Holding up traffic, do the math!
 

I was resting at the Express station, they have a nice rest area
just for bikes, A red neck type walked over and told me he didn't
like bikes, they hold up traffic.

He told me he got behind a bike and it made him fifteen minutes
late to work and he almost lost his job.

Some one do the math, how long would you have to follow a
bike to loose fifteen minutes? Highest speed limit in town is
45mph. In the morning rush, maybe 30. Very few ride in the
street, we have bike lanes and paths along all the major streets.
The whole city is about five miles by ten miles.

So corner to corner, town is about 11.2 miles. At a slow 12mph commute speed, you're looking at an hour to get all the way across town diagonally, hitting a few red lights along the way.

If this guy's normal commute is full corner cross town at 30mph he should be there in 25 minutes, taking lights into account. An extra 15 would be 40 minutes, or "stuck" following a 12mph rider for 3 full miles.
There's nowhere in those 3 miles to turn off and take a different route? OK, sure...

If you want to play around with the numbers yourself, let R be the speed the redneck usually travels at, let C be the speed the cyclist slowed him down to, then

D = .25*R*C/(R-C)

is the distance he'd have to drive before he'd be 15 minutes late.

For example, if his normal commute speed is 30mph and he got slowed down to 15mph by the cyclist, then he'd be 15 minutes late if his commute was 7.5 miles long.

This ignores traffic lights and the fact that angry people like to exaggerate. I also don't think an angry redneck would keep driving behind a cyclist for that long.

I don't like pho.

I've never had pho. But there's a new place open in a nearby food court called "Good Pho You", maybe I should check it out.

I love pho. Eat it at least once a week.

"Don't argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience." Replace bike with anything else he's every (thought) he's seen on the road. Could have been a stray cow with the farmer's kid herding it back home by bike. Or the bike was on the back of a car following a school bus making lots and lots of stops. You get the idea.

What's wrong with pho?

Angry people always exaggerate. I'll bet one day he got caught behind a bicycle for 30 seconds, then caught behind a bus, then stopped at a construction zone, then got stuck at a railroad crossing, then got a speeding ticket. When he showed up at work 10 minutes late, he blamed it all on the cyclist.

I don't like road users who think others don't belong on the road. Neither one of us is allowed to do anything about it. :)

Don't know PHO, the Express station here is Walmart owned, a very nice place.

Table and bench for the cyclist and they let you fill your bottles with ice and
water, NC. Some places charge for ice.

BTW, Walton Blvd, runs East and West across the South end of town then
turns North for the entire length of town. Most of the time in the middle
of rush traffic I make a lot better time on the bike lane than the cars in
the street.
I passed a white Jeep one day and it took him almost ten miles to catch
up to me. There was road work in the area.

Who gives a **** what this rude, ignorant, in-bred idiot thinks. Having experienced similiar approaches by total strangers my standard response is to ask them if there's a reason I should care what they think? And I look 'em in the eye when I say it as well. It's never failed to cut short any further conversation. Where does it say in the cycle-commuting handbook that we're required to suffer fools gladly? :rolleyes:

I agree with the other poster who said you'd have to be behind them for nearly 3 miles assuming you'd otherwise average 30mph and are averaging 12mph behind this bicyclist.

I don't think I've ever had someone behind me that long.

If I had to guess I'd say the guy was probably already almost 15 minutes late, got held up for a minute (tops) and blames the whole thing on that one minute he was held up. If only that bicyclist hadn't been there he'd have left on time for work!

There's no math involved. He was running late and would have been 14 minutes, 45 seconds late anyway, and a bike slowed him down by 15 seconds, so it's the bike's fault he's late.

A single car waiting to turn left on a 2 lane road can easily slow you down more than coming upon a dozen bikes, yet nobody says that we should ban left turns and instead make everyone go around the block to turn right.

He was goading you for a fight. That's how rednecks work.

Think about it. Go up to someone random. "We don't like-a yur kind round these parts. Yur kind be scarin' our daughters somethin' fierce."

What do you think they're trying to imply here?

If it were me, I would have told him I don't like rednecks, and that I got in a fight with a redneck once and he cried like a girl. Then when he took a swing at me, I'd apply a pain compliance hold (likely kotagaishi but block him from collapsing by pulling so I could restrain him with a severely painful but non-damaging wrist lock-- this is probably a Judo move, but I've yet to study Judo ... Judo is like that a lot, though) until he cried like a little girl. Then send him on his way; things get peaceful after that.

Sure, you can find 50,000 ways to prevent that from working out; and I can find 50,001 ways to make things worse for you. But that's me.

You don't really think he was just talking to hear himself talk, do you? Come on.

By the way, generally I really just ignore these types, though I make note and prime my reflexes in case they decide not to wait for me to make the first move. Usually people aren't "ready to fight" until you push them, but if they want a fight they'll goad you to get you to push them so they can go over. It's an emotional thing: they want a fight, but they're not feeling it, so they try to get you to knock 'em into it so they can ride it out. It's way easy to let them burn out on their own; but you risk further passive-aggression, and may find your bike damaged or stolen later. Even if you lose the fight, if you come out okay you might be better off (a few bruises versus lost or destroyed property? Good trade).

A wise man said you must choose your battles wisely; but it takes an extremely wise man to know which battles are wise to fight and which are unwise to walk away from.

I think you are probably right. They will almost never do you the favor of initiating violence, which would give you a self-defense alibi for what little those are worth.

I would tell him to invest in a better time calculating device, I'm only assuming he uses a sun dial to tell time.:)

Really though I work in a parking garage and everything about my job involves time, you would be surprised at how many people pull up to the booth and say they have only been here for "5 minutes" when in fact most the time it's 20 or more minutes. So basically what I'm saying is I think that 80% of the general public can't judge elapsed time very well.

