So yesterday was another meeting in the city, after which I had a delicious lunch with wifebot(tm) at Bocadillos, our local favorite, and then pulled Carpetbagger, my coupler travel bike, out of the MINI and rode back to the office in Marin thereon. And it was a great ride day: the cold, foggy, wind-whipped SF weather broke on the far side of the bridge and it was sunny and reasonable the rest of the way to the office.

However, I had a few problems. On Bay, on a steep uphill, a contractor truck took his lane wide and squeezed me off the road as the parked cars and him left about 3mm for me to ride in, forcing me to dismount and walk the last 10 feet or so, which was frustrating. But hey, whatever, he probably didn’t see me. The bridge remains a mess, as pedestrian and bike traffic for both directions are sequestered to the east side of the bridge, overloading it and causing serious safety problems. Again, though, no big deal, got through it.

But on the way down? At the last descending section of Alexander, shortly before entering Sausalito, I had an altercation. Tourist busses and various vehicles stop suddenly on that descent, just like they do in SF and in Sausalito. They don’t look for bikes, they don’t pull off the road, they just STOP. This forces bikes and cars to go around them. In the case of cars, it’s technically not even legal to pass them. But anyway, there’s usually room to do so one way or another, assuming everyone avoided getting collected on their bumper and no tourists on Blazing Saddles rental bikes weren’t thrown overboard. But at the bottom of that section, as we enter Sausalito proper, the crown of the road that had acted like a bike lane? Gone. So you’re just in traffic, like normal, but on a steep drop. So, a pickup in front of me pulled to a complete stop at an intersection that has no stop sign. He was over to the right, so I thought he was dropping someone off or picking someone up. No big deal, I just slowed, and then went around him on his left. Just as he suddenly jerked left to male a left turn. No signal. No warning.

We did not collide but my wheel was right to his driver’s door. There we were, complete stop, no deaths, and he leans out his window in a rage and says ‘you cant do that!!!!’ so i said ‘you can’t stop in the middle of the road! I was going around you!’ he said ‘I was turning, you can’t just go wherever you want!’ so I said ‘Consult your Owner’s Manual for the turn signals asshole!’ and then rolled forward. He lurched forward more, blocking me. ‘You’re the asshole!’ so I watched as he was rolling into opposing traffic that slammed on their brakes. ‘You’re about to have an accident, dick. Good work!’ and then as he started cursing, I regained my composure and just waved him down. ‘just go. JUST GO.’ and fortunately, he did. And so did I.

However.

I felt really bad about it. Now look, DO have the legal right to go around him. I am allowed to share the lane in the vehicle code. We actually all have that right, but only motorcycles and bicycles can do it practically. Passing on the left is not allowed. However, we were on a single lane road and I did not ‘pass’ in the sense that the vehicle code defines passing as a lane change, which I did not make. Now, in normal traffic, I do not pass on the left of a car, merely because unlike the right, there’s virtually no chance of me being seen. Cars turning right generally have to look right when doing so, so they MAY see you in time, and anyway, that’s where they expect you to be, if at all. Cars turning left are looking straight ahead. So, I would never defend my placement in that incident as being the safe or desirable place to be in a traffic condition. That said, he was stopped. No signal. To the right. Then slammed left, no signal. So. He DID break the law, and I didn’t.

But what bothered me was that every time we have an altercation with a driver, the impact is felt on bicyclists at an exponential rate. That driver tears off pissed at cyclists. not me. CYCLISTS. Add that to every other reasonable (safe distance behind bikes, bikes forced to take the lane as allowed for safety) and unreasonable (roadies two or three ride in the road blocking traffic) bike encounter that frustrates that driver and it’s a pressure cooker. Many cyclists, sometimes me included, ride around grumbling with a grudge against drivers, as we have learned from our day to day experiences. Totally unfair, majority of the drivers being attentive and reasonable people, using compassion and good judgment. But we don’t have much ability to cause harm to drivers. When drivers go off half-cocked and have a grudge against cyclists, the road rage thing percolates until we have aggressive driving threatening riders, violence towards bikes, and worse.

I hated that I got into it with him. I wanted to be able to go back and find that guy and say ‘look, we shouldn’t have lost our heads back there. You thought I was in the wrong, I thought you were, but big picture, no deaths. I’m sorry I yelled at you, and I’m sorry I startled you being on that side.’ even though very likely he’d never understand that hos own driving behavior led to that encounter. I just didn’t like the fact that he drove off thinking I was just another asshole cyclists tearing down that hill, shooting around him, and then yelling at him for daring to make a turn. I would have loved to have been able to actually TALK to him about what happened, and at the very least apologize for losing my cool. Neither of us were even yelling, it was all verbal.

But I rode to work stewing about letting myself stoop to the level of conflict that other people engage in regularly on the road. I did none of us any favors.

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