[kil0ran]

Just been the victim of a road rage attack (I’m fine, and, more importantly, so is the bike).

Had a head-on close pass on a narrow country lane at well over 50mph (its a NSL road) which unsurprisingly caused me to yell out (I think it was F*** sake, or possibly something blasphemous).

Cycled on my way only to have the driver turn round, pull alongside, and force me to stop. Following a continued exchange of viewpoints I tried to cycle off, only to be shoved off into the ditch. At that point the driver left whilst I checked the bike over and sorted my bleeding elbow.

Got me thinking – literally all I did to provoke that was to (a) exist and (b) yell out when he’d almost killed me. If I hadn’t yelled at him there’d have been no afters, just another one to add the list. I don’t run cameras because I can’t be doing with all the charging and downloading of yet another device in a life I’m trying to make more device-free.

So I’m sat here wondering what I could have done differently. My partner’s now concerned about COVID-19 risk (yelling at each other for 5 minutes isn’t going to have helped but hey, adrenaline). Getting it in the ear for engaging but I’m struggling to think how I could have avoided it. I only stopped when he forced me into the verge because I’d rather fall off a stationary bike then be hit from behind on the road. In the middle of nowhere so at that point I couldn’t ride off (no way to get away from the wanker with the 2-ton metal box). No way to hop a gate and go cross country because he’d just catch me on foot. All I wanted to do was de-escalate and get away from the situation.

The most annoying thing about all this is that for the previous two hours I’d had a glorious stress-free ride. Zero close passes, lots of give and take – I even had a WVM pull in and flash me through on a narrow lane. But that’s the thing, it only takes one. At the moment I feel like it will be a while before I’m back on the road – I’ve just taken delivery of an MTB and my son prefers riding off-road anyway.

Sorry for the long post, just at a loss to think what I could have done and also worried about the fact it could easily have been the end of me.

Topic

[bikeman01]

I ride with a policeman. We

I ride with a policeman. We have our fair share of arseholes in cars on our group rides but rarely do they stop and get out of their vehicles. On one occasion a guy stopped the group and got all mr angry. What I observed from our group copper stayed with me. He moved in real close to the guy and faced off his rant until he calmed down. He made no attempt to calm the guy he just let him know that he wasn’t going to back down. Afterwards I asked him why he appeared to be escallating the situation and he said most people give up when you don’t back down but make it clear that you’re ready to fight them. By getting in real close they can’t hit you with any force and you’re close enough to trip them down if you need to. 

[Dangerous Dan]

What you experienced was an

What you experienced was an assault. There is no other way to describe it.  I read your question as how could you have defused the situation enough to get out of it. The key is to not escalate the situation. No matter what, don’t engage your assailant in an angry argument. It will never end well.

There is a practice we used in the Fire / Rescue Brigade I was in which is called “Verbal Judo”.  There is a book by that name which was written by the late George Thompson, PhD, who was a professor of English turned police officer.

It may not be the best written book ever, and he was very full of himself, but the principals are sound: in a confrontation attempt to deflect the agressor verbaly and get them to see that there is another side to the conflict.  An example of this is described in this article: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/promoting-empathy-your-teen/201210/how-use-verbal-judo

Your angry driver might respond to something like, “look, I understand that this road is too narrow and the council should make it wide enough for two vehicles to pass safely, but until they do that we all need to be careful of other users on the road.” If you are lucky, they may go off on a rant about “the effing council.”

I don’t know if you have a Methamphetamine problem in that area but if you do, nothing short of overwhelming force will work.  Some people under the influence of alcohol will behave the same way.  They are agitated and angry.  We always got police on scene when dealing with these people. You need to get away from those people as fast as you can.

Some people are just plain “bat shit crazy”, as in paranoid schizophrenic.  They can be deflected, but don’t ever try to play them.  They know that you can’t hear the voices in their head.  Also, they are very rarely violent.

