Ok this one definitely wasn't my fault, but I'm posting it because it's a situation I'd not previously thought was a specific danger to bikes.
I was travelling through my local town centre, 30 limit, shops, pedestrians, speed bumps, top speed of around 15mph, there's a few cars in front of me and behind me is a kid on a motorbike.
I have no problem with the kid, he's on an off-road style bike in Ford ASBO orange, it has numberplates and L plates and the kid is in full gear and a proper helmet. He's keeping back about 3/4 car length which is fine at that speed and is signalling correctly and everything, he's roughly level with the centre of my car. All fine, all good. (I saw the bike a little later, it's a Hyosung, no idea if they're any good, I'm not a biker)
The only thing he's doing which you could possibly describe as erratic is he's going around the speed bumps rather than over them. Not sure if that's the recommended thing for bikes to do or not, but I have no problem with it, however it seems to unnerve the car behind him who is keeping back almost two car lengths. Again all fine, no problem with leaving extra distance.
This is until a minor road appears from the left, typical T junction with that minor road giving way. Waiting at the give way line is a pink PT Cruiser
, and suddenly my idiot sense starts tingling (well, this person did think that a pink PT Cruiser was a good idea)
You know how sometimes you just know what is going to happen, it was one of those moments, I move towards the centre line a little so that they can see the bike a little sooner, but it doesn't prevent the inevitable. "aha! a gap!" thinks the PT Cruiser pilot and procedes to pull out behind me with the intend of cutting in front of the car that is foolishly leaving over 2 1/2 car lengths. (That in itself should have been a clue here, no-one leaves a gap like that in this particular town centre, everyone drives in bunches separated only by traffic lights or people parking/departing)
The driver sees the bike at the last minute, drops the anchors and stops about 6-9 inches short of the kid's back wheel, about where his leg would have been had he not made a very rapid right turn moments earlier, and then said driver starts gesticulating and shouting like it was the kids fault.
I really don't understand how you bikers put up with it, you're not even safe in a slow moving town centre traffic jam and then the idiots blame you for the crash.