dubbikecommuter

This weeks blog is dedicated to my friend and colleague who was involved in a car-on-motorcycle accident. He has been in hospital for two weeks already, and could potentially stay there for quite some time to come. We hope for his speedy and complete recovery.

My husband and I are in the habit of going on the weekends to cycle in the mountains. It’s nice for many reasons: it’s a nice challenge, there are only few cars, only few roads which minimizes the chance of getting lost, and the scenery is outstanding.

The problem with this route is that, coming out of our house, there’s a long descent of about 1 kilometer and as it’s always shaded–in the summer by the trees overhanging and in the winter by the mountain–it’s always cold. Always. Even in summer by the time we get to the bottom, my quads and knees just are not working properly any more. Then, just when you get to the bottom, there’s a climb. Not just any climb: 172 meters up in 0.6k distance. It’s really painful. Quite cruelly, seperating the descent and the climb is a stop sign. Sigh.

It’s also quite normal on a Saturday for this road to be full of cars. I don’t really know who all these people are or where they are going, but they pass nearly right in front of our house. This means that on the descent, the pressure is on for the cyclist to keep the speed of the car, even if you’re freezing. Sometimes the road is wet and covered with moss: when it’s like that, I act like the old woman that I am and ease along at almost no speed at all!

That Saturday was pretty much like any other. We always have a good lie in, then breakfast-at-lunchtime, then we’re off.

When we pulled onto the main road and began our descent. It didn’t take very long before a car pulled up behind us. There’s nothing unusual about that, only she didn’t pass us. Well, I can honestly say that I have done this as a motorist too, because you just can’t see around the curvey roads! Only I know that, as a driver, it doesn’t bother me to stay back a bit. But I began to imagine the person, getting wrestless, desperate to pass, and in the end doing something stupid like passing on a blind curve or on the “traffic calming” bumps.

So when we got to the bottom, I was in quite a hurry to get to the other side of the stop sign where the road widens a bit and the visibility is better. As I pulled up to the stop sign I could see a VW in the oncoming lane. It’s a “T” junction, so the VW only had the choice to go straight or turn right. The car did not have any blinker on and was, in fact, on the left side of his lane, so I stopped but did not put foot on floor and then carried on through the stop sign.

Now let me say at this moment that I did have a stop sign, so I was meant to put feet on the floor. So, for that, my bad. But what happened next was completely unexpected: the Volkswagen in the oncoming lane approached the intersection and then suddenly made a left hand turn almost on top of me. He turned so bruskly that his tires chirped. When I shouted (nothing bad, just Aaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh)he rolled down his window and shouted at me “Get out of the road you fat bitch!”

How rude is that? What a cheeky bastard. The backtalk in my mind was shouting “I might be fat, but you’re stupid and I can diet. There’s no cure for you!” but I thought it best not to provoke.

My husband was, as usual, right behind me. Because he was behind me, he slammed on his brakes and also nearly missed the maniac in the VW. As per usual when something like this happens, he shouted Are you trying to kill us? or something similar. To our surprise, the woman in the passenger seat, with a full mane of grey hair, flipped my husband off!

I’m not necessarily international, I’ve traveled a bit, but I don’t think I’ve seen a woman in her 70’s flying the bird to anyone, least of all in suspect circumstances.

I have to think, if something similar was to happen with someone else, this jackass would just run them over! Unfortunately the whole thing happened so fast, I don’t think even my helmet cam would have captured the license plate number. It would have captured the event, but not the plate number.

It reminded me of an incident that happened when we first moved to Dublin. We were going through Stepaside, and just at a bend in the road, a cyclist coming in the oncoming lane was being overtaken by a car behind him at the same time that a car coming up behind us was trying to pass. The end result was that the car going the other way pushed the cyclist going the other way into the curb–and then kept on going!! Can you believe it? I was dumbfounded. It turns out that the guy was ok, he landed in the grass and his bike was no worse for wear, so in the end he got back on his ride and pedaled away.

I think I’ve seen that guy again, later in the week. Of course, I can’t be sure it was him, but it was a car just like the one he was driving, and he passed us so closely on a part of the road where there’s a blind climb, even us on the bikes can’t see over the hill. He really took many people’s lives in his hands when he passed us on that particular part of the road. On that same piece of road, another car, another day, another driver did the same thing and almost hit a Dublin Bus head on. I wonder if these people don’t think about the potential consequences of their actions? What will it take?