People who like to yell at cyclists

[SalsaMTB]

Hey kaian...I ride in metro detroit also and find people here are just rude. When I commute to work (Livonia to Farmington Hills) I always get yelled and honked at. You're right, motor city just isn't bike friendly and many of the yells come from teenagers. I haven't really had names yelled at me, just things like "get on the sidewalk" I just try to shrug it off and think to myself that I'll live a longer and healthier life than them.

I'm surprised you have problems on Hines Drive. I find most drivers to be pretty polite on that road. I ride there all the time and have found it a rare ride to get honked or yelled at. I have had a strange truck drive slowly behind my sister and I before. Talk about creepy! He would follow, go ahead and pull over, wait for us to pass, then follow again. After a couple miles, he took off.

I will admit though, to ride any road other than Hines Drive, takes getting used to. You really need confidence to ride in Detroit!

If you ever want to go for a ride, send me a PM! I live in Livonia and like I said, ride Hines Drive pretty frequently.

[lauraelmore1033]

I have been lurking here entirely too long, so I'll just insert myself into the conversation since the subject so moves me. I don't even bother trying to ride my bike on the roads anymore because it just doesn't seem safe. I am aware that people are hostile towards cyclists in general, but they are doubly so towards overweight women on bikes. Ten years ago a guy in a car full of hooting teenage boys tried to hit me with the open door as I was going over a bridge, and the situation here (20 some miles north of Seattle) seems to be getting worse. I only ride on trails now, but even then....well, just last month a teenage boy yelled "Fat ***!!" at me as I was riding along the Centenial trail. I was so shocked and angered that I blurted out something to the effect that it was better to be a fat *** than an *** hole. Not the cleverest of comebacks, but what ARE people thinking?!

[kaian]

I am so sorry to hear that, lauraelmore1033 - that is just outright cruel! It is really sad that you don't feel comfortable riding because of jerks who have nothing better to do! I can't believe someone tried to hit you with a door! Don't people realize they could kill another human? Have you tried riding with a club or a group? Maybe you would feel safer. People in cars still yell at groups of cyclists, but they are less likely to do something if there's 10-20 people with you.

[mimitabby]

Last week my paper (the Seattle Post Intelligencer) ran an article
about biking and then they had an on line forum to discuss it.
Two different posters threatened to door bicyclists, and a third said he likes to stand where bikes go by so he can push them into the street.
they might have been just blowing off steam, but they are THAT nasty and angry and full of road rage.

When i catch up to someone, I try to smile and be polite. (I'm small and not
intimidating, so i'm sure that helps)
but then i tell them (as fast as i can because i'm afraid they'll zoom off)
what they did wrong.

[spokewench]

A couple of years ago, I was out on my commuter bike (mountain bike) on the road. After work, I had gone out Hwy 180 to go climb our local hillclimb - Snowbowl Road. I had a nice ride and was coming back into town. There is one part of this stretch of road that is 50 mile per hour zone and has a left hand curve where the side of the road just disintegrates into nothingness.

Two men, out of towner road bikers, had just passed me coming into town (this is slightly downhill so you can go pretty fast). A white pickup truck that was going WAY TOO FAST went by me and it appeared at the last minute saw the two bikers up ahead of me a little ways. He was going too fast and so his truck was being pulled into the bikes on the left hand curve. All of the sudden he swerves to avoid hitting the two cyclists in front of me - ALL his fault - his speed was too high and he was not paying attention. He just barely missed the two unsuspecting cyclists in front of me.

So, I got the bird's eye view of what happened and thought the guy was a total raging jerk but I still had to go home so I kept riding. There was a dirt pull off on the side of the road right after this incident happened and the guy in the white pickup truck skidded to a stop in the dirt and got out of his car and was running alongside the road beside me screaming at me that I was to tell him who those guys were and he wanted their names so he could go after them. YIKES, he almost killed those two boys in front of me! So here is this kind of fat guy SCREAMING at me and I'm all of 5'4" and 120 pounds , but as I rode by I just told him that he should settle down that he had almost killed two people because he was not paying attention and that even if I knew the boys names, which I did not, I would not tell him!

What a jerk -