Interesting one today...

[Chris71]

I was cycling along a suburban street with cars on the nearside this morning when I heard someone wringing the neck of a heavy diesel engine behind me. I glanced over my shoulder and saw a large-ish truck - probably 15 or 20 tons - catching up rapidly. It was obvious he was in a hurry so I was thinking about somewhere I could pull in to let him pass, but before I did so he found his own gap and overtook.

It was one of those 'this could be interesting' moments as I heard the turbo start to whistle behind me and the huge diesel straining towards the red line. He went past pretty close, but fortunately had plenty of time to pull back in and it was all refreshingly free of drama. Quite a nifty bit of driving I thought given the circumstances.

About 100 yards later he took the wing mirror clean off a parked hatchback.

Edited by Chris71 on Tuesday 27th September 11:08

[anonymous-user]

a good reminder of the need to apply a bit of road craft, self preservation and common sense for us all.

i hope you got his plate and the details of the truck company and gave them a polite call. thats the advantage of having trucks with signwriting all over them! personally i would go back and leave a note on the windscreen of the car too stating what you saw too. Mirrors are the best par tof £100 if they have electic movements and heated gubbins in them so its seems unfair for the poor owner to stump up. the scary thing is the truck driver wont have even noticed. ,much like the guy with the car across his front on themotorway recently....

[The Stiglet]

Sounds better than the tt in a white van who hit me with his wing mirror at around 25 mph last Thursday right in front of a police van!

Amazingly, that's the first time I've been in an 'incident' in 3 years of daily commuting in central London.

Not bad...

[yellowjack]

Interesting near-miss for me yesterday. Porker, some 911 model or other (it was dark) leaving the Norris Bridge roundabout, near Fleet, in the direction of Aldershot. The Knob Polisher mashed the loud pedal into the carpet and began an overtake on the THREE! cars ahead of him BEFORE he was past the traffic island at the entry/exit. This meant he came out into the lane I was in (approaching the roundabout to go right, to Farnborough) at quite a lick, missing my right elbow by about an inch. Fortunately for me, there was nothing approaching from behind me, or I would probably have 'taken the lane' on approach to the roundabout, putting me directly into his path. For the sake of him waiting a few seconds to clear the junction and PLAN his overtake properly, my missus could have been a wealthy widow.

[Fetchez la vache]

I sometimes think pedal powered should be re-titled the self preservation society. You have to be on the look out...