Almost run down... by a cyclist

Had a very close call with an idiot on two wheels last week. I had left the office for lunch, and was standing on the corner at a set of lights waiting for the green thing to come on.

I usually stand back from the corner as some drivers have a habit of cutting the corner a bit fine and the amount of rubber on the kerb is testament to the number of tyres that have rubbed up against it. I am in no mood to have my toecaps polished by a set of retreads going by.

Coming down the hill from my left was a car with a bike close behind. The cyclist decided he wanted to get ahead of the car, so as the car braked for the right hand turn, the cyclist shot up the inside of the car, went up the pram ramp, around the traffic light pole and down the next pram ramp, emerging about six inches in front of the turning car. If the driver hadn't braked, the cyclist would have been sushi.

The idiocy of that maneuver was compounded by the fact that the street to my right has a reasonably steep hill on it, so the cyclist was immediately slowed to about 20km/h - much slower than the car could do. Talk about a way to make friends..... not.

The thing is, in cutting across the footpath, he missed me by about an inch. If I had breathed in deeply, he would have collected me. I was not impressed. Most of the people that I meet on the bike are nice people - but there are certainly plenty of cretinous, arrogant arseholes out there.