“She saw nothing was wrong, came back and started screaming about how I’m a f***ing moron”: Cyclists share “terrifying” road rage experiences; Hinault tips Pogacar to win three Grand Tours in a year + more on the live blog
With Ryan slowly adjusting to life without a lanyard for another 12 months, Callum is back on the live blog to sweep up the last remnants from the men’s Tour and settle back into the more regular rhythm of drivers questioning cyclists’ right to exist
Tue, Jul 28, 2026 09:52
28 July 2026, 09:27
London road rage
There’s a bias to trawling the London Cycling reddit thread, much like there is in news reporting. No one reports on the hundreds and thousands of journeys that are uneventful, safe and maybe even enjoyable.
But it being the summer, these are peak months of the year for people to be travelling around on two wheels, which unfortunately means there’s more scope for cyclists to be victims of the sort of road rage that no one deserves to be on the receiving end of… like this woman:
“Yesterday after work I was cycling home and was about to go onto Wandsworth Bridge. The bridge is under construction right now and is down to two narrow lanes.
“Traffic was stopped, I was merging from the cycle lane into normal traffic by carefully/slowly weaving through some cars so I could integrate. I was going barely above walking speed, and while trying to squeeze through the last bit that would let me onto the bridge, the side of my foot grazed against a car. I did not hit it or kick it, my bike did not make any contact, my shoe grazed the passenger side door.
Immediately I said “sorry! was my shoe!” and this woman SLAMMED on the horn. I stopped and repeated myself again. She was still laying on the horn until traffic started moving again, and she floored it and sped past me.
I didn’t want to escalate anything so I cycled behind her car and made sure to give a very ample amount of space, like about 10 meters. Traffic stopped again and she got out of her car, came up to me screaming in my face about how I hit her car.
“She walked back to check her door, saw nothing was wrong, and came back to me and started screaming about how I’m a fucking moron and shouldn’t squeeze through tight spots. I had a really awful day at work and just broke down crying saying I’m sorry I’m sorry I promise it was just my shoe. She said oh don’t fucking start crying you bitch (I’m a woman in my mid 20s). I kind of dissociated for a lot of it and don’t remember all of what she screamed at me but she got back in her car and sped away.
“I was crying and hyperventilating because I was terrified, but the guy in the car behind me said he recorded the entire thing on his phone if I wanted it. I said no but thank you, I just want to go home.
“I just wasn’t expecting someone to be so aggressive for such a non-issue. I’m here on a work visa and I’m terrified of someone being on my record to send me back home and I just spiralled. In the future, which hopefully never happens, what do you do when a driver gets out of their car to approach you?
“Next week I’ll start taking a different route home to avoid this bridge and hopefully won’t happen again.”
A horrible situation all round. Unfortunately car weaving can be perilous even when it’s ostensibly not dangerous. The comments aren’t short of sympathy…
“That sounds awful, I’m so sorry that happened. I’ve had people yell and abuse me for just existing on my bike (I’m a woman in my 40s). It leaves me all shakey! I’m glad other people were there for you. I’ve just bought a small camera to attach to me for when I ride cos I’m fed up of this shit.”
“This is so horrible, I’m so sorry it happened to you. Absolute idiots exist. Glad that you’re okay and absolutely next time cycle off and ignore the dumbass. You didn’t damage her car, so no reason for you to hang around!
“I’m purely terrified of weaving so I avoid it and ‘think like a car’ when I’m cycling in London. I drive more than cycle, so i know sometimes drivers don’t check blind spots and all that stuff that they SHOULD do and sometimes get spooked by cyclists. Purely for safety reasons, I’d sit behind tight traffic rather than weave.
“Ignore it, hope you’ve recovered, take yourself off and get a cake and give it no more thought 🤘”
“This really sucks, and they sound totally out of order. If a driver angrily gets out of their car and is approaching you and you feel threatened; this is already grounds for common assault so feel free to pretty much do anything that gets you out the situation and into safety.
“You’re not at risk of being done for fleeing the scene of an accident if you fear for your safety.”
It’d be interesting to hear the thoughts of the esteemed panel on this. Is there any hope of undertaking or weaving through vehicles when drivers are capable of acting so irrationally? I thought we were moving past the mindset of ‘vehicular cycling’ but it appears not…
28 July 2026, 11:28
Bernard Hinault tips Pogacar to win three Grand Tours in a year
Both Bernard Hinault and Roger De Vlaeminck have a knack for saying something along the lines of ‘He’s one of the greatest, like Eddy Merckx and me.’ Our latest example of this comes from these quotes from the Badger on Tadej Pogacar to La Gazzetta dello Sport.
“It is beautiful to see an athlete remain at the top for so long. Merckx managed it, and so did I.
“When he wants to make the race, he makes it,” Hinault said. “He does not ask himself too many questions, just like Eddy and me.”
