Buffalo & Doozerie - The mild musings of two grumpy old men!

Weepsie wrote: »

Car beeped at me. Rolls down window. Use the cycle lane. You're in the bus lane and that lanes covered in leaves and muck I retort.

Unmarked Garda car so it was, tries to lecture me. Didn't change my mind, he was still wrong even with his lights now on.

It wasn’t a big bald fella about 40 odd in a Ford something, was it?

I encountered a muppet of a taxi driver today. I'm stopped at a red light, here, in the advance stopping box, in the left turn for everyone/straight ahead for buses/taxis/cyclists lane. Because I don't want to be left hooked, I am in the middle of this lane. Stopped. At a red light, for proceeding in any direction. Said taxi driver drives up behind me, stops, and beeps the horn at me.

I ignore him. The lights change to green. I proceed on straight, still in the bus lane, because the cycle lane to the left is now full of parked cars, starting just after the bus stop 30 or 40m ahead, and visibly continuing as far as the next two sets of lights. These cars are also blocking half the bus lane, so the taxi driver is going to have to move out anyway. Beep. He then moves out, and drives along beside me for a few metres at cycling pace. He then drives on until he reaches the queue of cars another 40m or so ahead, and at this point he pulls back into the blocked bus lane as far as he can, to try to stop me proceeding. I go around him and continue on my way, past the queue of cars, through the next green light.

100m up the road he catches me again, back in the general traffic lane again, and again drives alongside me for a few seconds before driving on.

I ignored him the entire time. I did notice he had a passenger. I wonder would he have been a bit more aggressive, instead of plain annoying, had she not been there?

Haven't been commuting on the bike in a while, felt good to get back to it this morning.

Highlight was the taxi driver who took the time to scold me as I came on to the quays from Parkgate Street. He was coming across the bridge from Heuston Station, but a distance back so I kept moving through this junction: https://goo.gl/maps/RNq1SL8KzveASNip7

As he pulled level on Wolfe Tone Quay he started shouting out the window at me from the next lane that I should've stopped. I pointed out it was only a yield, and he said I should stop next time. I asked if he needed a hug and he drove off.

What's baffling me is that he could've given out to me for a legitimate complaint, that I had forgotten to properly turn on my back light and was relying on brightly coloured clothes for the whole of my commute (including the pitch black Strawberry Beds) for people to see me from behind. :eek:

CramCycle wrote: »

The slow pedal was just childish ****e, and I should be a bit more grown up. His passenger had a glint in their eye as they filmed. Interesting to see how bad I look without the context.

Do you really give a sh1t?

Career choice is a tricky business, many of us probably get it completely wrong and end up in lines of work which don't suit us or to which we are completely unsuited. I encountered a guy recently who must be an awful disappointment to his school career guidance counsellor. He ended up as a bus driver when he should really have chosen a career better suited to his temperament, something that would allow him to express his sociopathic tendencies in a safe and supporting environment.

I was at a junction with a left-only (bus) lane, and a straight-on (bus) lane. Sandwiched between the two is a cycle lane. The lights go green for straight-on traffic only if triggered. I long ago gave up on being able to trigger the lights by being in the cycle lane, it seems like there might be a sensor there but it has never worked for me and because the straight-on bus lane is so rarely used I've found myself many times sitting in the cycle lane for multiple cycles of the traffic lights without ever getting a green.

So I use the straight-on bus lane instead, there is a sensor at the head of that lane which my bike does trigger almost every time. It's very rare that a bus ends up queueing behind me in that lane, but it happened this week after I'd been stopped at the red light for a minute or two. The bus was now second in a traffic queue of two, the light wasn't due to change in our favour for a couple of minutes or so. But the driver still felt it necessary to blow the horn and gesture that I should get into the cycle lane.

I called out to him that I was in this lane because I wanted to trigger the traffic sensor, and that there is no sensor in the (now busy) bike lane. I shouldn't have bothered, he had already classed me as "the problem" and he shunted his bus towards me to demonstrate just how wronged he was by my apparently terrible behaviour. I ignored him and waited for the light to change.

