Various topics: 2: Anti-social behaviour from motorists in NL vs. what I saw in the UK, Poland, Ukraine

Today another nutter motorist made me write this down, no actually it was 2 of them.

I read and heard many times that motorists in the UK are so bad compared to motorists in NL, not watching out for cyclists in particular. I read in travel guides that motorists in Ukraine are so bad, riding where they may not and not paying attention to cyclists. On my travel pages you can read that I did not experience that at all, and I gave an analysis there for why there are claims of this type of behaviour, which is caused by looking at evidence with a bias and interpreting what happens through that bias, in particular treating anything slightly undesireable as confirmation of the already assumed truth which is not actually the truth. See my travel pages for more on this. I will give a summary here but also I will describe here my experiences in NL which are at least as bad as just about any videos from the UK that I watched, where cyclists complain about motorists' behaviour, well, except for nutters purposely ramming cyclists which I've not experienced, but such things happen in NL too!

• Today, 2022-6-21: Near Ter Aar, on a road next to a canal: A woman in a blue car overtakes me, then 20 m ahead of me on a road where cars may ride 60 km/h, and where I was going at least 30 km/h, brakes to park her car! I had to brake full power which luckily works well with my Magura HS33 rim brakes. Why the hell overtake if you are going to park? I gave her the finger and some verbal treatment of her anti-social behaviour then another nutter (woman passenger) in a 2nd car starts blabbering to me. I ask "What" and they drive off. Obviously they thought I was wrong, perhaps she (that first woman) had her turn signals on, but that is meaningless for me because she overtakes me then immediately brakes! How stupid and/or blind are those people in the vehicle following me for not seeing/understanding that? Next time I will stop and make photographs of such people, their cars, and post them online. Don't care about privacy bullshit. If anyone threatens me or endangers me I will publish all I know of them as police don't do anything.
  Note about the 'must overtake' mindset: This type of behaviour of overtaking then braking is fairly common in villages, where a motorist overtakes (coming from the fairly natural 'must overtake' mindset which happens even when I'm going the speedlimit of 30 km/h), then 'realises' he must turn left forcing the cyclist(s) he just overtook to brake, but speeds there are lower (I usually cycle 25 km/h there, they are only allowed 30 km/h there), and this case is different as it is a long strip of houses along a road and you can't prepare for it mentally that someone is going to overtake then go into one of the many short own roads to houses whereas with the situation of villages people don't brake to park or go into an own road, they only turn left to go into a public road. I've never seen nor experienced in villages that someone brakes and turns in front of a cyclist he/she just overtook, to then park on the public road... Also, any use of indicators of course means there is no 'sudden realisation'...
  
  
• Last year, a guy tries to intimidate me and threatens me after he cut me off on purpose, for which I gave him the universal sign of friendship: The middle finger. Details to come. I called the police and they did nothing, stating "If you didn't feel threatened then we can't make the case he threatened you". WTF?! I don't feel threatened because I'm not afraid of anyone nor of any situation, that doesn't mean he didn't threaten me! Bunch of incompetent morons. They will go after people making 'mean comments' online, but if your bike is stolen, if you get ripped off online, or if someone threatens you, police will do nothing. At no point in my life when I could have used the police, were they of any help...
  
  
• To come: Experience with person trying to prevent me from going ahead where cyclists can pass cars even with oncoming traffic. Within a village called Rijnsaterwoude, number plates of the car 55HHVS (was ca. 10 years ago, might not be valid or same person now). More details to follow.
  
  
• Heavy snow situation, car with 2 people in it honking for ages to let them get past me. I would not move over to the right as just keeping control of the bike was hard on this fresh snow over older snow which meant a lot of hard pieces of almost ice that steer you randomly if you don't keep very steady control. I was NOT going to stop to let such a-holes get an opportunity to overtake me... I was going perhaps 10 km/h, they when they finally saw a place where the road is wider (overtake areas used for tractors, it was a road from Bilderdam to Leimuiden), where they could go past me, they went and they went at a blinding speed, a whopping ca. 12 km/h... I called the police about this, but as usual they were useless...

Besides those examples of bad experiences, what is it like in NL and what about my experiences in other countries?

Generally in NL there are few problems, it's simply that a-hole exists in all countries. Education does help a bit in curbing anti-social behaviour, but I saw no great difference between NL, Poland, Ukraine, from experiences riding there, and observing quite a lot of behaviour of motorists at the times in Poland/Ukraine that I was not riding on a bicycle.

Last modified: 2022-6-22