Two items:
Neither one surprises me in the least. Especially the second one, since drivers of full-sized pickups as a group are the most bike-unfriendly drivers out there. It’s all part of the tribalism that’s infesting this country.
When I heard about the bike riders getting run over by the pickup driver my first thought was Trump supporter, as somehow that justified it (which was my second thought).
As I read the story about the truck driver at the Pride parade, it sounded more like an accident, or just carelessness maybe. The driver is gay, and was an entrant in the parade.
Alas, I have to agree with you, a lot of pick-up drivers are road hogs and worse sorts of inconsiderate. I try to be the exception - a careful pick-up driver.
No one should ever purposely hurt a cyclist. If that is what happened they should be prosecuted.
I try to share the road, yet sometimes the cyclists make this very hard.
One time I was delivering heavy equipment, a D-6 & a D-8 to a job site on a Saturday. I had 34 tires holding up these heavy loads. The trailer was 10’ wide & we had the proper permits. The roads in were mostly narrow 2 lane blacktop & gravel roads. I am being generous, in places they were really only 1 lane roads.
Unannounced to us locals, or anyone else for that matter, there was a bike ride on these roads that day. Imagine my surprise when as I am coming down a steep part at 15 MPH & tooting the air horn to warn other drivers that I was coming, I round a curve & discover 10 bikes across the entire strip of pavement. With nowhere to go & no time to stop, it takes a while to stop 80 tons, I was sure that some of them would die that day. Happily, one looked back in time to yell at the others & they all swiftly got out of the road.
Now they had jeered at my pilot car driver who warned them about me following him, telling him that they “owned” the road. He had warned them that the 13’ blade on the D-9 did not care who “owned the road” & they jeered some more. In typical country fashion he decided that they were adults & could be as stupid as they wanted to be. Less then one minute later they were in the ditch, alive, but angry.
So on the return trip for the 2nd tractor we used a different route to avoid their silly butts. It was clear of them. Thinking we had a longer, but safer (for both them & us), road we brought in the “smaller” Cat with a 11’ blade in on it.
You guessed it, the cyclists were using this road for their return path & we met them again. This time they got out of the way for the big tractor. At least these idiots were trainable.
This & other similar incidents are why I have little sympathy when cyclists get run off the road when they are being stupid. Again, no one should purposely hurt any other person. That is not acceptable. Yet folks have a responsibility to use their heads for more than a hat rack.
IMO, If you need to take up two entire lanes for your “ride” get the proper permits & work with the DOT & the local police to escort you through safely. You are not the center of the universe. A shocking concept I know.
Also IMHO, If you need a “support vehicle” to run beside you along the route, maybe you should not be riding the bike. If you need them, you should have “support vehicles” at wide spots or in parking lots. Driving beside a rider is dangerous at best & should be avoided at all costs.
Do not forget to flame me in the pit. I do not go there as I have little time for that, but it might make you feel better. 
There could have been anything across the road. If you have an unusual load shouldn’t you be driving at a speed so you can stop in the clear road in front?
He was already creeping–only 15mph.
Two questions:
- How long do you think the trip would take at 3mph?
- Do you not understand how difficult it is to stop an extremely heavy load when you’re going downhill?
Just the usual anti-cyclist bigotry.
Every pro truck driver I’ve ever met can tell stories for hours about dumbass things motorists, pedestrians etc have done that have nearly got them killed. That you need to tell your story about cyclists in particular, in the context of the subject of this thread, says a lot about you and not much about reality.
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You don’t have to slow down for the whole trip, just the blind corners, if 3 mph is what it takes, then so be it. Like I said, there could be anything across the road. Ambulance might have just arrived at the scene of a car accident.
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Sure. That’s why you need to drive at a speed appropriate to what you can see ahead.
I also wonder, if he had a pilot vehicle, why was he surprised by a bunch of cyclists across the road? Isn’t it the pilot’s job to maintain contact and warn of hazards ahead?
