This is what happened to me last night - I'm riding up First Avenue in the East Village, only about 10 mph, a half-block or more away from the next intersection. It's windy. A stout woman is waiting to cross the avenue, and her hat suddenly blows off her head. Mind you, I'm half a block away, at about the point at which I'd look up to see if I had the light, but I'm now on alert, looking to see if she or the man now crossing the street towards her is going to go running after it. Neither does, but I'm aware of the hat still skittering along the road, waiting to see if someone picks it up. I feel a little sorry for her, and briefly think of going to pick it up for her, but it's all the way on the other side of the avenue and I can't get over safely; traffic is relatively light, but that still means plenty of cars.

Now, honestly, I don't know who had the light when the hat first blew off. I don't know if the peds or the cars had the green. But I was, again, half a block away. When I finally pull up to the corner, slowing for the car approaching on the cross-street, this woman looks me in the face and screams, "You f***ing b***h! Because of you, I lost my hat!"

I didn't even get angry right away, because I'd felt the whole incident had nothing to do with me, except for my being a sympathetic witness. I suppose in her mind, if she hadn't seen a bike light approaching, she would have run after the hat. But I do think there were cars rolling along with me -- and was I supposed to stop in the middle of the block because I saw her hat fly off? I was not riding quickly, and I was nowhere near her when it happened. Anyway, I'm not sure it being night had much to do with it, because I could easily see this happening here during the day, and this is less "crazy person" than "childishly misplacing anger person" but her rage was so out of proportion that I thought it might qualify for this thread. Sometimes from our vantagepoint as cyclists we get to see the worst in some people.