And finally, when asked about how he would have fared against the Slovenian…
“Every champion’s dream is to compete at the same time and under the same conditions. I do not know who would win, but Eddy and I would not start already beaten.”
I honestly admire the chutzpah. I suppose once you are a retired elite athlete you are stuck with an elite athlete’s mind for the rest of your life. Hinault was undoubtedly a great, a five Tour wins, 10 Grand Tour titles, a world champion and a winner of monuments as diverse from Lombardia to Paris-Roubaix.
Why wouldn’t he insert himself into the conversation, even if most people are probably in agreement over who is third best? And he is surely third best, much like how Jonas Vingegaard is currently second best, albeit less assuredly after this Tour de France.
Still, one achievement which Merckx, Hinault and a certain Chris Froome have achieved is uniting the belts, being the defending champion of every Grand Tour at once. But they all had a pesky off-season, with none of them ever winning the Giro, Tour and Vuelta in the same calendar year. But both Merckx and Hinault think Pogacar can do it…
“He has no limits,” Hinault said. “There is enough time to recover between the Grand Tours, and he could win more than six Tours. He has an advantage over his rivals.
“He knows how to manage himself, so I do not think physical wear will be the problem. Mental fatigue could be more important. But he enjoys himself. He loves competing and he thrives when things become difficult.”
To put that achievement into context, the number of riders who have even finished all three Grand Tours in a season is really rather short, although there is precedent of riders sustaining multiple GC challenges in a season, even if you have to go back to 1957 for the last time a rider top-10’d all 3.
It seems like the Slovenian might need to contact Nelson Oliveira for some advice if he feels so inspired, or his union rep…
📊 Record-breaking ✅ Grand Tour # 2⃣4⃣ out of 24!
Parabéns, @Nelsoliveira89!
— 501 stages (incl. a couple of neutralized / cancelled)
– 1 y, 4 m, 16 d— over 80,000 km of racing
– 2x the length of the equator 🌐— 0⃣ DNF, DNS, DSQ
___
🇫🇷 #TDF2026 // 📺 Ⓜ️/ig pic.twitter.com/j0ZD86YXxI— ammattipyöräily (@ammattipyoraily) July 26, 2026
28 July 2026, 11:25
How strong is a steel frame?
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In true Taskmaster style, the answer can only be provided in strange units of measurement…
28 July 2026, 10:39
Georgi, Clay and Nelson in Picnic PostNL's Tour team
The best way to get over the end of the men’s Tour de France is to look ahead to the women’s Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift. We had our first Brit confirmed when Canyon SRAM announced their line-up on Saturday. Zoe Bäckstedt will be making her debut in a team that will be supporting Kasia Niewiadoma in the mountains and Chiara Consonni in the sprints.
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And we now have more Brits and our first Irish rider confirmed to be tackling the biggest race of the year courtesy of Team Picnic PostNL. And special praise must go to any team integrating their men’s team into their women’s team socials…
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Eleonora Ciabocco is the team’s GC hope, whilst young Irish sprinter Mia Griffin will spearhead the team’s hopes on the flat. Pfeiffer Georgi, Josie Nelson and Robyn Clay will be domestiques and no doubt seeking breakaway opportunities. Incidentally, our Ryan spent a bit of time following and interviewing Pfeiffer Picnic’s classics team this spring…
> Big Mac recons, broken radios, and never giving up: Inside Picnic PostNL’s classics campaign
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Callum is a News Writer for road.cc, having initially joined as a freelance journalist in September 2025. He is also a Road Book contributor and has written for the almanac since 2023. He has a master’s degree in Broadcast Journalism from Cardiff University, where his dissertation focused on Geraint Thomas’ retirement and the boom and bust of the domestic racing calendar. He also has a degree in Scandinavian Studies & Politics which is somehow even more niche.
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Latest Comments
Clem Fandango 28 seconds ago
@jackcycles yes yes, but what was the picture on the ground re established reds?
Robert Hardy 27 minutes ago
I hate the term road rage, as if it is an excuse for violent hate filled thuggery. Cycle hate should be a defined hate crime with enhanced penalties and....Rod Liddle should be In chains somewhere dark and damp picking apart old tarred ropes!
mctrials23 38 minutes ago
@jackcycles London is indeed a bubble but I can assure you those exact same people live everywhere. Unless by "revert to normal" you mean just the average level of twattery from drivers in this country.
mdavidford 41 minutes ago
"We need to take the “them and us” mentality out of society" ...unless the 'them' is Londoners and the 'us' is the rest of the country? There will be more aggressive motorists per square mile in London because there are more people per square mile in London, so the same proportion gives you a higher total incidence, not because they're "more aggressive as a group".
chrisonabike 44 minutes ago
Can confirm that wounded pride at "lack of respect from the 'other' " (cyclists here) exists on the roads of Edinburgh, albeit it's mostly good. I reckon it's just the greater density / numbers of population. The more people trying to get somewhere, the more stress and acting out. Sometimes one might think something similar applies on the internet.