If you can, get away from them.  If not, deflect them.  An example: my daughter works in a Psychiatric Emergency Services unit in a big city hospital.  She is about 5’4″ and not physically intimidating.  An an aggitated patient was complainiing that someone was trying to cut their hair.  She got them a towel to wrap over their hair.  They calmed down. The non-existance of the person trying to cut their hair should never be the issue.

[kil0ran]

This is the worrying thing,

This is the worrying thing, isn’t it? As I said below I’m a big powerful guy and I’m conscious that if I lamped him I could have done serious damage. Too many one punch stories out there. But by being passive and trying to disengage I ended up down a bank in a ditch. The only solution is to not provoke the response in the first place.

[nniff]

I hate things like this.  It

I hate things like this.  It brings out the worst in me – fortunately only in theory not practice.  I can’t help thinking that idiots who behave like that do so because they’re confident that they’re not going to get a violent response, and mostly they’re right.  All you need is for them to fall and hit their head and it’s game over for you – a nasty role-reversal in which you have nowhere to go.  No ‘SMIDSY’, no ‘he wobbled out in front of me’, no ‘the sun was in my eyes’, or ‘he wasn’t wearing Hi-viz or a helmet’.  You pushed him and he died.  Criminal record for ever. Wife, family, job, all stuffed.

All you can do is shrug it off, and acknowledge the good when you see it.  But, dear god, it’s hard.  I followed a van down a country lane yesterday.  He was slow and careful.  He passed several on-coming cyclists carefully.  He and I followed several others for a while.  When he stopped, I stopped too and thanked him for driving carefully.  All one can do.

Commuting in town, I have cameras.  That got beyond a joke.

[kil0ran]

Thank you everyone for your

Thank you everyone for your responses to this, it’s really helped me acknowledge that I’m the victim, and that sadly it’s not uncommon. Will be off the roads for a while (mainly until my partner is less worried about me riding on the road – best I don’t tell her about hurling the MTB down singletrack then 😉 

I’m also going to experiment with only acknowledging positive behaviours. That was working really well for the previous two hours of the ride. It will be tough to control an involuntary/adrenaline-fuelled reaction but lets see if it’s possible. 

[kil0ran]

Sadly no point. No evidence

Sadly no point. No evidence of the whole incident as I’m not one to whip out my phone and start filming people. My local force don’t prosecute without video or independent third parties and even though I was assaulted they’d still treat it as a driving offence. Given how rural it is where it happened (the only reason to drive that road is if you live there) it will be dead easy to find him – there’s about ten houses up the end of the road before it turns into farm tracks. Which proves how much of an idiot he is – for all he knew I could have been as much of a psycho as him.

[Daveyraveygravey]

Sorry to read what happened,

Sorry to read what happened, it is a part of riding a bike in the UK these days though, and has been for at leat 30 years.  Nobody in a car thinks they are ever wrong, especially when it comes to a “pleb” on a bike.  I react every time to every close pass or bit of bad driving, I have toned it down in the last couple of years, I’m even trying not to swear, but it’s hard when “Cnut” covers it perfectly.

I’m not a fighter so on the rare occasion it gets to that level, I calm it down if I haven’t already taken to my heels.  I can’t let it go though, if you gesticulate at a close pass in my experience every car after that gives you an exaggerated amount of room.

I’ve tried a camera, but it’s a cheap one.  It only records about 70 minutes and most of my commutes are more than that one way.  It’s also blurry and under trees it can be hard to make out reg plates anyway.  Even if you get good footage you have to edit it, and remember to clear the memory card before you go out again.

[Shades]

Cameras.  I’d rather not be

Cameras.  I’d rather not be sitting at home with a busted bike and body (not injured badly enough that I’m considered a priority case by the NHS) with the police telling me they can’t find who it was and there’s nothing they can do, as opposed to them telling me they’d analysed the video and arrested the driver.  The cost of a front and back camera will pale into insignificance when you start replacing bikes and fixing yourself (my Chiropractor charges £50 a session).  Sort of insurance, or spend money to save money.  I don’t download bad passes, but anything deliberate and aggressive and the video would be straight to the police.

