3:38pm Monday 15th March 2010
I am a recently born-again biker and was involved in a scrape with a car on my first morning out on my new bike.
I would like to know what readers think of the incident.
I arrived at traffic lights where there was a short queue of cars in two lanes, so I made my way between them to the front.
Just when I stopped, the lights changed. I wasn’t ready to pull away immediately but the car beside me did, clipping my wing mirror in the process.
I set off thinking I must take account of this bike being a little wider than the ones I used to ride round London all those years ago. But I soon came across the driver of the car signalling for me to pull over, so I did.
She got out of her car looking very cross, and didn’t agree when I pointed out that she had clipped my mirror.
She started examining the faint mark my mirror had left on hers and seemed a little disappointed when it just rubbed off. She left saying, “That’s what happens when you get a motorbike.”
I’ve been thinking about this. As a car driver I can get irritated if a car pushes in front of me, but not motorbikes as they won’t hold me up.
Could her reaction have been justified? On the other hand, I could have pointed out that our vehicles had been involved in a collision while mine was stationary, so basically she had driven into mine from behind.
It seems silly to sit on a bike at the back of a queue of cars when there’s room to get past, but is that what we should do?
Miles French, Upper North Street, Brighton
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