This morning, on our ride to school, my daughter says, out of the blue, "I think motorists hate cyclists".
I asked her why she thought so. I asked her if she was talking about the motorist behind us who had revved his engine as we stopped at a stop sign. She said no. She explained that a few minutes earlier, the driver of an oncoming car who had to wait for us to go by (because of parked cars on either side of the road) gave us a really angry look. I hadn't noticed.
We must have held him up for all of 5 seconds.
Yesterday, we were overtaken (with no delay) by two cars who then had to pull over to the side of the road because of a garbage truck that was coming in the opposite direction collecting trash. On our bikes, we could get through, so we overtook the cars and passed the garbage truck. So what does my daughter hear from one of her classmates when she gets to school? According to the kid, his mom spent the rest of his journey to school complaining about how 'those cyclists' might make her late for work - apparently it was our fault. In the kid's mom's mind, the garbage truck had nothing to do with it.
Fricken idiots.
We periodically see news reports of motorists crashing into school buses, as if they can't see them. Bigger than a car by orders of magnitude, yellow with black stripes, sometimes even with flashing lights...
ReplyDeleteIt's almost like people drive with blinders on.
In DFW, motorists were held up three times in the last two days by buildings abruptly stopping them according to news stories I've seen. Do they get mad at architecture, too?
ReplyDeleteCan you post some links? I'd love to see that!
DeleteWell, I don't recall them all as they were on television news, but one was at http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Car-Crashes-Into-Volleyball-Court-After-Chase-192475221.html More spectacular is the story in California of a car that flipped and landed on an apartment roof! Actually, around North Texas, motorists crashing into buildings seems fairly common. If you google "car crashes into house," be sure to limit the search to within the last week or so as you'll still get an AMAZING number of results.
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