Congestion?

I recently experienced a delightful irony.  I want to share this one.

I ride in traffic.  I am a vehicular cyclist.  That means I consider my bicycle to be a vehicle, and I ride it according to the rules of the road.  (Oddly, this is the way the state’s code requires me to ride.)  I am a firm proponent of John Forester’s Maxim:  “Cyclists fare best when they behave and are treated as the operators of vehicles.”

I’m on the road a lot.  That means I get my fair share of verbal abuse.  Most of the time I shrug this off.  It doesn’t signify much.  It is a bit annoying though.  You see, the majority of those drivers who are hurling verbal abuse have just one theme.  It reduces to “cyclists are slow and in the way.”  No, they never say exactly that, but you get the drift.

Of course, most of the time there is only one occupant in the vehicle, two at most.  Congestion is caused by lots of large vehicles occupying the road.  I know I’m part of the solution, and that raises the irritation factor a good bit.

Adding to the aggravation is the fact that I spend a lot of time waiting on motorists.  I wait for them to figure out how to get through a stop sign controlled intersection.  I wait for them to wake up after the light has changed.  I slow down to give them the road, and then have to wait while they dawdle about taking it.  It’s a simple fact.  If the motor traffic where reduced by a third to a half, it would take me a lot less time to get there.  And they dare to call me slow!  Grr.

So now we come to the good part.

I was in a traffic “situation.”  There were a lot of cars on the road, and things were almost at a standstill.  I moved past a stationary SUV, passing him on the left.  As I did, the idiot at the controls leaned out of his window and castigated me.  The gist of his commentary was that I should get off the road as I was slowing traffic down.

Please note the following.  I was riding legally, passing on the left.  And I was moving.  He, and his fellow motorists, had tied things up and were stopped.

Hmm.