BIKE: Road Rage (Long)

[Grant, Jon]

Hi, all,

My name is Jon Grant, and I'm new to this list just now.

(I already posted this to the iBob list so for those of you who are on that
one too, please forgive the cross-post. I'll not make a habit of it.)

I often commute by bicycle to my office downtown. I do my best to share the
road responsibly and sensitively, but sometimes that isn¹t enough.

On Thursday morning, March 10, 2005, as I rode north across the Congress
Avenue bridge, a car driver behind me aggressively pulled around and hit his
brakes, coming to a sudden, complete stop right in front of me. I was
puzzled by the move, as I had been riding at the right curb, as straight as
I could manage. 

I watched as he entered his parking garage, and I called 911. As I spoke
with the police dispatcher, the driver walked out of the garage and
confronted me. He screamed in obscene language that he had commuted by
bicycle for two years and that he had ³never once held up traffic.² He
called me ³a disgrace to the bicycling community² for ³completely blocking
traffic,² then walked away.

A pair of police officers on bicycles showed up less than five minutes later
and took notes as I described the driver, his car, and the incident. One
officer even went to the man¹s office building in an attempt to find him.
Then the three of us rode into the garage and found his car.

The driver must have been watching from his office window, because he came
to the garage and confronted the officers with his ³side of the story,²
about how I was ³taking up the whole lane at five miles an hour² and how he
only intended ³to teach him a lesson on what it feels like to be held up by
somebody -- you know, tit for tat.² He told the cops that I ³was never in
any actual danger.²

The police were not sympathetic to his admission that he had just
deliberately used his car to try to intimidate a bicycler. They told him
that bicycles had a right to use the road, just like cars, and that his
action was inappropriate and illegal. They also pointed out that he couldn't
have been too inconvenienced if he had managed to pass me in the first
place. He continued to argue that he had only done what anyone else would
do. 

They asked what resolution I expected. I told them that, while I thought
pursuing further legal options would only make matters worse, I hoped the
man would realize greater understanding for those with whom he is bound to
share the road. As I left, they told me they would file a ³road rage²
report, and that they intended to ³talk to this guy for a little while.²

I expect inattentiveness and ignorance on the road, but when drivers choose
to express their frustration in willfully dangerous ways, I will call the
police every time. We don¹t allow children to get their way by throwing
tantrums, and we certainly cannot afford to allow bullying behavior from
adults wielding two-ton cars as weapons.

--Jon Grant