A Thread For New, Young And/Or Caught Up in The Moment of havig Standup 4 U Bicyclist
 

if someone touches me, 911 gets a call. I would have stopped then. You ran into some real crazies, be careful. Even now, I would contact the police on a non-emergency line and make a complaint, that's just nuts

And I know I'm not just speaking for myself when I say that red makes your post pretty much unreadable

It's not just the red...

They don't even have to touch me, just make a credible threat of imminent danger. Flipping me the bird, or yelling at me is below the line here, but a swerve, stopping up ahead to head me off, or any overt action gets a visit to the local police headquarters.

I gave up on trying to read it. Way too long without a paragraph break. Way too long, period.

Don in Austin

Really? I'd be filing a couple complaints a week just on my commute.

I didn't make it past the first sentence.....

I read it all, but it was hard to follow and choppy, almost like it was originally in another language and a compute program did an automatic translate (I read a lot of foreign web-sites using google translate).

Long story short, if I understand him correctly the OP had three different confrontations with the same aggressive male driver and female passenger.

First time it was just a deliberate close pass and a verbal exchange.

Then the driver circled back around for a second attack on the OP and the female passenger physically reached out of her window while alongside and tried to shove the cyclist over or off the edge of the road.

And then finally in the third confrontation the cyclist caught up with the attacker and tried to pass the car which was stopped in backed up traffic and the male driver physically got out and pushed the cyclist to the ground and stood over him and challenged him to a fight right there in the road. During this time more cars were backed up behind and honking and no one tried to help the cyclist.



This does not sound in any way implausible to me, I would consider this par for the course and just another case of violence and aggression by a dangerous and vicious felon motorist and his accomplice passenger aided by a bunch of other motorists who although they didn't have to guts to actually do it themselves or join in were certainly willing to stand by and do nothing and probably silently cheering the perps on.

I have found that I personally by how I ride and how I respond to vicious motorists like this can reduce how often stuff like this happens to me personally, but I cannot totally prevent or eliminate it, I've had as bad and worse as this perpetrated against me personally in multiple incidents.

It's just par for the course and it happens every once in a while, acknowledge that fact and make peace with it and then learn to deal with the situations when they come up. Just how it is.

I won't let a motorist get that close to me.

And just how do stop a motorist from getting that close to you Chris? The OP needed to file a police report, these incidents seem to be at least two different assaults. Plus in a warped way of thinking, I consider that teaching their children this was OK behavior is a form of child abuse and I get so sick of seeing bad parenting. I know thtas a bit off the deep end, but to show children its OK to assault a cyclist?

Thanks for your post. Too many of us learn the hard way that few situations are so bad we cannot make them either better or worse.

Par for the course? That's ridiculous. These people need to be held accountable for their actions. I have NEVER had anyone try anything close to this. If they did, the police would have been called after the second incident.

Agreed... paragraph anyone?

@ spivonious

I never said it was right, I said that was how it is, there is usually a huge difference between what is right and how things actually are.

I didn't try to. When I saw it was all red I gave up.

gcottay,

You are welcome; but I do not want people lose the fact that these are situations are created by The Police and County, City & State Govs. first, and The Father and Woman second and the kids are just caught in the middle and used as a shield by the father and probably the woman. It is very important to make sure people understand that
Sorry, I should also post Thank You.

Those who advocate calling the police, just what do you think the cops will do? The cyclist has no significant injuries, no witnesses and likely no real identification of his attackers. Plus, he's a cyclist.

Yes, I'm cynical with respect to police responses to attacks and threats against cyclists, but that cynicism is the product of experience. Two times I contacted the police about attacks. In one instance the cop refused to take a report in spite of several witnesses to the ADW-V. In the other, the cop took a report but the DA let the perp off with a deal to not prosecute him as long as he could go a whole year without engaging in similar conduct. It kind of made me wish I had maimed him instead of letting him go. (He had exited his vehicle (a Pinto) and came at me swinging his tiny fists. He was 5'8" 140 lb and untrained; I was a 6'2" 185 lb blackbelt training for nationals. I really don't know what he could have been thinking.)

If we could get more police to ride bikes, out of uniform, then we might get some of them to take such attacks seriously. It would help if the DA's also rode. Until then, we're just ugly step-children to law enforcement.

B. Carfree,

I could not agree more with you,

I also know Judo self defense (3-college level classes), just cannot flip people, feet surgeries and recently damaged big toe on right foot have left not balanced enough to do so. But as I said I was not really experiencing it all, shock it happened on that route and peace first person.

So in the bcarfree works a motorist can assault and batter (he was knocked down into a lane of traffic) and police will not care? Not buying it despite your them against us world view.

Depends on the individual cop(s). Some care but have their hands bound by departmental policy. Some care but are kept busy with "more important" tasks. Others do indeed not care. Some would even cheer on such activity and possibly even participate in it themselves.

I'm not saying its right, I'm saying that is how it actually is.

And, yes, some cop(s) actually do both care and will take action and are not obstructed from doing so, unfortunately that seems to be somewhat of a rarity, or its under-reported.

That also is "how it actually is" as well, just wish there were more of it and less of the other ^@^%@ 2&@^@ WY%62 kind.

my experience is that cops will care if someone makes physical contact with you from a car. I can't imagine the sort of anarchy where that would be below their level of interest

Anyone close passes with verbalization, then it's intentional and I make a police report with license plate number as a minimum. Come back around a 2nd or third time and it becomes a more serios crime and I'm stopping right there to call the police to report someone in progress of repeatedly trying to run me over and I'm in fear for my life. Speaking in a panicked voice might help.
A driver stopping ahead of me and exiting their car to confront me just became threat of serious bodily harm that will be met first with appropriate armed response followed by a swift call to 911. They will NOT get within arms reach of me.

If it's just "he said, she said", no witnesses, no serious injury, no serious property damage, then what is the cop supposed to do? S/he knows cyclists put up with abuse/threats/death-defying risks/self-sanctioning route selection on a regular basis. If there isn't an ambulance ride and witnesses, it's a waste of time since there's pretty much no way to get a conviction without using relatively expensive and time-consuming evidence collection. Those measures are reserved for more "important" victims. We don't make the grade.

Even when there is a death, it's often difficult to get the police to take any action. A month or so ago, a cyclist was right-hooked to death in San Francisco. The SF Bike Coalition specifically asked if the cops checked the video footage of nearby businesses and the cops said there wasn't any. (Remember, when a cyclist fatally struck a pedestrian SFPD was Johnny-on-the-spot to secure video footage, so they know how to do it.) A week after the death, a cop showed up to taunt the SFBC and friends/co-workers of the victim when they held a memorial at the site of the death. Fortunately, as a direct result of that incident someone noticed a video camera pointed at the death scene and secured the footage just hours before it would have automatically overwritten the critical footage.

Here's the news article:http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/nevius...ce-4757178.php

Yes, there is a bit of us-and-them going on. It's unnecessary, unfortunate and just plain prevents justice from being meted out fairly.

If I commuted, I would have my firearm with me. End of story.