Oh Lisa - I do take the lane when stopped at an intersection. Every time!

My problem is at intersections where there is no light. I'm on the road with the right of way. It's the cars turning left or the ones waiting at a stop sign to pull out (they are to my right), that are causing the problems.

Just today, I was approaching a side street that had a stop sign (I was on the main road). I'm always aware of cars pulling into the street because unless I make eye contact, I assume they don't see me. There were two cars at the stop. The first one saw me and assumed they could 'beat' me so she pulled out in front of me. She was ok doing so, but I did slow a bit to see what the car behind her would do. He stopped, so I kept going. Then, at the last minute, he pulled out in front of me. I screetched to a halt jumping off the saddle and just barely kept from slamming into his car. I yell at him to just GO now that he's blocking the road and he indicates that he can't because now there are other cars on the street that I was on. Yes. He had no intention of stopping for me, but he only stopped because there were cars on the road with me. And yes, this guy looked right at me and smiled before he pulled out. He showed no concern at all that he'd almost hit me. This is the 4th such incident in the past 5 days and my commute is only 2 miles each way!!

H's theory is that the local drivers are getting fed up with all the new cyclists who don't follow the rules of the road that they are taking it out on all of us.

Admittedly, as a driver, I'm finding a LOT of the new cyclists to be extremely dangerous and quite annoying...so I'm frustrated.

I don't know...maybe it's just a coincidence and bad timing.