A couple of hundred metres later I was in the right-most of two lanes, as I was going to be turning right at the T-junction ahead. The bus came up in the left lane and swung in on top of me, I had to swerve right to avoid being hit. The bus had to stop at the back of a line of traffic stopped about 30m ahead, right at the T-junction, so I pulled up alongside the drivers window. I asked him if he knew how close he had come to hitting me, he replied that "it's a pity I wasn't even closer!". He then told me that he had me on camera, I told him that was great as it will have captured his terrible driving. I then questioned his ability to drive, particularly drive a bus, and he said "do you want me to come out and knock your head off!".

Threats are never funny, but there is something slightly hilarious about this kind of scenario. I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt and assuming that he doesn't routinely and casually assault people that "get in his way", and that therefore this threat was out of character. So in the heat of the moment he threatened to do something that is clearly irrational and illegal, and then found himself sitting there awkwardly in the immediate silence, in full view of the public (passengers on the bus, motorists stuck in the same line of traffic, pedestrians, etc.). To carry out his threat he'd have to presumably kill the engine of the bus, then leave his seat, open the bus doors, get out and walk around to my side of the bus. In full view of many people. And not knowing at all what the outcome of the assault would be. And still with a busload of people that he is supposed to transport, so his job is potentially at stake along with his personal physical safety, and his ego.

To hopefully add to his discomfort I told him I'd report him and I rode past the bus to get a photo of the license plate. Timing was against me though and before I'd even managed to get my gloves off the traffic started to move, so I moved off too, me in the empty left-most bus lane after the junction. He pulled in on top of me again, presumably just to scare/intimidate me because to actually get past me he'd have had to literally drive over me. I stopped at the next set of red lights, he pulled up close behind me, as soon as the lights went green he overtook me (which can't have been fun for the cars in the lane to his right) and pulled in on top of me again before immediately getting stuck in another traffic queue.

I made a point of taking a photo of his license plate while stopped, stupidly forgetting that I should note his bus route number too. I told him again that I'd report him. There were no further threats, I was now to his left so to be heard he'd have to shout at me and anything he shouted would this time be clearly audible to his passengers, amongst others, and given the traffic congestion he was going to be sharing space with them for a while yet. So he stuck out his tongue at me instead, which summed up well the maturity of his behaviour overall, I thought.

I didn't see him again after that, I like to think that's he's still out there several days later, stuck in the same line of traffic and questioning his life choices. Maybe he'll have thought about his actions and realised how utterly appalling they were, but more likely he has categorised this incident as further proof that cyclists (or more likely, *everyone but him*) are a scourge on society that need to be crushed. And what better way of crushing them than under the wheels of a bus. Now if only he had access to a bus, and if only he could actually drive one...

Yes, Dublin Bus. At the time I rode off with full determination to report him to Dublin Bus, and with thoughts of following up with the Gardaí too.

By the time I got home my determination had waned a little but was still there. By the time I'd finished dinner though I was back in the land of normal/rational people and this incident seemed so far removed from that that it seemed very surreal.

Reporting him would have been the "right" thing to do, he's a danger to everyone behind the wheel of any vehicle and particularly something as large as a bus. But I found myself not wanting to dredge up the anger that I'd have needed to do if I were reporting him and recounting what he had said and done, so I simply let it go.

I must admit too that I'm not very optimistic that reporting him would achieve anything. I'm very conscious that that's a negative attitude though - I don't want to become someone that turns a blind eye to stuff just because it would either inconvenience me to take some action that might prevent it from recurring, or because I choose to accept such behaviour as either inevitable or accepted as normal. But on this occasion I've let apathy win out.

Posting about it here helps to burn off some of the lingering frustration, the Internet is my unpaid therapist

I'd like to think too that the driver himself has learned from the incident that he needs to think twice, and three times, before resorting to aggression and dangerous driving for probably no more reason than him being "in a mood". I have a hard time convincing myself of the likelihood of that though, it's just as likely that he is always in such a mood towards the world around him and his grasp of what is socially acceptable behaviour is fundamentally broken.

