Back from a vacation in Newfoundland, waved farewell to the parents, and now catching up on past entries...
Rode in to Bedford for a physio appointment, just after the lights at
Convoy Run I had a truck driving next to me about 6 inches away. I shouted through the window for the driver to give me more space, and the passenger laughed at me and flicked his cigarette ash at me. I was so surprised I just spat it back out and the driver proceeded to veer over at me. I swerved out of the way so all he did was nudge my knee, and as I stopped he stopped about 20 metres in front of me. As soon as he saw I was getting my cellphone out, he took off - not slowly enough for me to capture his license plate (EGM 233), the model (Sonoma) and colour (a particularly ugly shade of maroon). I called 911 and got through to the RCMP, who took down my details and connected me through to the HRM police, who in turn arranged for a squad car to come over.
The officer arrived after about 15 minutes and took down my details and recorded what happened. He seemed quite angry at the driver, commenting that such behaviour was "extremely inappropriate", and that I was perfectly within my rights to be on the road. We agreed that there was insufficient evidence to warrant a ticket, but he was more than willing to call the driver and inform him exactly how dangerous his actions were and what the possible implications would be. I asked the officer if he could notify the driver's insurance company, and the officer got a gleam in his eye and said that he couldn't notify the insurance directly, but he could "file the report in such as way that the insurance company would find out, which will be a better deterrent than just a ticket anyway". The officer left with a handshake, and I got a followup call a couple of days later from the desk sergeant to confirm the details, then another call a few days after that to confirm the driver had been spoken with.
I mentioned this to the guys at
IdealBikes and I was told there was a letter in
The Coast, the local indie paper, about a driver threatening to hit bikers. A bit of hunting around on some private networks found it:
"This goes out to all you cyclists who insist on riding in the middle of the goddamn road: FRIG OFF. Unless you can pedal as fast as I'm allowed to drive, stay as far over to the side as you can get, or ride on the sidewalk... I don't really care which: just stop pretending to be a motor vehicle and slowing everyone else down. You're not proving a point, you're just pissing people off. Eventually, I'm gonna give into (sic) road rage and give one of you buggers a nice little love tap. Trust me, it'll hurt you a lot more than it hurts my truck. - Anonymous Asshole"
The current suspicion is that this author may be the same person who hit me. If he does it again, now he has a record, I'm sure a ton of bricks will fall on him from a great height, courtesy of the legal system.
The rest of the ride was, thankfully, uneventful.
Distance logged: 24.707km
Time: 93:34
Average speed: 15.8km/hr
Max speed: 50 km/hr
Temperature:
Cumulative distance: 2814.479km
Cumulative cost per km: $0.29
Monthly distance: 82.254km
Monthly cost per km: $0
