Quote Originally Posted by GLC1968 View Post
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!!
What I see in this scenario is that this kind of thing has always happened to cyclists and always will. People make bad decisions whether they are driving cars or riding bikes, and that will never change. The difference here is that YOU were ready for his bizarre move- in the back of your mind you knew there was a freakin' tiny possibility of him pulling out unexpectedly at the last moment. That gave you a big edge over other cyclists who would have blithely accelerated at that moment, thinking the coast was all clear and safe. They likely would have slammed right into him and been totally surprised by the whole incident. YOU knew better than to be that confident. So I see it as wonderful proof of your defensive biking technique. You avoided all your recent near collisions because you expected the cars to do the wrong thing. This is defensive biking at its best.

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 think this is partly true as well. I'm seeing way more people on bikes this year than the past few years. And I see them biking in ways that make me shudder. They are astounded when cars don't see them and they also ride so timidly that it puts them into dangerous situations (such as riding along in the 'door zone' without any idea what could happen) and they ride in such a way as to make cars unsure of what they are going to do, which just compounds the danger.