Road Rage

Oh goody, another American import for me to deal with over here!

Yesterday morning I had to run some errands. One of my housemates was not feeling well so I ran out to the Chemists in the village for some flu medication. The Chemist's shop in Thames Ditton is located just where the high street ends at the round-about. I had left the chemists and was on my way back along the back road to my place when some total wanker cut me off. (I was on my bicycle staying in the bike lane when this happened.)

This tosser comes revving his engine and pulls into the bike lane and screeches to a halt diagonally across the bike lane about a yard in front of me. Luckily, there was a drive entrance there so I was able to apply the brakes and swerve onto the sidewalk. Having cleared the rectum, I went to the next drive and returned to the bike lane. Up until this point I could have dismissed this incident as a bad timing thing. I had apparently been where the guy needed to be and there was nothing personal involved. What happened next dispelled any belief that I may have had along those lines.

About twenty feet further down the road someone was parked across the bike lane so I swerved into the traffic lane to round the parked car. As I was doing it this scrotum comes up on my right and tries to trap me behind the parked car. He brought his left-front bumper to within about a foot of the parked car and again skidded to a stop. Had I tried to stop I would have surly have gone over the handlebars with the inertia. What could I do? I lifted both feet to a level above his front bumper and shot the area between the cars.

At this, the jackass throws it back in gear and pulls into the right-hand lane to go around me again. (Remember, this is London and the right-hand lane is where the on-coming traffic is!) I neatly threaded myself back to the travel lane and started pedaling as fast as I could manage. There was a main street coming up and I wanted to get this schmuck where if he wanted to run me off the road he'd have to do it with other vehicular traffic around.

I shot through the roundabout and headed left toward Portsmouth road. This arse pulls up along side me and yells something completely incomprehensible out the window. He then left rubber heading the wrong direction up the one-way approach to the round-about from the other road.

Coasting to a stop to see which way the idiot was going to turn onto the Portsmouth road, I caught my breath. I was relieved to see that he was turning to the west along the road so that I needn't worry about meeting him again.

I never have understood road rage to that level. I mean, sure, London has some pretty narrow streets and some times the bike lane is the only open space for a vehicle to drive, but who the hell actually believes that they can improve things by running down a cyclist? I mean come on! The damage the bike would do to the car would be more of a bother than any satisfaction of getting the guy on the bike to yield the entire street to you.

Wherever you are today, I hope that you are safe and secure. AND CALM!

Don Bergquist - 07-February-2006 - Thames Ditton, Surrey, United Kingdom