. But he rang, I looked up, and without a doubt, if I hadn't moved he'd have hit me or would have had to do a major last minute swerve.