Cycling down the Dublin quays this morning, there's a green bus parked outside the Custom House blocking the entrance to the cycle lane. With this in mind, I position myself primary in the lefthand traffic lane at Liberty Hall. After I pass the bus, I opt not to swerve back between the orcas, but instead to continue down the general lane, and end up behind one car at the next lights. I feel a bus looming behind me, but know I'll be on the bumper of the car in front so I won't 'hold up' the bus. Car indicates left as we pull off, turning across the cycle lane into the carpark - glad I wasn't in the cycle lane as at best it would've been an awkward braking situation.

I start moving over to the left and I get a blast of the horn from the bus driver. While I turn around to non-verbally ask why, I hit a section with a lot of manholes and potholes, so I probably look like I'm weaving to be a dickhead. He overtakes with no issue, and then pulls in 200m down the road at his stop outside Jury's.

I'm generally not a fan of interacting with drivers, as I find the instinctive, irrational part of my brain (that has been activated by the raised heartrate, often a surge of adrenaline and a 'threat') generally does not come across well in what should be a rational conversation of "here's why what you did was not very nice/safe/correct". Nonetheless, the irrational part of my brain overruled the rational part of my brain which was saying "don't bother" and I stopped for a chat.

I think, and this might be a first, that some of my points may have gotten through.

He opened with the unsurprising argument that I should be in the cycle lane like 'the other cyclist', I said the other cyclist could do what he wants, I preferred the road. He said the cycle lane was there for my safety, I said it would've brought me up the inside of the left-turning car. He said he didn't see that car (which was the car directly in front of me and just ahead of him, so that's a little worrying!). He said I should've been in the cycle lane before that, it was there in front of the Custom House for my safety. I said if it was really for my safety then they wouldn't have put a bus stop in it. He accepted that was valid.

He said I shouldn't be in the road because someone would run me over. I asked if he was going to run me over, he said no, I said he was the only person behind me, so if he didn't run me over, nobody else would. He said somebody else might choose to run me over, I said well then the cycle lane isn't going to be much help if somebody really wants to run me over.

He said I should take some responsibility for my safety. I pointed out my bright rear light and said there's me taking responsibility for my safety. He said somebody might not see that. Again, I said if someone doesn't see that, sure the cycle lane isn't going to help.

He said that he had a friend who killed a cyclist after the cyclist broke a red light, and that his friend couldn't bring himself to drive for a year. I said that's terrible, but I didn't break any red lights.

We went round in circles for a little while, but I think he took my point on board that cycle lanes are not always the safest option - due to the presence of left-turning traffic.

After about five minutes, I'd said all I could say and went on my way. He didn't try and run me over for the 200m of road we shared after that, so that was nice.

Had one of the (thankfully) few genuinely terrifying experiences of my life from some bell-end driver on the way home last night. I was heading down the road here https://goo.gl/maps/oA4zvFwZx7UeVCTR6 to turn right at the roundabout. To put it into context, it's a 5-6% downhill gradient that's maybe 5-600m in length, so I always take the right hand lane and put the boot down to keep in the traffic flow. Which is what I did. I checked behind me maybe 400m from the roundabout and while there was a car in the outer lane it was still about 250m back so I moved out and accelerated as they're generally MGIF merchants who crawl past to then pull in on top of you. I was starting to brake slightly on the approach to the roundabout but still doing of the order of 50km/h and to my mind well occupying the lane, about 1/3 to 1/2 way across, when I became aware that there was an engine noise very close behind. Luckily I instinctively pulled slightly left as this bell-end sped through the non-existent space between me and the concrete median wall. Unfortunately I didn't get the full licence number as a) I was in shock, and b) (s)he took off like a rocket. With hindsight it's lucky for both driver and myself they didn't get held at the roundabout as with the adrenaline rush I had I can't imagine it would have been a very civilised affair. I would have been straight off to the guards though if I'd gotten the full plate as this was genuinely one of the worst pieces of "driving" I have seen in 30 odd years of driving/cycling.

Is it just me or are we now past the honeymoon period following the dangerous passing legislation when they've twigged that there's no enforcement? Certainly I find personally there's been an upsurge since Christmas

In Limerick its usually 2-3 cars per red light that I've noticed.