From himself.
He described driving to work this morning, somewhere between Amersham and Burnham. he was descending a hill into a dip and, ahead of him, coming in the opposite direction, he saw an MTB with rider in Fuzzy descending mode (head down, arse up pedalling as hard as he could) trying to build up momentum for the climb out of the dip. The cyclist then started the ascent, looking down towards the road in front of him, honking from side to side, about in the middle of the road. My colleague realised that if he continued like this there would be a collision so he slowed and sounded his horn as the cyclist had not looked at him once. The cyclist showed no sign of having heard my colleague who was by now slowing to crawling pace. He then saw that the cyclist was wearing earphones which looked like they mere plugged into an MP3/ iPod. Colleague tooted again and got no response so he stopped. The cyclist was by now in primary position- in my colleague’s lane! Still looking at the wheel or road immediately to his front, honking good and proper. The cyclist was now no more that 2 or 3 yards from the front of my colleague’s vehicle so he leaned on the horn good and proper. The cyclist suddenly looked up and registered that he was feet from death (I think he thought the car was moving towards him), overcooked his avoiding manoeuvre and landed in the roadside ditch. My colleague rolled forward until he was beside the cyclist, wound down his window and asked if the cyclist was OK. He was. My colleague then reminded him that if he wasn’t going to look where he was going, his chances of survival would be greatly increased by listening to what was going on around him as opposed to his music.
A cautionary tale if ever I heard one!