Its ironic to me that the rednecks in trucks seem to be the ones most annoyed by cyclists on the road, yet when I'm in the car its the rednecks in trucks or giant SUVs slowing me down the most. Despite being 20ft in the air, they still have to slow to a crawl to pull in the slight incline into the parking lot or just make a turn. When you are in a parking lot, they have to make complicated maneuvers and 30pt turns because their over-sized land yachts cant navigate tight spaces. I wish society would be as impatient with them as they are with cyclists.

I am on the pho side, but no tendon, please. Brisket only.

But seriously, this guy was likely already late.

I'm actually surprised "aggravated assault" is a real charge. It's basically a court admission that he had it coming... well, it would be if it wasn't so broad. Somebody threatening me with the suggestion of violence will aggravate me real quick, but you know what? If Russia points their nuclear missiles at the US and starts shouting, the US bombs all of Russia's silos. If you start seriously insinuating that you're going to be waiting outside for me in a dark alley near the bar, I'm going to make sure you're limping before you leave, then I won't have to worry about a surprise attack from your lame ass later.

That's the problem here: you can make someone feel completely and totally unsafe, and legally what can they do? Call the police, get a restraining order... the cops are not my personal guard, and they will not watch over me 24 hours a day for the rest of my life. I'm not the President, I don't get four teams of body guards for all eternity. One day "something will happen," and they can't just go "OH we KNOW it was you, you're in trouble now boy!" and throw my declared adversary in jail for it. Gotta prove it.

But it's not self defense until they make that first move. Even if they actually burn your house down with you and your wife and kids in it, and you get out, and you find the guy running away with the gas can and torch, and chase him down, and rip his heart out of his chest, and you prove he did it in court, you get off for "temporary insanity" because you were "so emotionally disabled at the time that you couldn't identify the difference between right and wrong." If he's not standing there, right then, trying to stab you in the throat at that moment, you're not within your legal rights to do anything about it except cry to the police.

So you get these people, you can mostly ignore them, they won't make the first move. Not for legal reasons, but really because they need to really "get going" before they're into a fight. They're not feeling it, they need you to take the first shot to set off their fuse. You can't make the first move, because that would put you in bad legal standing. Unfortunately, that could draw more passive aggression (destruction or theft of property, annoyance or threatening of your friends and family), or it could set up real aggression and you could find yourself wandering out at night and you meet the same guy and a few of his friends and they decide to make the first move this time around.

It's all very, very complex. It's a social disaster is what it is; and trying to engineer laws for this crap was a huge mistake. Back in the day, a bar fight was "disorderly conduct" and maybe you got billed for "destruction of personal property." Now it's a serious assault charge, and they try to figure out who to blame for starting it, and if you can claim you didn't start it you might get off scott free, so if you can instigate it but not throw the first fist into the mix you can kick some ass and let someone else take the fall for it. So much suck.

Sometimes, you really gotta realize that somebody gets punched in the head, and the best thing for the cops to do is go, "Hey, you guys okay? Listen, behave. I don't want to have to come back here, and if I do you're both spending the night in separate cells to cool off. I suggest you both go home." It'd be cheaper on the court system, and better for everyone involved.

I'd be inclined to point out to him that I've worked for some places that it was really easy to get fired from, and 15 minutes late once wouldn't even get mentioned at a performance review. Probably had more to do with his ****ty attitude.

Then he'd probably force me to demonstrate how his attitude can get him hurt.

A coworker of mine says to aim for the big SUV when your brakes fail, because they've only got one person in them anyway, lots of empty space to absorb the impact.

Really I like smaller, rear-wheel drive cars. They maneuver great, you can see everything around you, and they accelerate real quick with a tiny little engine. Mazda MX-5 Miata is an awesome daily. Why anyone would drive a gigantic SUV that handles like a boat and runs on front wheel drive off a 150hp 4cyl I'll never know. Even with a V8 engine, wtf? It's too much garbage to play with, not enough handling and visibility; that huge 400HP engine won't help you when some moron reaches into his back seat and skids his car into your lane at 70mph on the highway and you have to swing your car out of the way and around him. You're gonna roll over if you don't just cruise right into the wreckage skidding as hard as you can on your brakes.

Should have told him to think back to the last traffic jam he was in and tell you how many bikes were visible through his windshield.

The truth of the matter is all drivers have great memories for every bike the slowed them down a bit, but their memories fail them when it comes to all the cars that have impeded their progress. Must be a selective memory type of thing.

I think he's exaggerating just a tiny bit. He was probably just 14 minutes late ;). Nothing to do but politely acknowledge his existence, but nothing more.

What is pho?

His attitude and posture did not seem threatening. Just waiting for his truck to fill up and
walked over to visit. I assumed he was already late and the bike just added a few seconds
to his problem. But he needed some one to blame. I also suspect it was not the first time
he had been late to work.

The truck was an old Dodge 4X4 in cam'o, black net tail gate, big tires, and so on. He was
opening a can of Skoal when came over, maybe just to put the wrapper in the trash can?

Seemed like a likeable Joe.

So, to review:

1) The redneck was an idiot, although possibly a likeable one
2) Blaming a cyclist for the fact that he almost got fired due to being late is complete, utter bollocks
3) Neither logic nor math provides a good defense when dealing with folks that blame all the failures in the world on bikes
4) The folks on BikeForums have varying knowledge and desires of Pho

I would've just asked him why he didn't just go around, like he would a tractor or other slow moving vehicle.

I'm not sure you quite understand the legal meaning of "aggravated assault."