*Venting ahead*
For all the militant cyclists raging about how dangerous drivers are, I see a good amount of them who look like they're trying hard to get themselves killed in traffic. I've never come so close to having one do it under my truck as I did today though.
I'm approaching a 't' intersection in the left lane, and there is a footpath on the left with a cyclist on it who's travelling in the same direction.
The light is green for me to go straight or left, and the light is red for pedestrians (the cyclist in this case) to cross the road.
I come up to the corner, indicator on for a good 30+ metres before it, and start turning left. As I'm about half way around the corner and she rides dead straight onto the road without breaking stride, as if I wasn't even there.
I was only going 30km or however fast you do for a corner, but I'm well around it now over what would be the walking area if green for her and from gutter to bullbar there is only about a foot of road, she's going at a face pace so within a split second she's in front of me.
I'm not going fast obviously but just have zero breaking distance. Anyway I hit the breaks and do a little stutter and lurch to stop, she has a 'oh s**t' realisation and tries to turn; so fast she almost falls off the bike to the left but manages to hold it. Then... after steadying the bike she just continues along down the road as if she always planned to turn.
Not just to recovery herself and turn around either, she goes on for about 400m, past several side streets before turning left again, so going left where we nearly collided must have been her intended path. So why she went out onto the road instead of continuing on the footpath in the first place I have no idea.
Looking over the bonnet, if she'd been a stationary object I was parking in front of I would have said my bullbar was touching it. I wouldn't be surprised if her handle bar touched it and that was what nearly sent her off.
I dunno how she was calm because I can tell you my heart was pumping afterwards, and I wouldn't have been the one leaving in an ambulance if it had gone that extra bit wrong.
No wave from her afterwards either, no 'I'm ok', 'sorry', 'oops', just casually cruise along the road after as if she hadn't nearly just dive underneath by 4X4.
F**k me