It’s easy to get paranoid when you’re riding a bike alongside drivers who, despite commanding vehicles much bigger and faster than yours, seem uninterested in your safety or survival. Sometimes it feels like they’re out to get you. Or at least like they’d be happy if you got hurt.
And apparently, that paranoia is not entirely unjustified. In the U.K., for instance, one driver bragged on Twitter about knocking a person off his bike with her car:
In this case, bike activists who monitor social media for anti-cycling comments alerted the police, who told Way to report having being in a collision. (We can just imagine her whining “but I did report it! I told everyone on Twitter he deserved it!”) But it is creepy that anyone would be so excited about potentially injuring another human being.
And, for what it’s worth, “road tax” isn’t really a thing in England. There’s a car tax, but funds for the upkeep of roads come from general taxation. Everyone’s paying for them, and everyone should get to use them without fear someone will assault them with a two-ton vehicle and then sneer about it online.
