Risk assessment of assertive cycling

Thank you! I have some footage of a rather good brakeless fixed rider to upload, btw. I loved his riding.

would be hilarious of it turn out to be skydancer!

Mikey, I beg to differ

In my opinion you acted agressively not assertively towards that driver ; there is a difference. I came away thinking you had gone out for a ride looking for a bad driver to have a fight with.

Not the act of a gentleman cyclist is it?

^ re: aggressive not assertive - are you commenting on the riding or the conversation?

Behaviour, it could have gone a lots better than that, perhaps even can get the point across.

I'll wholeheartly agree with that sentiment, you remind me of another point about having mirror on the bicycle - you might end up not looking back as regularly as you should after aquiring a mirror, and looking back is a very powerful tools to communicate with other road user.

fair enough, the recumbent doesn't give you the ablitiy to look back comfortably.

Well, that's true enough, you lose the ability to get eyes-eyes contact. I do a fair amount more signalling to compensate though, and that seems to work reasonably well. The other big advantage is riding a weird bike causes most drivers to behave better than they would with an upright rider anyway, even one of the very few that look back properly as taught.

Mikey, I beg to differ

In my opinion you acted agressively not assertively towards that driver ; there is a difference. I came away thinking you had gone out for a ride looking for a bad driver to have a fight with.

Not the act of a gentleman cyclist is it?

I'm sure we'd all like to be the meek and polite one, but it's not easy after someone has barged past you with a 4,000 pound weapon like that, threatening your life. That's enough to make anyone angry, including yourself by your own admission that you've also done this. I wasn't angry at all before then, I was nothing more than a happy cyclist on his way home from work. It's a bit of a leap of imagination to assume I went looking for that incident, and I feel offended by that assumption.

To me, you come across as both personal and attacking, making your posts on this seem a little far from gentlemanly. You seem also to be following the description of drivers in TRL549 rather well, excusing the driver's behaviour by ignoring it, and focusing on what to me seems like a minor and very restrained reaction to some exceptionally bad driving. Is that fair comment, or am I misreading you?

I am afraid I still can not agree with you, though I would like to see the video again.

I also get over taken too closely almost and I some times over react, but my memory of you in that video, especially the way you approached the driver was , in my opinion overly agressive and some what sexist

Consider what that driver will have learnt from that incident? Will she have reflected on her driving , will she have learnt any thing? One doubts it; other than having her prejudices about cyclists confirmed. She also did a good job of confirming yours about drivers...

like what skydancer says before, i think generally we either regret what we do or that we think of something which would have worked better as we ride off...."Damn! i shoulda said...." but that's what makes it life and not a cheesy action movie with killer one liners after the bad guy has been dispatched. I have NEVER walked away from an interaction with a motorist thinking that i dealt with it perfectly....i always think it could have been a little better, could have made him/her understand my point of view better or calmed the driver down etc.

As for my comment about "the silly little mirror"....sorry bout that. I probably wouldn't have said it if i'd have known you were on the forum, which does run against my principles of typing only what i'd say to someone's face...

I do think however that more than just seeing more/better the "look back" is inherent to good riding as it shows other road users that you know they are there - knowing they are there isn't enought, but them knowing that you know. This cuts down on the "what the fuck is this prick doing riding in the middle of the farkin road..HONK!!!! HONK!!!!...just warning you that i'm coming" and ends up with the driver thinking "OK....what's this guy doing?...OK...he seems to know what he doing and he's seen me." It is incredible how much simply looking back makes other road users just back off slightly...touch the brakes....and give you space.

All disclaimers about recumbents accepted though!

I should add that I am far from perfect.

That's OK Fausto, I used to be rather more anti-mirror than I should have been in hindsight. I now use them on recumbents because they're essential there, although I couldn't put one on any of my uprights and still look myself in the eye in the mirror. :D

I'm with you on the looking back - but it would have made no difference on this driver. She was determined to come through no matter what. I think I'm fairly good at compensating for the reduced looking back by signalling, and that extra signalling seems to have much the same effect on drivers as looking back.

Peter, you still can see the video, you just have to search for the numberplate as I mentioned above. Sexist? I'm not sure how you jump to that conclusion. If it's from "stupid woman", I'm just as likely to say that about a man's driving, and I have in the past, so not sexist at all.

She most certainly did learn from the video, she was ashamed of it, and got a Roadsafe letter about her driving. If she's anything like "D4N OK", then her next pass will be considerably better. The two D4N OK videos are worth a watch for the change in behaviour that a camera and some police attention causes.

^Job done!

I had words with a lorry driver on Monday. He overtook me with zero space when I was on the superhighway (next to it there were 2 other lanes). When I told him that he almost touched me when he overtook and that it was terrifying to be put in a situation like that, he got pretty defensive and said that he drove by the white line and didn't get over it!!! He also said that he had a car to his right so had to be closer to my lane to avoid it....

I think he got my point though, I could tell he knew he had made a mistake and what I was going to tell him. He had all his answers ready. But I was lost for words when he told me that he didn't go over the line and that he put me in danger to squeeze past a car. Hopefully he will take more care around cyclists. Denting a car is always preferable to running over someone, IMO.

running over someone is always preferable to denting a car.

fixed.

Risk-assessment is a key skill in enjoying cycle-travel. Successful risk-assessment is a life-enhancing faculty. Over-estimate hazards and you miss out on fun and excitement, under-estimate dangers and you may come a cropper. Learning to ride a bike is learning to live.

from Own the road blog
Thanks Patrick for your wise words.