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Riding to work this morning.. in the cycle lane. Traffic had stopped moving on my side so I'm more alert.. sure enough, a car just in front of me waves another out of a petrol station to my left.. chap looks straight at me then pulls out in front of me. Luckily it was a relatively soft impact due to the stuffed Brompton bag on the front. No damage. It's happened a couple of times, so my question is this.. do you usually stop if the traffic isnt moving to avoid this or do you usually keep going as you're in the cycle lane?
I slow down and assume something is about to jump out and kill me.
Didn't always. After a bonnet face interface in a similar situation to the one you describe I'm far more wary.
EDIT: Glad your OK.
Generally i slow (a bit) and cover the brakes, especially near the junctions.
Irritating when someone is attmempting to "draft" you when this happens (seems quite common in London)
Yeah.. as I said it's happened a few times on the same stretch.. Straight on into the side of a car isnt so bad... worse, is when someone in the queue up ahead decides they're sick of waiting and randomly lurches left across the cycle lane into some side road at speed.. they do hurt! 😀
Thumbs up for the brompton bag/bumper.
If I'm filtering along side stationary traffic I always slow down and cover the brakes and expect someone to pull into our out of a gap in the traffic.
You've got an Airbag on yer bike?
Patent it sonny..
I always slow down for this, too many reasons why they won't see you or stop.
Happens every commute for me. The special this morning was an overtake before a left hand turn.
+1.I slow down and assume something is about to jump out and kill me.
Occasionally I do some stupid stuff, then I'm thinking how the hell did I went intact and how bloody stupid I was... 😳 But that's the lessons.
Everyone has lots of close shaves when sharing the road with cars, but my most memorable was, I had the same lady nearly hit me three times within 300mtr stretch on the same single journey once, in slow moving traffic..
Firstly she pulled out of a left junction straight in front of me, then she decided a little further along that she wanted to turn left, but was in the right lane, so swerved across the road in front of me again. She then changed her mind swerving back into the traffic. At the lights she then decided again to turn left, turning into me as I was going straight across the lights. :/
She seemed completely oblivious to me the whole time.
...I had the same lady nearly hit me three times
[b]lady[/b]
You've got the explanation.
😉
She seemed completely oblivious to me the whole time......
assuming that your not currently... howabout Reflective / hi-vis jacket and a light on the bars(brompton lowlevel dynamo lights are great for lighing up the road but motoorist never seem to see them)
you shouldn't need to dress in dayglo and be illuminated like a christmas tree however there are a lot of zombie motorists, pedestrians and cyclists out there
I had 2 transit's (unfortunately without any company names on them) actualy aim at me this morning.
First one overtook with <50m to go before the stationary que of traffic, then took issue with me filtering* up the inside and decided to try and cut me off (without checking his mirror) except I was already almost level with his door as he'd barely made it past me. 2nd (in the now slow moving que ahead) decided to squeeze me into the curb as I passed (wile looking at me in the mirror) untill I had to brake (and go round the outside).
*not advisable but it's a long mostly NSL road with no junctions, just suffers from traffic jams and the oncoming traffic is doing 60.
Find self nowadays riding slowly and anticipating impact at every busy junction/exit/garage etc. This means an mearly always on the brake levers in towns/built up areas.
Glad you're Ok.