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28 comments
by the look of the road which appears to go on forever into infinity with not another single car on the road, I hardly think that riding two abreast could be construed by a reasonable person as being inconsiderate. If you (in a car) approached a car doing 30 or 40 on this road you would overtake it as soon as look at it, so what would be the problem with two abreast?
Sadly, riding two abreast really irritates a lot of drivers and causes them to lose their rags - even when the road is perfectly clear. My point was simply if you are riding two abreast and a car, van, lorry approaches you, out of courtesy and respect, drop back to single file and let the driver through. After all - they "own" the road ... don't they???? (Har, har, har!! Especially if they drive a BMW!!) On a bike, you really are vulnerable and deference is to my mind always the safer option ... if you want to stay healthy and try live as long as you can!
What a turd. Ain't it strange and utterly unforgiveable that any driver should want to interfere with the enjoyment, pleasure and lives of anyone else? Provided, of course, that the cyclists did nothing wrong ie.: giving turd the finger, or riding two abreast. In the end, it's all about respect for other people and most of this forum's commentators have got it right - what complete arrogance from turd and it is shown by most drivers that you, the cyclist, are an imbecile to be abused, taunted and dismissed for the irritant that we cyclists clearly are!
I have always tried to respect other road users, but don't you just hate it when on blind bends or on cresting a hill, you wave the car, truck, lorry or white van through telling them it is safe to overtake you ... and they simply ignore you, not even giving you the courtesy of flashing lights or a wave to say thank you. So far, this week, I am 0 for 7 and it is only Monday!! I waved through 7 drivers on a 23m ride and not one acknowledged my courtesy to them. Not one. So ... may the fleas of a 1000 camels infest their underpants!!! Nuff said!
So the cops traced the guy, James Ernst, and fined him. Note the detail about other cars having to pass him:
James Ernst, 75, clearly has strong feelings about sharing the road with bike riders. But rather than use his words, Ernst allegedly opted to harass a pair of riders by trailing them in his SUV and blaring his horn for more than five minutes. Bicyclist Dirk Friel and a friend were enjoying a nice ride near Longmont, Colo., when Ernst pulled up behind them. The two allowed Ernst enough room to pass, but he instead slowed down and repeatedly honked at the pair, backing up traffic to the point other cars had to pass him, officials said. State troopers used the video to catch up with Ernst and cited him for harassment and impeding the flow of traffic, but the best ticket had to have been the one for improper use of a horn or warning device.
http://news.uk.msn.com//blog/trending-blogpost.aspx?post=60bd3a28-5053-4...
My point was that i'm sure we have all encountered nutters on the road at some point and because i am not Jason Bourne and frankly because i cant be bothered i mainly just let dickheads get on with their life being a dickhead and dont give the them the satisfaction of 'fronting' them.
They may win what they consider a small victory in an instance but in the game of life i get to win.
My point really is that 2 minutes of YouTube video is not sufficient to make a judgement on this case. What happened in the two minutes before the video? Or the two minutes before that?
It's clear that the rear of the two riders was level with the SUV at the start of the video at the head of a line of traffic, what was happening? Why was that rider not closer to the front rider, why was the SUV at that point going so slowly? Had something happened? Had something been said? Did the driver have any previous history of this kind of action? Was there a relationship between the cyclist and driver? Was the driver actually being aggressive for another reason (such as sporting rivalry or as above, his wife having an affair with the man)?
All of those questions need to be answered before a judgement is made.
Occam's Razor doesn't apply here because to judge that the driver is attacking the cyclist because he's a cyclist you have to make a large number of assumptions, namely that he is unstable, that nothing happened to aggravate him in time previous to the clip starting, that the clip is a fair representation of events and that there are no other factors involved other than the driver hates cyclists. That's a lot of assumptions to make and I would say that most likely cause is that something else has happened that we are not aware of. That takes far fewer assumptions than that the driver is just a dick.
Sadly this, and many other cycling forums, are predisposed to judge the driver the guilty party without any further evidence. In most cases the driver is guilty of aggressive or dangerous behaviour but not always and judging drivers the guilty party automatically just causes the Them vs Us divide to widen.
I'm just saying that you can't judge a book by its cover and you can't judge the action of a person based on a clip 2 minutes long that could have been taken completely out of context.
Not level. Look at the shadows. The driver was bugging the first cyclist he came to, the rear or the two, who obviously didn't want to be alone, so caught up with his mate.
Why should he be?
Nothing that could have been said would excuse the driver's actions.
This isn't a court. Hopefully this incident will go to court though, and a combination of testament under oath and previous incidents with the same driver will convict him. Sadly, he'll probably get a wrist-slap.
Really? Let's count the number of assumptions:
My position:
Assumption #1: That the driver is one of the tens of millions of mentally ill people in the United States.
That's it. Now your position:
Assumption #1: That the cyclists did something so heinous, on this back road in the middle of nowhere, that it would cause even a sane person to sit on their tail, blowing their horn at them (I don't actually think there is anything a cyclist can do that would justify such a reaction, which is what presumed liability in certain European countries is all about.)
Assumption #2: That despite the noise and the apparent danger, these two cyclists colluded to frame this guy with their camera phones.
Assumption #3: That they are both such fine actors that they can feign total nonplusedness under these circumstances.
Assumption #4: That they got home, edited the video, and posted it to YouTube, risking that whatever truth you think exists will come out eventually, given the exposure that the video is getting.