More information from BBC : Driver was 77 years old and could not walk in the parade due to a medical condition, so was asked to drive the lead vehicle. The driver snd the two cyclists were all members of the Fort Lauderdale Gay Men’s Chorus.
Shhhhh, you’re ruining a good story.
I didn’t mean to start general trucker-cyclist argument (or flamewar) and I hope one doesn’t break out here. I try to be a considerate cyclist, sometimes even pulling off the road if there’s a long string of vehicles behind me and I know there’s no good places to pass in the immediate road ahead. In fact, there’s one place fairly close to where I live where I always pull off, but that’s mostly because I don’t feel safe riding through that section with cars behind me. It’s a single lane with curbs on both sides and no bike lane.
Anyway, my comment on pickup truck drivers was due to that subset of them who insist on expelling excessive amounts of exhaust at every cyclist they pass. I’ve even had it done to me when I pulled over to let cars go by.
Just tonight I was returning to home on the Beeline Highway in the left hand lane when a 250-size (didn’t catch the make) lifted 4WD pickup rolled up behind and put on his brights. Since I was
- 7 mph over the speed limit
- Overtaking the car in the right hand lane, and
- 3/4 miles from where I was going to turn left
I ignored him.
He went right, came up on the other car’s bumper, then cut left again, having enough room only because I anticipated his actions and eased up a bit. Needless to say he brake checked me.
The likelihood of a driver giving a cyclist a hard time depends on the extent to which the driver:
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considers their vehicle to be an extension of their ego
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considers their vehicle to be status symbol (bonus points if it’s their primary status symbol ie they don’t have a fancy house or job or clothes etc)
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is insecure about their place in the pecking order, typically because they are young and/or feel they are of lower socio-economic status
A disproportionate number of people driving pickups fit this picture. A cyclist holding them up (or even just being on the road) is an attack on their little ego and the (minimal) status they get from their fancy pickup. So they become enraged and/or take steps to humiliate or threaten the cyclist to demonstrate that they are higher up the pecking order.
Personally, I think it’s about 70% drivers, 30% cyclist stupidity. And I say that as both a sometime cyclist and pickup truck driver, albeit a 16 year old mid-sized one.
I mean, cyclists may have the de jure right of way, but there seems to be a small crowd of them who feels like they have to assert that right of way by doing stuff that’s risky and obnoxious. @48Willys story is a good example of that in my opinion.
Conversely, there’s a much larger crowd of drivers who don’t think that they should have to share the road with cyclists, and are generally unfriendly, if not actively hostile.
And finally, there’s an almost exclusively truck-driving crowd who looks at cycling as effete or something, and generally does asshole things around cyclists- drives too close, etc… These are the people who need to be imprisoned and/or fined; they’re deliberately doing stuff that is dangerous for no reason other than to be assholes.
Unless these cyclists were complete beginners, 15 mph is a pretty typical riding speed on a flat surface. So there really wouldn’t have been much if any speed differential between him and the cyclists at all. According to his story he was going downhill, in which case the cyclists almost certainly would have been going faster than 15 mph (I’ve hit 30 mph on my bike on long downhill stretches on a few occasions).
You are very correct: What cyclist would be going under 15 downhill? Just a quick look at recent Strava activity doesn’t show any rides where I wasn’t hitting around 35. I have a couple, going down longer grades, where I’m doing mid-40s. My average ride speeds are in the 15mph range and I’m the slowest of my riding friends! I’d be annoyed at the slow-ass wide-load hindering my ride 
Are you guys suggesting that a motorist was underestimating his speed in order to make other road users seem unreasonable? Seriously? This never happens.
No one going to take the OP to task for this bias stereotype? “Pickup truck” drivers are all bad. Yeah, right. Talk about selection bias. Especially since the first story was a genuine accident.
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Don’t even have to be a cyclist. My brother drives a Tesla and gets coal rolled all the time. I would imagine Prius drivers have similar stories.