Drivers and Cyclists Unite

Maybe it's time I swallowed humble pie. Or something equally humiliating.

Like feces.

But alas, for all the anger at the tragic killing of a young woman by one of those annoying tour buses that take up the whole non-tram lane in Swanston st. I actually have had a good week on the bicycle.

No near crashes, not even abuse.

One incident that sticks out clearly in my mind though, was coasting down Studley Park road, thinking, a pro-cyclist has to actually work down the hills in order to reduce their time. It's no fun, they don't get to enjoy gravity.

Anyway I'm thinking this and I have a lot of time to think it because I'm just coasting , not racing and I emerge on Johnson st, and right near the corner where one would turn in to visit the Collingwood children's farm there's this SUV sitting mid turn. Then adjacent it at the intersection is a guy in a ute or something also waiting to turn.

But they are in a strange standoff, all as I approach the intersection.

The ute had plenty of time to turn in front of me, even if I have right of way, I was a long way off approaching the intersection.

But the SUV is parked in his turning circle, and not completing its turn.

Perplexed I coasted into the intersection, tapping my breaks to try and give a patented cyclist glare to the driver only to discover.

There is no driver.

The SUV has just been parked mid turn and it's driver vanished.

SO I turn and shrug at the driver of the ute.

And the ute driver pulls a face, the universal facial expression 'what is that douchebag doing?' and I imagine it's the same expression I am pulling.

And the universe just got that little bit more united.

And I pedalled on to the city. The incident not taking more than 30 seconds.

It's just so refreshing to be able to share a piece of driver stupidity with another driver. Instead of being the cyclist having to have exchanges with some hero in their big tank of a car that feature gratuitous use of the term 'mother fucker'.

The vehicles are a-moral tools of stupidity.

Cars don't kill cyclists. Stupid people in cars kill people on bicycles. Alternatively, people in cars also kill stupid cyclists.