Road Rage

I had a rather unpleasant interaction with a motorist today.

I was running, he was traveling in the opposite direction. This was a country road, so no sidewalks, I was on the road. As he passed, he came uncomfortably close, despite having the entire other side of the road available to him... I threw up my hands and yelled "woaaah!" mostly in surprise. He honked, stopped a little up the road, but then drove on...

... but 10 minutes later, he returned in the opposite direction!

Yikes.

He drove along side me, cussed me out for being "in the middle of the road" (I wasn't), threatened to "thrash" me, then finally took off. The piece de resistance? He had a child in the back seat!

Sigh.

This is actually quite rare... I've logged thousands and thousands of kilometers of running and cycling, and there's really only a handful of incidents like this. 99% give you lots of room, slow down, and are generally courteous and safety-conscious.

But there will always be a small minority who seemed to be offended by your very presence... not much you can do about it, except what I did - take down the license plate and report them. I'll be surprised if anything comes out of it, but maybe a phone call from the police will be enough of a wake-up for this guy.

Keep your head up!