Why is it that you as a driver are more than happy to drive behind a other motor vehicle at 2mph or sit and wait in a queue that is going nowhere fast. But for the life of you, you can’t drive behind a cyclist. You just HAVE to get past that cyclist in front of you, when …
1/ they are doing more than 10/15 or even 20mph, quite often in a 20mph zone.
2/ to just gain 5 yards (in a hurry) and then get stuck behind another slower or stopped vehicle.
3/ at all costs, e.g. cut right in front of the cyclist so that they have to do an emergency stop.
Munster Road, SW6, in London is a great road for this, every and I mean every morning I have SillyDriver who just has to get past me, who is doing around 15mph. On a road with many speed bumps, plenty of road narrowings and parked cars on both sides of the road, which makes it narrow and very hard to overtake on. Every day I have a SillyDriver trying their best to over take me at all costs, easily two or three times before they succeed.
Attempt number one: Pull out, figure out that there is no room to do the manoeuvre, hold back wait until they are past the bollards.
Attempt number two : Pull out, figure out that there is an oncoming car and there still is no room to do the manoeuvre.
Attempt number three: Pull out, for the heck of it, revving the engine in the wrong gear to the max, which clearly can’t be any good for the motor, speed past me at break neck speed, way too close to comfort, hit the speed bump hard which clearly did break something judging by the scraping sound, which I of course laugh out to, which they of course don’t like. And then the SillyDriver comes to a quick stop less than 100 yards up the road in the queue ahead, which the SillyDriver would have seen if only they had looked a little further ahead than their bonnet of the vehicle they are in.
At which point I just cycle right past them, with a little wave, on the right all the way up to the junction of Lille Road and Fulham Palace Road where the tail back stated.
I have only one question, why ?
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