Bananas

Karl McCracken has a nice post at "Do the right thing" that looks like the start of a series on different kinds of problem driver. He describes what he calls a "junction drifter". Although he handles it in quite a light way, he's touching on some pretty serious behaviour. Junction drifters are dangerous, but rare (at least in my experience), so there is nothing I can add.

However, it gives me an excuse to get something less important off my chest.

It's quite common around here to come across youngsters who like to beep their horn just behind a cyclist in the hope of making them jump. Let's call them beepers in hatchbacks. Unlike the junction drifters the beepers in hatchbacks are not particularly scary, and I don't think they are much of a risk either.

If a four year-old made a funny noise to try and make me jump I hope I would find it amusing. When somebody old enough to hold a driving license does the same thing it's irritating. But my mother tells me that I used to be a small child once myself, and I understand why it is funny to try and make people jump.

On the other hand, as a car passed me the other day somebody threw a banana skin at me out of the passenger window. I don't get where the humour lies in doing that. I see beepers in hatchbacks as immature, thoughtless and irresponsible. Throwing banana skins at cyclists isn't particularly scary, but it strikes me as the behaviour of someone who must be quite disturbed.