A word of warning about one of your drivers road rage last night. It does your company name no service.
Last night at about 6:30pm, I was riding a bicycle northbound on Brainard Rd. overpassing I271. At this point there was no one behind me, and I often will take the whole lane as I plan on turning left on Aldersgate, about 100 yards up the road. I was approaching a red light when one of your trucks started honking their horn and screaming at me. They were still 100 yards behind me, no one else was around, and the light I was approaching was still red.
When the light changed, I proceeded to get up to the posted speed limit. Yes, I can get to 30mph very quickly on this slightly downhill section of road. When your driver, still honking, decided to pass me left of the double yellow line, at least 15 to 20 mph over the posted speed limit, just so that they could stop in front of me, and make a left hand turn on Aldersgate. It seems that they had a call on Aldersgate, since they continued to follow me for a short distance on that street and stopped somewhere between Brainard and the first cross road. That is unless of course they were trying to hurt me by stopping to make that left turn. I will not know since I did not ask them.
I assume they were not angry with me to start with, since they started honking long before I had any opportunity to do anything to slow them down or piss them off. The driver did put me, and his passenger/crew member in some danger with his actions.
One point that I would like to make, a very large portion of cyclists are professionals. It's how we afford the equipment we have. Doctors, lawyers, engineers, and business owners. In short, potential customers of yours. Though not the norm, there are drivers who act like this without giving us a chance to let them know how dangerous their actions are to us. Driving in this manner in a company vehicle would seem rather short sighted.
I am not looking for an apology. Fortunately no one was hurt. I ride the way I do, in an extremely very defensive manner because of the actions of drivers like this. I only want to inform you of an incident that does not reflect kindly on your companies reputation.
My question is, did you call the company and report the actions to someone directly? If not, I have to ask, why not? It is especially easy with a marked company truck. They don't want the bad press but writing about like this, in a forum only seen by other riders, doesn't do any good. Make the issue known to people that can change things. I have, and I will, report poor drivers to the company for which they work. I have done it with UPS, USPS, Sidleys, Kirtland Auto Body, and Dominos pizza. You would do all riders a favor by doing so.
ReplyDeleteBTW, in my opinion, no one really cares if lots of riders are "professionals". Everyone who does a job for pay is a professional. That is how we all pay for our toys.
Of course. This is exactly what I sent the company. I figured a phone call was to easy to ignore. Not that an email is any harder... so I also posted it.
ReplyDeleteMy "professionals" comment was more to say how silly this guy was. I could control the largest contract this company holds...