Every driver makes a trade-off, choosing his or her own convenience over other people's safety, every time their turn the ignition key. For that reason alone, I am happy to say I predisposed to judge drivers guilty unless there is evidence otherwise. That's not a position that would hold up in court, but it doesn't have to.
If you take that attitude, all those people riding with cameras are wasting their time. Because even if they record their entire journey from home to destination, you could say that they are hiding the fact that they cut-up or gave the finger to the driver that mowed them down six weeks previously.
IMO, the most likely thing is that it's some arsehole who doesn't like cyclists and has nothing better to do, so he's sitting there with the horn on to ruin the cyclists' day. It's obvious that he doesn't want to overtake - people are overtaking him!
This assumes that there really isn't some prior incident that we're not being told about, but the behaviour and tone of the cyclist when he speaks suggests that it isn't the case and that they've been followed by this guy for at least a couple of minutes before he starts filming.
I agree wholeheartedly with Some Fella, the cyclists almost justify being challenged solely because of their arrogance and actually got what they deserved. But may I point out that the events that lead up to the display of horn blowing were never shared with us and we are being asked to support the cyclists.
From a global population of 6bn, cyclist are and will remain a minority to other road users and by maintaining such a obstinate stance it does nothing but perpetuate the distance between all road users and cyclists. Let the idiot go, don't wind yourself up, take the moral high ground and let the imbecile pass and get back to your Sunday morning.
If you would ever like to swap places and enjoy the roads rutted tracks of South Yorkshire please contact me through this forum. I would prefer battling/ignoring the occasional idiot on the smooth, quiet, warm roads presented in this clip to the local routes we enjoy over here.
The riders have every right to be on the road and are not being antagonistic. The driver is behaving like an utter prat. What else is there to say?
Yeah, how dare they think they are legitimate road users!
Why didnt they just pull over?
Best to gives nutters a very wide birth in my experience.
Im sure they wanted to make a point but even so ..............
I couldnt understand why they didnt do that either. Just pull over and let the bell get on.
I wonder if his wife was sleeping with one of the cyclists... There must be extenuating circumstances, there's no reason for him to act in that way and it was certainly exagerated. Beeping as he drives past closely is one thing but sitting behind them for so long whilst other cars overtake him is bizarre.
Is this a serious comment? You'll need to ask the tosser driving the car. You're implying that it is somehow the cyclists' fault - which it isn't.
The first part is obviously sarcasm but my point is that a 2 minute YouTube clip never tells the whole story. For example, are we sure that before the clip starts the cyclist didn't offend the driver, do something dangerous or are we sure this isn't a set up?
Unless the guy is a total nutter there must be something else going on.
I think the principle of Occam's razor applies here. There are a lot of "nutters" in the US as in the rest of the world (although your choice of terminology wouldn't be mind.) If you are a cyclist you must have encountered more than your fair share.
The trouble with things like "arrogance" is that it is in the eye of the beholder. Menacing behaviour like this cannot be excused because the driver, or you, think the cyclists were being arrogant, any more than racism can be excused by the perpetrator thinking the victim is an "uppity" N-word.
[[[[ NO NO NO! You've ALL got it wrong. The frustrated tank-driver is peevish because the pesky cyclist (or both cyclists) had REFUSED to pound his wife, who is a dog. The offer was made (b4 the video starts) by "her indoors" as tubby-hubby likes to call her, (or"her in Chelsea Tank"), who is actually sprawled in the back, and had stuck her bits out of the window at the velo-men back up the road--- but as she is a dog, they pedalled swiftly on, yelling "No ta, we're very busy just now!" And the bikies are also aware that she's known locally as "Beatrice the Bike", which is baffling as she has no velo. However, it's rumoured that she keeps Fiziks and B17's in her drawers---in the spare room, that is. All very strange, but these facts might explain why hubby-wubby bought the monster wheels all those years ago, even b4 he became impotent, and insanely jealous of cyclists' chunky thighs.
PhiRuss.
Might be funny if he wasn't in control of 2 tons of metal. What a weirdo.
The driver's behaviour is bizarre. He obviously has a mental problem of some kind. There was sufficient space for a capable driver to overtake without crossing the line and the cyclists were clearly aware of him and giving him the space to do so by riding right at the edge of the road. It suggests that the driver was INcapable and therefore not fit to be behind the wheel of such a large vehicle
Liking the NEW??? Youtube integration to the forum
Was looking at that this morning, thanks for posting Londonplayer, bizarre behaviour - wonder what he'd have done if the riders had just stopped? Although when you've got an obvious nutter in an SUV on your tail I can understand why they didn't stop.
I keep reading things about this and seeing the same kind of sentence over and over. So I was quote one.....See if you can find the MASSIVE error here?
Nice to be positive, guys, but he was just being a dick.
perhaps he was just showing his appreciation?
Maybe he was banging his head against his horn because he was struck by the sudden realization that the two people in front of him were getting to their destination fueled only by a hearty breakfast and a bit of gumption. Whereas he was driving, alone, in a two-tonne hunk of metal, fueled by oil mostly sourced from countries populated mostly by people who hate him and his country, and that the need to secure supplies of said fuel, for him and his kind, is resulting in hundreds of deaths of his countrymen per year, and bankrupting his nation's economy. Not likely, I know, but just a thought.
Weird...not so much driver abuse just something wrong with the guys head!...the cyclists a lot more patient about it than I would be!...
I know what I would be doing to this driver. I'd lose my multi-tool in the process, But it would shut him up.
It you put the rego into google, everyone is talking about him now
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=893+EKG&sugexp=chrome,mod=18&sourceid=...