You are reading a single comment by @Oliver Schick and its replies. Click here to read the full conversation.
  • Thanks to Bagheera for alerting me to this thread.

    In this case, you have the support of other people in the company. I'd go back some other day and have another chat with them. Ask if he's there, or when you might be able to talk to him. Approach him in a friendly manner. You can have a reasonable chat with pretty much anyone if you catch them in the right mood. Explain how a cyclist feels when that sort of thing happens. Shake hands with him.

    He may well have just been completely stressed out that evening, and people act like that when they are. Maybe he's already wished he hadn't done it. With more bollockings and reprimands, he is only going to be driven further into himself, and from your description of the incident I certainly think it's likely that he might do similar things again to other cyclists if he doesn't get some understanding.

    Driving for a living must be an intensely frustrating job at times. That can obviously be true of all jobs, but with driving the specific problem is that when people try to break out of that frustration, it is sometimes done in the process of using their vehicle, as if to redeem the vehicle--to see that it can go fast, after all, and isn't always stuck in congestion, etc. (People obviously also do that just out of general life frustration.) You have to decouple the two things in their minds, so that they try to get over their frustration in some other way. The best way of doing that is by showing them the person behind the cyclist.

    As Bagheera says, the company could consider cycle training for its drivers. I'm not up to speed with what schemes operate now (there's a bewildering blizzard of activity), but I'm sure others on here could help with that. Good luck!

About