Near Misses Volume 2 (So close you can feel it)

They're as likely to have that mentality with anyone. Was working for an elderly lady yesterday and while she was taking her car out to let me in a car held up for maybe 20 seconds started aggressively beeping the horn at her. Looking up expecting to let a roar at some young lad about having a bit of respect I was stunned to see a late middle aged woman.

What can you do?

That is absolutely horrendous. Look at the amount of wasted space. The height of the kerb. The narrowness of the road. That's before even getting into the points you mentioned, which seem to be part of the design brief for every new cycle path - yield for farmers' fields, make it impossible to get from the road to the bike lane and back (in case, god forbid, there's an obstruction on the cycle path or you miss the initial entrance to the cycle path and find yourself on the road), encourage pedestrians and cyclists to mix, start and stop at random spots for now reason.

Unreal I'd a guy once tell me if I hadn't been cycling so fast him pulling out of a junction in front of me wouldn't have mattered! Some people can never be in the wrong.

Didn't you know that you're expected to move over for oncoming drivers driving on the wrong side of the road?

Popped out to run an errand over lunch. Rear camera had been charging, and I forgot to put it back on the bike before I left - which I really regret now as I only have front-facing footage of this Merc (162D11801), who was determined to squeeze past me multiple times.

He passes me three times - at 13 sec, 1:00, and 1:54.

The front camera really doesn't do justice to the incident at the 1 minute mark. I'm in my lane and slowing for a red light. You can just see the nose of his car slide right up next to me, giving me no space. You can actually hear my sharp intake of breath when it gets up next to me - I really wasn't expecting it. He also tried to roll his car forward into the junction to prevent me from going ahead of him.

The mental thing is (as with most city driving) - he was making no progress every time he got ahead of me.

I actually passed him again after the end of this video, but by this time I was (thankfully) in a segregated cycle lane. His female passenger noticed me though, and leaned across the driver to wag her finger at me. I will never understand the mentality of some people.

You're right in that, looking back at it now, I think he did move to block me off at the first set of lights. At the time, I didn't think all that much of it, as there is an empty parking space immediately to the left which I used to (safely) go back to the front (as is my right).

As for the lane - the left lane goes left at the end of the road. The right lane goes right. I want to go right, that's why I'm in that lane. It's the same reason the car is in the right-hand lane.

Exactly. And therein lies the irony. That car was making precisely zero progress every time they overtook me. They were just racing to their next stop, at which point I was going past again. As I mentioned already, I passed them again after the video ends, at which point we went our separate ways.

Important to make sure you not inconvenient to the drivers.

Important to maintain good vibes.

This is Brass Eye levels of satire: you've got a bright career ahead of you. Just the right amount of believability, it's really well written I must say.

The first opportunity for me to get into that cycle lane would have been immediately after the South Mall/Parliament Bridge junction. It's actually what I was intending on doing - but the car squeezed right alongside me at the lights. I expected him to either floor it off the lights, or be immediately on my right as we got going. So, I couldn't cut across him to get to the cycle lane.

Isn't that the exact same as what you were doing at ~38s? Squeezing past him at the lights to get in front even though you were both caught at the next lights?

The thing is, yourself and that driver have a lot more in common than you realise!!

You are absolutely entitled to that right but sometimes it's nice just to be considerate instead of being entitled. Let's say a slower group of cyclists filtered through in front of you at the lights when you were stopped, they'd be prefectly entitled to do so but they'd be arseholes.

Like I said, you and the driver have a lot in common