Blah Blah Blah

When I’m out cycling, in order to keep my body and bike parts safe, I have to pretend(?) that every driver is half drunk, partially blind or casually homicidal. This allows me to predict, with sadly surprising accuracy, what cars will do much of the time.
Then there’s the 10% of drivers that go out of their way to be “nice” to me. Mostly this takes the form of giving me right of way when it’s not warranted. This is mildly irritating, as I have tostop what I’m doing and figure out what they’re trying to do.

But sometimes one of these Samaritans really does a number…

Today I’m riding down a very steep hill somewhere in Belmont, about a block behind a woman driving an SUV. She puts on her signal for a right turn, and I do some quick vector addition, determining that she’ll be well past the turn by the time I get where she is.

Wrong! Because she decides to be “nice”, and slows way down, presumably so I can pass on the right.  There is, of course, no way in hell I’m going to pass an SUV on the right at 30 MPH when they’re trying to turn. I’ve got to go around the left side, and I’ve got to do it fast, because I’m really moving. So here’s what happens in the next two seconds:

• I start braking, then
• check my rear-view mirror to see if the left lane is clear,
• at the same time shifting my weight back in case it’s not clear, and I have to go for a panic stop (which will be very dicey on a hill this steep). Then I
• look down at the SUV to make sure she hasn’t done something really dangerous, like change her mind and start turning left. Seeing that she’s still sitting in the middle of the lane I
• swing left and let up on the brakes a bit.

If she had simply acted in her own self interest, and made the turn, things would have been fine. But because she went against the norm in a misguided attempt to be helpful, I had to practice my emergency skills.

So don’t do me any “favors”.