New Forest cyclist suffers broken collarbone after being rammed by car in road rage incident

This article and the " half the drivers points " item came to my attention after posting an item to my blog skippi-cyclist.blogspot and i have borrowed a few of the comments here to reinforce the story !

Well here..

I am a cyclist and a driver

There are bad drivers.. AND certainly bad cylists as well. Nobody has the right to ram somebody off the road for any reason. But giving somebody the fingers, or shaking heads is not a very good thing to do either. I am always very patient with other cyclist when driving, but sometimes we/they get drivers and themselves into very dangerous situations because we/they think that a cyclist can be a pedestrian and a traffic object at the same time.

I say we should have respect for eachother - mostly people just want to get home in one piece anyways.

Though I get annoyed when people on MTB's ride in the middle of the road in rush hour when there is a path on the other side of the road.

It annoys me so much when you get Mr Irratic Car in a very busy location attempting with every sinew and muscle to squeeze in front of you on a bike only to see them brake harshly in front and stop in a queue which was totally visible way back. When safe to do so you inch slowly past said vehicles and get abuse thrown at you! It's about time everyone looked in the mirror before getting in their car and taking a chill pill and looked forward to an enjoyable drive to their location instead of the stoneage attitude of working out how many people they can upset on their way....

When alone on the road a raised closed hand with a waggle of the extended little finger is the way forward. By the time they realise (brow furrowed in intense struggle) that your little finger waggle is a direct reference to the size of their manhood they're already miles away.

The pinch point traffic calming system sometimes has a mini lane that allows cyclists to bypass the danger spot - there's a busy and formerly dangerous road near us in S London that has this system and it's pretty good.

From the Highway Code
General advice (144-158)
Traffic-calming measures. On some roads there are features such as road humps, chicanes and narrowings which are intended to slow you down. When you approach these features reduce your speed. Allow cyclists and motorcyclists room to pass through them. Maintain a reduced speed along the whole of the stretch of road within the calming measures. Give way to oncoming road users if directed to do so by signs. You should not overtake other moving road users while in these areas.

How often do we see this advice disregarded? The ranting cyclist hating lobby of the Echo seemed to have skipped this page.

That is our favourite road for cycling. They only recently added the pinch points and it has become lethal.

I've resorted to the headshake, futile that it is, as the motorist will probably be clueless in the use of their rear view mirror. It does get rid of some frustration in demonstrating my contempt for the offending driver and then I find a hill to tackle. Had a look at some of the responses on the Echo and found the usual tedious attitudes many of which had nothing to do with the incident. Hoping that this individual hands themselves in and the authorities actually charge him for something other than dangerous driving - attempted murder comes to mind. Speedy recovery for Mr Roberts and hope he is rolling soon.

Showing a v sign to an offending driver may be tempting and even deserved in many instances but given how many aggressive drivers there are, it's not a good idea. The cyclist didn't deserve this and I hope the offending driver is caught but I think it's worth remembering just how many loonies there are out there behind the wheel. A simple shake of the head can show dissatisfaction with another road user's ability without necessarily challenging some witless knuckle dragger to show just how thoughtlessly and dangerously aggressive they can be.

Similar nonsense going on at the sister paper:

http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/9257803.Cyclist_claims_he_was_knocked_of...

Its "his fault" because he flicked the Vs. Whilst I don't agree with it - its no reason for someone to deliberately drive into someone. The guy is probably losing a lot of money where he cant work now.

Oh lord, the Bournemouth neanderthals out in force, with their pig-ignorant comments about RLJs and cyclists not having a right to the road because "they don't pay road tax".

When will these ignorami finally get the point, that road tax was abolished in 1936, by Winston Churchill no less, for the excellent reason that he feared that motorists would start to believ that they had excluive rights to the road.

Well, you need to be at least 80 years old and to the right of Atilla the Hun to live in Bournemouth, so what would I expect?