Jonola14

THE PSYCLEPATH

Blog entries on this website have been sparse in 2006 - three in January, one in February and one in March - mostly due to this music website and a continuous string of uneventful days at work, hence no material. Plus there was a tentative, time-consuming dabble at house-buying which has now been postponed indefinitely and the occasional ‘really can’t be arsed’ evening amongst a miriad of stress and bad moods.

But for those of you that have stuck with me over the past six months and checked back to the site every now and again (when are you going to fix the Subscribe option Simon?), you may remember this post in which I described how a cyclist crashed into the side of my car, blatantly disregarding the Highway Code’s laws on protective clothing (point number 45) and the Road Junction rule (point number 57). Well, after yet another uneventful day at the office, I was in the car on the way home when I spotted a cyclist pelting down the main road at a fair speed, with NO helmet, NO reflective clothing and NO idea about the rules on road cycling.

I was stuck in a traffic jam, there were some roadworks or red traffic lights up ahead and the traffic was at a standstill. Having overtaken the cyclist a minute or so before, it wasn’t long before he came hurtling down the inside of the lane whilst the cars to his right waited patiently for the jam to clear. ‘Uh-oh’ I thought as I saw a BMW turning across the lane of traffic just three cars in front of me. ‘That cyclist looks like he’s going to…’ BANG! The cyclist went straight into the front wing of the BMW at a rate of knots and I kid you not, the bike went twelve feet in the air. I momentarily lost sight of the rider and feared for his life (despite the fact he was an irresponsible prick) until seconds later I saw him charging at the driver’s door, fists clenched, shouting obscenities as if it was the BMW’s fault.

I therefore had a decision to make - should I stop and act as a witness or just ignore the incident? If I stopped, I would have had to deal with an irate cyclist and probably get involved in insurance claims which I could frankly do without - after all, the cyclist was unhurt and hadn’t assaulted the BMW driver so I made the split-second executive decision to pretend it never happened and drove on. Those of you about to criticise me for this, let me just point out that I was potentially dealing with a knob-end cyclist and a BMW driver - neither of which I have any desire to assist.

Did I do the right thing?