At the bottom of my street, there is a T-intersection. While out riding today, I stopped at the stop sign at the bottom of the hill. Being the after work rush, there was comparatively a lot of traffic at this otherwise quiet intersection. There were two cars on the left, and three cars on the right.
No biggie.
I clipped out and footed down to wait for an opening. The first right car was a Lexus RX. She (I’m profiling here: Lexus RX + illegally dark tint + bad driving = short Asian mom) stopped appropriately to make a left into the street I was coming out of until the left cars passed. She then waited there. If the windows (including windscreen) weren’t excessively dark, I would have probably seen her waving me through. I had the stop sign: She had right of way. I unclipped the other foot and stood down. I was not going to trust her and go.
She waited!
I couldn’t make eye contact with her, again because of the blacked-out windows, so I had no idea what she was thinking. If I was in a car, there’d be no way in heck she’d be relinquishing her right of way and waving me through – she’d be cutting into my lane making the turn, probably cutting off the left cars! WTF?! Meanwhile, the cars in back of her were getting all annoyed. Misguided false courtesy turns unnecessary deeds into nuisances for others. She finally turned, the cars behind her did whatever they were going to do, and the intersection was clear for me to go – just like if I was driving a car! Do people suddenly forget how to drive in the presence of bikes? Great – there’s an idiot driver in my neighborhood… wait, make that another idiot.
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