No, the cyclist on the road wasn’t a problem for the driver. The driver on the road was a problem for the cyclists.
And everyone else on the road as well.
I think you’re missing the nuance of how @Chronos framed it. @dolphinboy is the one who framed it as if the cyclists were “asking for trouble.” The counter to that is, uh, no, actually. Someone riding a 2-ton death machine on the same road as cyclists (and pedestrians) is the one asking for trouble. And whether @Chronos meant it as tongue in cheek or not, I personally happen to believe that: motorists should be held to account for behaving irresponsibly while operating a piece of dangerous machinery that can effortlessly kill or maim other road-users just going about their own business.
He wasn’t physically injured, but would you like to trade places with him right now?
You make him sound like the villain at the end of every Scooby-Doo episode - “I would have gotten away with it except for those pedaling kids!”
You’re retired & living on a fixed income & need to watch your spending, & hire someone to do the house repairs you’re no longer physically capable of. Look at his upside, at his age, he won’t need to worry about any of that ever again since the state will be kind enough to care of his housing, medical, & food needs for the rest of his life. Sounds like a good deal to me, no? 
It’s dangerous out there, you couldn’t pay me to ride a motorcycle or bicycle these days. I used to ride a motorcycle a fair bit, but found I was riding it less and less. It took up a fair amount of real estate in my garage and I decided an expensive coat rack wasn’t worth insuring, registration and all that stuff. I like driving, but I hate traffic. Way too many nutbars on the road these days.
Even jogging. I lived on a divided road with a wide grassy boulevard and sidewalks on both sides, but joggers insist on running on the road in traffic. I don’t get it. Jogging is presumably done mostly for health reasons but it doesn’t look very healthy to me. Find a trail somewhere.
Yesterday, a bunch of us participated in the big annual New Belgium Brewery Tour de Fat bike parade.
And this happened:
Which would normally ‘only’ be harrowing.
But the eight of us were, literally, in this exact spot about two minutes before this happened. We weren’t yet 100 feet away when it did happen.
Which brought it awfully close to home.
Be careful out there, everybody, no matter what means of conveyance you’re using.
As cited above, the perpetrator was tailgating. I think this factor deserves more attention. I HATE tailgaters — and there seem to be more of them lately, at least around where I live.
The last few weeks have been pretty scary in my area that way. I can be doing 10 over the limit on the freeway (yes, I know I should not be doing so, but my car seems to disagree with me on this) and have someone pretty much in my trunk blaring their horn at me. I thoroughly resent those who feel entitled to endanger others’ lives because they can’t get their rear ends out the door in a timely manner.
Aggressive driving, in general, seems to be higher than ever. I see less police on the roads these days and I think this is one of the results. Sad to see.
As I have typed other places here, my wife was ran over by a car as a pedestrian, and I have been hit while on two wheels TWICE. This hasn’t stopped us from walking, running, and riding on roads/trails/sidewalks, but it is dangerous. Assholes in 4-wheeled death machines are everywhere.
There have been a couple of times where I’ve been on my bike, and made a left turn, and so ended up in the left lane of the road… and then a car came right behind me and followed me closely. Now, I’m sure the driver wanted me to get out of their way, and I wanted to get out of their way, too… but I couldn’t safely cross to the other side of the lane to get to the right edge of the road, because the car was so close behind me.
Sadly, I can see something like that escalating to road rage and resulting in a dead cyclist.
Don’t know how you manage to do that. When I make a left turn, I always turn so I end up on the right edge of the road. It’s not hard.
I’m having trouble picturing why you would do that? Why does turning left mean you end up in the left lane?
I’m not @Chronos.
But I could see turning left onto a two lane street just as opposing traffic decides to turn right from their rightmost lane and hence occupies the right lane I’d like to swing wide into.
Where I live we have a lot of boulevards with dual left turn lanes controlled by arrows. If I’m turning left in that situation, I try to filter up to the front of the redlight queue on the right side of the rightmost left turn lane. That way when the light goes green I’m the outermost vehicle and should have a clear path to swing wide to meet the curb.
Sometimes holding there is unsafe and I end up lane-splitting the two left turn lanes. Which creates a dilemma once the green appears as I’m sorta trapped in the center of the car flow.
But overall, yeah, in any left turning situation my goal is to get adjacent to the outer curb of the street I’m joining ASAP.
Actually, by law (in my state, at least), you MUST initially turn into the leftmost lane when turning left. This goes for cars, and there’s no special provision for bikes. One reason bikes and cars have to obey the same rules, is so drivers know what to expect from other drivers, regardless of vehicle.
Sure, a biker will usually then proceed to the right lane very soon thereafter (just as a car must, unless they’re about to pass a vehicle or make another left turn.)
Mine too. But if a car is following me too closely, I can’t.
That’s generally been my experience too. Now whether drivers follow that rule reliably is quite another matter.
But your point got me curious. Google AI informs me that of the 50 states plus DC, 12 vehicle codes explicitly require ending in the leftmost lane, 3 explicitly say what amounts to “any safe lane”, and the rest are silent on the point. Silence of course amounts to “any safe lane”, with the “safe” part provided by the general “don’t crash into other cars” statute. I am a bit surprised the leftmost-only states are as few as 12 and so many are silent: I would have expected more like a 50/50 split.
Perhaps disturbingly, CA & TX are in the “any safe lane” camp, and NY is silent. Those 3 huge states (3 of the top 4) constitute ~90M people, or about 1 in 4 Americans. Conversely, the “must finish leftmost” brigade is led by FL, PA, & NC who amount to a mere 48M, roughly half as many as the other group. The rest of the states in both camps are the tiddlers.
The fact that about half of SoFL’s drivers learned to drive in the don’t care states of NY & NJ explains a lot about the low compliance rate here locally with FL’s leftmost-lane-only law. Personal mystery solved! Thanks for triggering my research.
Thanks for checking this. I, too, am surprised that only 12 states stipulate this. (Is my current state, WI, one of them?).
I learned to drive in NY in the 80s, and was instructed that it was the law. Either NY has changed its law since then, or my instructor was mistaken.
Sorry. Still can’t visualize how this would put someone in the left lane instead of the right. When I make a left turn, I do so from the roughly the center (so no one thinks they can just cut me off in the turn and ride me into the curb) of the right-most left turn lane (ie: if there are two left turn lanes, I pick the one on the right). I just can’t conceive of ending up anywhere but the right lane at the conclusion of such a turn, no matter how closely I might be followed in the turn. Particularly as my taking a wide turn typically opens up the opportunity for whatever car is following me in the turn to make a tighter turn and thus pass me on the inside of the turn.
For me, it depends if there are other cars around, and if it’s protected (green arrow light). No cars or protected, sure, I’ll scootch right over to the right lane, making a big curve that happens to be in the left lane for a few feet (thus complying with the law in some states).
Cars around, and unprotected? I’m firmly going into that left lane first, even if just for 15 or 20 feet.