Originally Posted by High Roller

Like many of you without persecution complexes have related here, the vast majority of my interactions with motorists are cooperative and uneventful. (Yes, the occasional “get on the sidewalk, arsewipe” maybe once every month or two, more often than not from an unfortunate product of our failed public education system whose financial welfare and self-esteem issues would have been better served by a Viagra prescription than by huge monthly payments on a freakishly enormous pickup truck.)

In the last year or so, however, I have observed that this cooperation seems to be breaking down at intersections. Not because drivers are trying to kill me or force me to make a claim on my woefully inadequate medical insurance, but because they are reluctant to assert their right of way! In these increasingly frequent encounters, for example at four-way stops or while making a left turn without a dedicated green turn arrow, I make it clear to them via hand gestures that I will not take their ROW and insist that they clear the intersection before I take my turn. This has become a bit annoying, though, especially when there is other traffic stacking up behind me.

What’s your take on this? Have you observed this phenomenon where you ride? Have motorists suddenly developed some misguided sense of compassion for those of us whose “inferior” method of transportation suggests we must be victims of the current economic hardships? Or are they afraid they will squash us because their recent experiences with an increasing number of cyclists have conditioned them not to trust that we will follow the rules of the road for drivers of vehicles?