[Bungle_52]

I’ve always done this as well

I’ve always done this as well but recently had an incident where the driver didn’t slow down and had a very near miss at speed. This, and other incidents which are happening nearly every ride now, are making me feel a lot more vulnerable than I used to.

[brooksby]

I’m sorry you had such a sh

I’m sorry you had such a sh!tty experience, kiloran, and glad it worked out OK (rather than escalating).

I have suspected a lot of it is the attitude of “how dare you criticise me / tell me what to do!” (or, in Monty Python: “Don’t you oppress me!”).

People just don’t like being told what they should do or what they can’t do, or have their behaviour or activities criticised in any way, shape, or form.  This is an attitude which seems to be becoming more and more prevalent.  ‘They’ don’t even like it if the critic is an Authority Figure, so you can imagine how they start feeling when the critic is (in their eyes) “just a civilian” (or, worse, “just a cyclist”).

I don’t use a camera.  Will not use one.  I agree with commenters below that it’s easier to just be a leaf on the wind and let it all just flow…

Final point, total agreement with Lukas’s point:

Lukas wrote:

imagine if pedestrians had to carry cameras to record hostile road user behaviour towards them. There would be a national outcry. 

[Rome73]

I totally empathize. I try

I totally empathize. I try every day to avoid confrontation. And it’s difficult to stay calm. The one thing i do know is that when i get into a confrontation it determines my mood for the rest of the day (i.e.bad, angry, frustrated) and i even spend the night tossing and turning thinking about the bastard who cut me up and the injustice of it. It’s never worth that. A finger on my left hand is permanently dislocated because i punched a car so hard once. So now i use a camera. I just feel ‘safer’. If anyone starts shouting at me I unclip the camera from the mount and point it at them and keep my gob shut. The camera is like a cross to a vampire – it backs them off. 

Bloody tragic that it’s like this – imagine if pedestrians had to carry cameras to record hostile road user behaviour towards them. There would be a national outcry. 

 

[David9694]

Reg no, make (Audi?)

Reg no, make (Audi?) description of assailant, photos of injuries? You can’t not report this! Chances are your man is pretty practised at this sort of thing, so may be known to police.

FWIW, always intone to myself in times of stress “you don’t know who they are or what they’re capable of”. 

In an interesting point – get wild on him as he stops and opens the door but I think on balance all you “knee him in the stomach” posters have been watching too many movies – glorious though it would be #channels inner Rod liddle# to subdue him with a couple of blows from a Topeak and head off with his keys in your pocket. 

[Fifth Gear]

I’ve found an increasing

I’ve found an increasing number of oncoming drivers will pass on single track lanes without slowing down. As a result my normal procedure now is to move out towards the centre of the road and apply the brakes if the driver appears to be approaching too fast. The driver then has to make the choice to slow/stop or kill me. It works every time as you can tell by the fact I am still alive to post this comment and it has not resulted in any arguments or problems yet. I always run cameras which are an unfortunate necessity.

[0-0]

I totally agree about getting
I totally agree about getting your retaliation in first.
If they come running at you, you run at them and stick your knee or leg in their stomach, as you collide.

Don’t worry about the “who started it first” thing. Remember someone has nearly killed/badly injured you by reckless driving. Then they got out of their car in a threatening manner.
You feared for your safety etc.

Also get front and rear cameras to record all your rides.

[bikeman01]

What could you have doine

What could you have done differently?

Hit the arsehole as soon as he walked up to you – no engagement just wack him as soon as he’s got out of his car. Then for good measure, chuck his keys and ride off.

Attack is the best form of defence and if you can get in while they still think you’re a going to be a pushover so much the easier.

Of course it may not pan out exactly like this but you get the idea. 

Alternatively, you could have not shouted and continued to let the guy be a cunt.

Neither option is entirely satisfactory.

[Author]

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