Of Irresponsibility and Aggression

I almost had an accident this week – bicycle versus car.

After work, I rode from the train station towards home in the dark at around 8 p.m. and from a shop’s parking lot a big, fat, white Toyota Alphard comes zooming into the street with roaring engine, giving a shit about my presence and that he should stop before entering a street from a parking lot.

I had to swerve out of his way and showed him the finger while doing so.

That the dude took as an invitation for quarrel and with howling engine drove up next to me, letting down his window, shouting something at me, which I did not catch acoustically (I guess I should be glad I didn’t). I wasn’t in the mood to start a fight with this guy and ignored him and drove on. He picked up speed, letting the engine rev for the third time and deliberately drove past me so close that I almost touched the car with my bicycle’s handlebar, squeezed in between the car and a fence at the side of the road. Then, the dude drove off, much too fast in the 30 km per hour zone.

What a super-jerk!

Luckily he didn’t hit me and luckily I kept my balance and nothing happened.

But – guys like that should have their driving licenses revoked.

One of the reasons for why I am scared of driving is idiots like this dude who endanger their own lives and worse, the lives of others with irresponsible and aggressive behavior.

Maybe the dude had a bad day, but that doesn’t give him the right to ignore my right of way and it even more so doesn’t allow him to deliberately almost hit me. Had I lost my balance on the bicycle, I would have fallen into the fence or the dude’s car…

I am fascinated by the lowness of such kind of aggression. We ain’t that far away from animals yet, are we? It does take so little to make someone snap and do things that he or she will soon regret. It’s quite a leap, but a situation like that confirms my strong believe that the possession of weapons is poison for human nature. I am very glad to have been born and raised in a country where it’s very difficult to own a gun and that I am also now living in a country where it’s even more difficult to be a gun owner. There are enough weapons around already, like cars and knives. We as a people shouldn’t add to that with guns. Coming back to automated driving, please make it possible as soon as you can, you lovely engineers out there, because the sensors of an automated car would stop it before entering a road when leaving a parking lot!