Robert Hardy 45 minutes ago
My perfectly legal 200W motored 15mph restricted 2011 ebike has a throttle and does not require peddling. What hope of pc not the nicest listening to me in similar circumstances?
jackcycles 48 minutes ago
Agree there are some horrible people outside London too (and I used to live in Wallingford for a time, so I can speak to this) but generally it's a much calmer, less angry, less self-entitled place to live. My point was that it's really unhelpful to say "cyclists do this", "motorists do that" etc when they are just subsets of a wider population of the area. A motorist in London is far more likely to be aggressive then a motorist outside London, because Londoners generally are far more aggressive as a group. We need to take the "them and us" mentality out of society and I'm hopeful that politically we might see a little bit of cross-party agreement on things like social care etc, which might help to bring society back together a little and get a bit of consensus. We shall see. And I think once society starts becoming less angry, these kinds of incidents will occur less frequently.
pockstone 56 minutes ago
I wish that were the case. In Trumpton perhaps, but not the real world.
mdavidford 58 minutes ago
Nope - we get our fair share of violent, aggressive, egocentric individuals driving around the towns and villages of Oxfordshire too. Of course, with the concentration of people in London, you're likely to be exposed to more of them in an average journey than elsewhere, but they exist everywhere.
the little onion 58 minutes ago
Remember kids, every time you feed the troll, they go off for a crafty w@Nk. Don't feed the troll.
13 thoughts on ““She saw nothing was wrong, came back and started screaming about how I’m a f***ing moron”: Cyclists share “terrifying” road rage experiences; Hinault tips Pogacar to win three Grand Tours in a year + more on the live blog”
There are a lot of mentally ill motorists on our roads
@kingleo maybe. I don’t think mental illness is the issue here. It’s “car culture” and “motornormativity”. The constant treatment of cyclists as some kind of aberration, cockroaches to be crushed, cars as extensions of personalities and power, and drivers’ rights as sacrosanct.
Nah, it’s just Londoners being Londoners. Step outside the capital in any direction for 20 or so miles and people revert to normal.
Last time I went into London (a couple of weeks back) cyclists themselves seemed to have become far more assertive and aggressive, bundling through red lights and shouting at pedestrians. Very unpleasant city all round full of rude and insolent people. Couldn’t wait to get home.
@jackcycles If you want to stay in leafy Essex and keep out of our town that suits us just fine, Nigel.
Nope – we get our fair share of violent, aggressive, egocentric individuals driving around the towns and villages of Oxfordshire too. Of course, with the concentration of people in London, you’re likely to be exposed to more of them in an average journey than elsewhere, but they exist everywhere.
Agree there are some horrible people outside London too (and I used to live in Wallingford for a time, so I can speak to this) but generally it’s a much calmer, less angry, less self-entitled place to live.
My point was that it’s really unhelpful to say “cyclists do this”, “motorists do that” etc when they are just subsets of a wider population of the area. A motorist in London is far more likely to be aggressive then a motorist outside London, because Londoners generally are far more aggressive as a group.
We need to take the “them and us” mentality out of society and I’m hopeful that politically we might see a little bit of cross-party agreement on things like social care etc, which might help to bring society back together a little and get a bit of consensus. We shall see. And I think once society starts becoming less angry, these kinds of incidents will occur less frequently.
“We need to take the “them and us” mentality out of society” …unless the ‘them’ is Londoners and the ‘us’ is the rest of the country?
There will be more aggressive motorists per square mile in London because there are more people per square mile in London, so the same proportion gives you a higher total incidence, not because they’re “more aggressive as a group”.
I wish that were the case.
In Trumpton perhaps, but not the real world.
Can confirm that wounded pride at “lack of respect from the ‘other’ ” (cyclists here) exists on the roads of Edinburgh, albeit it’s mostly good.
I reckon it’s just the greater density / numbers of population. The more people trying to get somewhere, the more stress and acting out.
Sometimes one might think something similar applies on the internet.
@jackcycles London is indeed a bubble but I can assure you those exact same people live everywhere. Unless by “revert to normal” you mean just the average level of twattery from drivers in this country.
@jackcycles yes yes, but what was the picture on the ground re established reds?
Regarding the road rage incident, should Road CC/London Cycling et al look into obtaining the video from the driver behind to help bring the criminal (yes, that is what they are based on the incident description) to justice?
Whilst we live in the modern world with camera phones, some people still feel it is fine to behave like this presumably as they feel the chances of facing any repercussions are low.
Remember kids, every time you feed the troll, they go off for a crafty w@Nk.
Don’t feed the troll.