Not me, and not today, but an interesting story.
Yesterday, my colleague was driving to work when she was involved in a collision.
She was on a country road just wide enough for two vehicles to pass each other. As she approached the brow of a hill a car coming from the other direction pulled out to overtake a cyclist.
There was no way that the manoeuvre could be completed safely without one or other party changing speed or direction.
My colleague braked hard, allowing the oncoming car to complete the overtake. The car behind my colleague’s didn’t stop in time and hit the back of her car.
Neither the oncoming car nor the cyclist stopped.
My colleague (who sometimes cycles but never to commute) seemed more surprised by the fact that the cyclist, as opposed to the driver, hadn’t stopped. So much so that I had to check with her that she held the driver to blame. She said that she did, but she couldn’t believe that the cyclist hadn’t stopped to check that she and the 3rd driver were okay.
I pointed out that the driver whose fault it seemed to be hadn’t stopped, and speculated that the cyclist (aside from having no duty to stop) might have been in a bit of a state about the whole thing. You know, having just dodged a bullet, and might not have been thinking about anyone else immediately, but she seemed focused on the cyclist. She mentioned that she often sees this cyclist, that she doesn’t have any lights on her bike (visibility wasn’t an issue: I checked), and rides with “her coat flapping around”.
I was very surprised. This colleague is a fantastic person and a friend. She might have been in shock. I did ask and she said she was fine, but you don’t know.
It might also be that she identified more with the cyclist than the driver, which might explain why she was more surprised by the cyclist’s ‘failure’ to behave as she would have done, than the other driver’s failure to do so.
But still, it has left me uneasy. If my otherwise reasonable friend is able, apparently, to find a degree of fault in the cyclist’s behaviour in this scenario, what hope for us as cyclists at large?