G Magnus
So were you climbing up Helevatia Rd or descending? If you were climbing at a slower than posted speed limit you are reequired to stay to the right as far as possible, since you on your bicycle are a vehicle and thus a slow moving one. Was the individual driving the truck correct in his manner by "whizzing by blaring his horn", rude yes, I'd be pissed too. But did he give you enough berth so as to not endanger you, or did he appear to try and come so close as to cause you fear of being struck, causing you to swerve to not be struck?
I'm sure you were you just riding along minding your own business but Helevatia has significant traffic that also comes up on we cyclists in a hurry, I love riding that road but recognize our motoring road partners use it also.
This really comes back to sharing the road. I stay as far to the right as possible so as to cause as little inconvinence to motorists. I in return expect to be left alone and passed in a safe manner just as if they were passing any other vehicle on the road, does this always happen? Nope, but hey maybe someday it will, I don't ride my bike alone or with my spandex clad friends to inconvience motorists even though some of them think thats all we are trying to do.
As far as having the police take some action on this, as a police officer if a cyclist calls after having cyclist/motorist incident and they had already flipped the motorist off, had an encounter (and stopping in front of the vehicle location for anything other than noting the license plate is inviting an encounter) its going to be very difficult to do anything other than try and get the motorist to hopefully leave cyclists alone in the future, but as I stated above you are potentailly partially to blame for this unless you were proceeding at the posted speed or it wasn't safe to ride any further to the right.
But you also have the right idea don't pay patronage to the business, pass the info on to others not to use that place, I need some tires I won't buy from them.
Gregg
I was on the newly chip sealed Helvetia rd yesterday riding along in the center of the lane trying to find the smooth spots in the road as there was no traffic at the time. All of the sudden there is an older brown Chevy p.u. whizzing by my left shoulder blaring his horn. My reaction was to fly the bird and keep going. He turned left at Jackson Quarry rd. as well as I did. I came upon his truck at McCann tire and stopped in the road to see just who this jack ass was. He came running out of the business yelling at me about how illegal I was and that I was going to end up in a ditch! I tried to explain to him that if he would have tooted his horn a couple of hundred feet behind me, I would have gladly moved over for him and that the ch ip seal was hard for me to ride. He heard none of it and yelled at me. Of course I told him he was wrong and I did have as much right to be there as he did. This infuriated the man. He ran towards me and was kicking gravel on me from less than 5' away and swung his arms wildly as he was calling me a bitch. At that time the guy from McCann's told him to stop. I tried to explain to the shop guy what had happened, he told me to leave. I was on the street...not on his property. I got the license number of the truck and left. The police said they were going to go talk to him but wouldn't give me a return call to say how it went. I later learned that the guy that harassed me was an employee of the tire shop. I was a customer of his a month ago. He changed over some tires for my friend. We are both cyclists and wanted to give the small business owner our business. He won't get my b u siness anymoreLynne Cuevas_______________________________________________OBRA mailing listobra@list.obra.orghttp://list.obra.org/mailman/listinfo/obraUnsubscribe: obra-unsubscribe@list.obra.org
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