You're lucky you're still alive.

[Arno]

Is the comment I got from a not so friendly pedestrian chap on Regent's canal near Mile End (London)
On commute to work, the guy was walking under one of the canal briges.
So I hit the disk brakes of the HP Speedmachine, which stopped promptly as expected, about 3 meters from him and still outside of the tunnel... Not sure if he got scared, but he gave me a long dark look and made this comment about me being lucky to be alive.
I tried to explain the bike was quite safe, but he cut me short from the start saying he had more important things to do than talk to me and so we parted company in bad terms.

Sigh.

[toekneep]

Some people are impossible.

[Kathy]

Part of the reason I didn't enjoy 'bent riding was because of the continuous stream of comments and threats like that I got. 

[Tim]

Give or take if you were born in 1945ish or earlier you're lucky to be alive - it's about that point you can expect 50% of your age group to have died - essentially you're into the people who are lucky to be alive.

You're not that old are you?

[clarion]

Some people are impossible.

But mostly they're in cars

[Regulator]

Run the bugger over next time...


...then at least he'll have something to whinge about. 

[arallsopp]

But you are lucky to be alive. Aren't we all?

I get a lot of comments (and other stuff) thrown at me on the recumbent. Makes me giggle when I see a 'caution cyclists' sign, as I figure that's what half the population do by default anyway

[Arno]

Run the bugger over next time...

Maybe he was having a bad day himself.... If one day I become ruler of the world, I'll send him to a re-education camp teaching him the benefits of recumbent riding for a year... or until he sees the light.

[αdαmsκι]

I doubt the issue is with the particular bike & knowing what that towpath is like, he'd have probably complain whatever bike you're on. The low, narrow, bridges make cycling along the canal between Mile End & Angel tricky & as the number of cyclists increased in London, I gave up using the towpath as a commuting route. Instead I find a lovely route north of the canal that was on residential roads & had very few traffic lights.

[Mr Larrington]

Consider fitting a circular saw blade as a chainguard (unless you're nutty in disguise, obv.)

[Wendy]

...and the correct answer is "It's a good thing one of us was looking."  Delivered with a cheery smile.

I keep getting ignoramuses tell me I need a flag else I'll die.  It's irritating, because all this really is is people expressing their fear of driving near a recumbent.  Most 'bent riders will relate to the apparent donning of a cloak of invisibility when going back to uprights, but upright riders never get told to put on a flag.

[Pedal Car Jes]

Quite.

Sometimes I take the pedal car down to our local reserviour and use the internal road there as a 5 mile training circuit.
Sometimes I just ride my Ribble from home and do the same thing.

When in the pedal car people seem to assume that I am about to swerve violently across the 10ft wide track and run them over despite the fact that it is inherently more stable than an upright racing bike, has twin 8" disk brakes and an IPCS legal car handles better than any other human powered machine short of a KMX (I had a "dogfight" with some kid on a trike at one of the early Leicester Spokefest events - it was fun and he got cross because he couldn't shake me off his tail...).

On the road bike, people just tend to ignor me and I can blast past them without raising a comment!

Have to say that, in all fairness, the staff of Severn Trent Water are far more knowledgeable and supporting - backing me up completely when some militant pedestrian physically stopped me to dish out a load of verbals about me daring to ride something slightly out of his comfort zone a couple of years back.

[Tiger]

"wheres your flag" "you need a flag" 'Isn't that very dangerous - its so low - you can't be seen'. "Are they allowed on the road?" "Are you trying to get yourself killed?" "Do you feel safe on that?" "menace" "circus in town then?"  "waaangaaaaaaargh"