Shared Commute
I’m a creature of habit, I take the same route to work every day along with many others. I recognize many people on my commute. There’s the girl with the gold helmet, her guy friend who wears plaid shirts exclusively. There’s the middle-aged woman with the very large panniers who always dresses for rain. There’s the girl with a straw-basket-bag rigged as a back pack. There’s the girl with the old rust-orange bike who always insists in biking faster than me no matter what. Of course these are all bicyclists.
I’ve always suspected I’m biking alongside the same drivers everyday too. But it’s hard to tell since cars are pretty anonymous looking. Only the unusual cars ones stand out. Or the dangerous ones.
One day last May I was riding home in the rain. Because of the weather, the crazy traffic, the door zone, and the collective mood of the street I didn’t feel comfortable filtering and wanted to stay as visible as possible. Even if it was slower. So I took the lane.
I ignored it. They always honk. But then:
I tried to ignore her. Yelling is just honking but with words.
But she was wrong and I couldn’t hold back. I started to give a well-researched explanation about road rules. She rolled up her window fast and…
…used her car to forcibly pass my in the left half of the lane.
I was pretty shaken. The light changed immediately after and she wove through the dense traffic. I never got a plate and I regretted it. Even if I had, I didn’t know if I could do anything with it since I was not physically injured.
But like me, she apparently is a creature of habit. Because 10 months later…
…which gives me a small bit of satisfaction. There may not be anything I can do but now I’m even more researched and know that I have a right to file a police report for aggressive driving if something like this happens again.
From personal observation (and sort of controlled experiment), I think that men *tend* to be more polite to woman cyclists than they are to male cyclists. Data doesn’t confirm whether the reverse is true. My favorite pulll-over-window-down was when a man in a car on Columbus Ave. in Boston told me that I should have stopped for a pedestrian in the last cross-walk. I hate when holier-than-thou drivers really are! Ever since, I’ve been very careful to stop for pedestrians when they might have the right of way, pulling into the center of the lane so that cars can’t pass me and run down the pedestrians.
from my experiences of men shouting ” F U bitch” or the like at me from their cars while I am biking, this is not universally the case…. or maybe they say even less polite things to men?
That happens to me too: I see some of the same bikes over and over again. One of my wife’s coworkers rides along the same route in the other direction. Sometimes pedestrians, too. When I was commuting by subway, I’d see the same people going home at the same time. But rarely with cars.
Annoying woman in a Mini? My first thought was that it was my mother, but she doesn’t commute in Boston.
my favorites are the ones who pull up too close so they can shout, “you don’t pay taxes. get out of the road”. eyeroll.
I always find it amusing when motorists get mad at you for taking the lane, especially in Boston. Besides the fact that it’s perfectly legal to take the lane, it’s funny that motorists think that you doing so slows them down. Even if they do manage to pass you, you’ll just see them at the next red light anyways. What’s the big rush?!
I agree, file a report next time something like that happens