butt in face

[limewave]

Last week I was nearly clipped by a truck whose driver amused himself by seeing how close he could get his mirror to me. I caught them at the stop sign, but being the nonconfrontational person I am, I just ignored them. As I was about to take off, the passenger in the truck flung their cigarette butt in my face and hollered at me to get off the road. I've had people throw beer/pop cans at me before, but this was the most offensive thing that has happened to me on the road.

[BikeMomma]

Oooh...that's just sooo wrong. Was the cigarette butt still lit?? Imagine if that got stuck in your helmet straps or, worse, down your shirt, if it flew at you at the right angle. Yep....that one is pretty bad.

The worst I've ever had, and this is fairly recent, is we had a half-gallon jug of "something orange"....I'm presuming orange juice....thrown at our group of four. It whizzed over my head and hit the rider next to me, bounced off her ear, and riccocheted to her dh directly ahead of her. When it hit him, it burst open and we all got sprayed by whatever it was. Needless, to say we were pretty p.o.'d!! It was a totally unprovoked attack - we were minding our business, riding two abreast as usual, but staying right as much as we could. We were hoping that we would find the car it came from up the road broken down....grrrrrr. I'm not the retaliating type, but.....man, that sooo was not cool.

[CorsairMac]

lime & momma: I'm so sorry to hear about that. Did you get the license plate number? if no: next time try and do that. Per several women here on the board you can report the car for assualt. The cops may not do much but at least there will be a report on file just case there's a next time with another person.

[limewave]

That's good to know about reporting the license plate number. I should have done that--I will next time.

[BikeMomma]

I did try to look at the car's plate, but it went past us at about roughly 40-45 mph (which you figure was the velocity of the o.j. too!!), so I didn't have any time to memorize. I might recognize it again, however, if I ever see the car again.

[singletrackmind]

Argh!!! I HATE that. Whatever makes some people so braindead to the fact that we are living, breathing beings is beyond me. Oy. I keep telling myself Karma, karma, karma....except then I end up trying to figure out what in the heck it was I did to be on the Karma receiving line.

[Trekhawk]

Limewave - So sorry to hear about your encounter. Pleased to hear you are ok. Where do these sorts of people come from - they cannot be from the same gene pool as the rest of us can they?

[Technotart]

Here is the thing about filing reports - per a local police officer - some jurisdictions will file charges on things like that - others just take a report and leave it "on file" Now that on file report doesn't do much in and of itself - however, if the guy gets pulled over at a later date for ANYTHING - the cop is much less likely to qwrite him a warning - if the officer sees multiple complaints on a driver, that driver WILL get a ticket. So no matter how little you think the report is worth - file that sucker!

Besides - I have access to almost ALL states DMV records - for 25.00 a year you can too - www.publicdata.com

This enables you to look up someone mailing address from the plate number and send a nice letter reminding the driver to share the road, and a friendly thank you for his courtesy and consideration in the future...

Some state cycling organizations will also send out letters from the org that amount to the same thing. Easier than drafting your own - check your state organizations web site to find out.