Old 05-19-19, 09:26 PM
  #13  
estasnyc
Junior Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: New York City
Posts: 197
Mentioned: 1 Post(s)
Tagged: 0 Thread(s)
Quoted: 36 Post(s)
Likes: 0
Liked 8 Times in 6 Posts
You can be skeptical but I wouldn't be so quick to categorically dismiss this. A lot of the scary near-misses I've experienced outside of a city have been not from drivers almost running me under their wheel but from side-view mirrors coming within inches of my left shoulder as they pass by at near-highway speed.

I never had the sense that these were deliberate acts of sadism but more that this was about drivers not having a good sense of how near something can be on the right side of their vehicle. It's my experience as a driver that you don't really develop or maintain that sense unless you're in the regular habit of parallel-parking your vehicle into a tight space or having to navigate high-volume street traffic such as squeezing around a double-parked car.

There are MANY urban drivers who have never mastered this. I get stuck behind them all of the time while driving. It's also why I'm able to get around faster when I'm on my bike.

Go far enough outside of the city and I dare say that virtually all of the drivers there, probably always driving from a driveway at home to a parking lot at work or at a mall, have had no such experience at all since, maybe, passing their road test to first get a driver's license.

A pool noodle would give them something more forgiving to avoid than your head or shoulder.
estasnyc is offline