Posted by I was on my normal commute to work this morning, when I pulled up behind the line of cars on Sandy Bay Road waiting for the arrow to turn green so we could turn right across traffic and head down Gladstone Street into Salamanca Place …
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| Incident Zone – Source: Google Earth |
Normally cars just pull up behind you and it’s no problem. I can accelerate pretty quickly on a bike and no one gets held up, but this time the car that pulled up behind me did something different… he just kept on coming right up beside me and basically ignored my presence in the lane.
Now there’s a fine line to be trod between expressing one’s disgust at bad driving and not getting oneself killed by doing so, so I just looked at how close the car was to my bike, looked at the driver, shook my head trying to say “that’s a bit close mate and isn’t appreciated”, and then turned around to ignore him … except he didn’t want to be ignored … he had a point to make … he opens up his door and yells “You’re not fucking registered, so get off the road.”
This shocked me.
I was shocked that a person that stupid could get a driving license, I mean how did he pass the written test? Heck, how did he know he had to do a written test?
I wish I could report that I came up with some witty retort at this point, but the truth was I was gobsmacked … I’ve had beer bottles pelted at me, cars drive through stop signs and run over me … but I’ve never had someone get out of their car in the middle of sandy bay road and tell me to register a bike that doesn’t need to be registered.
I mean, I get his point … he is paying car registration which pays for the road we’re driving on right? and I’m on my bike and I’m not paying registration so I have no right to be on the road, hence it makes sense that he should try and run me over so that I know this. It’ a pretty good point.
It does however conveniently miss two counter-points (1) I do pay car registration .. my car is just sitting at home not blocking his because I chose to ride a bike and (2) point 1 is irrelevant anyway, because car registration doesn’t pay for roads … our taxes do.
I did throw some comment back at him, but I honestly can’t even recall what it was … something weak like “Get real man” which unfortunately just fired him up again and he launched himself out the drivers door telling me to pay my registration or get off the road.
I didn’t want to get into an argument with an angry and agitated guy in a big metal car sitting 20 centimeters from my bike, so instead I just looked down at the ground and realised he did have one point … car registrations do have one use … you can report f*ckwits that abuse you on the road.
Can’t you Mr Registration Number BF9632.
F*ckwit.