We're allowed to do that. There isn't a law against us cycling on the roads. But lots of people are irritated by the fact that bikes are allowed to share the roads with cars. And that's absolutely fine.
It's absolutely fine not to like stuff, or to feel irritated by things.
I myself hold my hand up to sometimes feeling irritated when I see a cyclist up ahead when I'm behind the wheel of my car...I also sometimes feel irritated when I see a tractor up ahead, or (I'm not proud to admit) occasionally even a learner driver. Tsk, I have to slow down and wait (im)patiently for a safe opportunity to pass and add a whole probably nothing on to my overall journey time! What a pain!
But, just because I feel irritated doesn't mean I do stuff that might kill the person on the bike, or in the tractor or behind the wheel of the learner car.
Sadly, there are a few folk who are a bit more than irritated and they deliberately try to edge cyclists off the roads. They really don't like cyclists. They hate that cyclists are on the road and want to push them off! I was in the back of a taxi one evening and the taxi driver told me that he deliberately drives too close to cyclists because he 'fucking hates cyclists'. So, I know that these people do exist.
But most people aren't like that. Thankfully. I'm sure that even most people who 'fucking hate cyclists' don't try to knock them off their bikes.
There are some people whose irritation turns to frustration and they'll lose sense of when's a safe opportunity to pass a bike. They might wait, then get fed up waiting and squeeze between the bike and an oncoming car. That's scary when you're the one on the bike.
And there are lots of people whose irritation doesn't turn to frustration. They wait patiently for a safe moment to pass and genuinely think they're leaving enough space when they overtake and would be horrified if they knew that they'd actually nearly knocked a cyclist off their bike and possibly nearly killed them.
I was probably one of those folk before I started cycling. I had no concept of what was a safe distance to leave between my car and a bike when I was overtaking*. My bad.
Of course, there are lots of drivers who always leave a big gap between their car and the bike they're passing. Thank you all! I love you!
This morning a driver nearly knocked me off my bike. It was really scary. I didn't fall off but I wobbled, a lot. The thing is that the driver, I like to think, probably wasn't deliberately trying to knock me off my bike while he was speeding past me on a big wide road with plenty of space to move out. He probably just didn't realise that he was so close. Or, he maybe did realise that he was close but thought that the teeny space between us was a safe enough distance to leave.
I really hope he wasn't someone who hates cyclists so much that he deliberately tries to knock them off their bikes. I hope he wasn't that taxi driver on his day off.
I'll never know. But I do know that it was a pretty close call and I do know that if he'd been a smidgen closer I would've been off my bike. I might have been writing here tonight about some pretty nasty injuries I'd sustained.
Or I might not have been here to write a post at all.
And that's why I don't really like cycling on busy - or main - roads.
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