Punching cars? Predator/prey relationships. staying alive

     When is it okay to punch a car?

    This is a very interesting question, and depending on where you are viewing the punching from, it drastically changes the rightness or wrongness of this. First, we have to consider from an outside perspective, someone punching a car. What does this look like to other people on the road(or to pedestrians)? What would anyone on a bicycle accomplish by punching a car? Relief from pent up aggravation and aggression? Letting a driver who just did something really stupid and dangerous know that you are pissed and being pushed to react violently? At the end of the day, every verbal or physical expression of "roadrage" is almost guaranteed to be regretted (I don't mean by motorists, i mean cyclers. As I've seen some of the craziest shit happening/being thrown back and forth between motorists while operating their vehicles on public roads). Reflecting back on incidents has always made me question my reaction, and wonder how bad things could've gone if the motorist who cut me off, or passed really close, or yelled something stupid, had reacted as aggressively as I was reacting to their action? Things could go bad...really bad. There's always the concern of does the person you're yelling at as you straddle your bicycle with no protection AT ALL have a gun? Are they unstable? and/or just got fired from their job? wife just banged out their best friend? We live in a society of INSANE FUCKING PEOPLE who think that capitalism and industrial civilization is always going to protect them and humans as a species. People who feel invincible in their cars. Gun crazy people who think their sunday afternoon trip to the home improvement store should involve packing their 9mm. And alot of people who don't know/understand that bicycles are vehicles, and are meant to be ridden in the road with the other vehicles (that's what "SHARE THE ROAD" means) and that most states in this glorious country of ours have traffic laws specifically stating the rules of the road regarding bicycles.
A few stories and then my point:
    I ride up to the front of an intersection one day heading to work and i suddenly realize that the van that was at the front of the line of cars i passed to pull up to the front is around a foot from me on the left, I was startled and before i could get out a "WHAT THE FUCK?!?!" The driver started yelling at me. He said "Hey man! Are you one of those guys that thinks that people on bikes have the same rights as cars do?!?!" and I replied "No, I'm one of the people who KNOWS that bikes are vehicles and are meant to be in the road with other vehicles???" Him: "Well what the fuck gives you the right to roll up here past all these cars that are waiting for this light and come up in front of ME!?!?!?" Me: "The same law that allows cars to pass me in the lane back there. And because there's plenty of room." The guy started yelling and calling me a stupid asshole blah blah blah and the last thing i said I yelled: "SIR, PLEASE DON'T LET YOUR OWN IGNORANCE OF THE STATES TRAFFIC LAWS ANGER YOU! I HOPE YOU HAVE A GOOD DAY!" The light was already green at this point, the driver then almost ran me over as he started driving and i started riding through the left turn we were both waiting to make. You can't fix stupid.

A week or so ago I almost got killed by an HRT bus, giving me another reason to hate our shitty public transit system in this area. When passing me, the driver got just the very nose of the bus by me and then immediately started coming back over to the right. He actually didn't just return to the center of the lane, he kept coming right til his right side tires were in the drainage runoff area on the edge of the road. When i realized the bus was coming over and was a foot or so from making contact with my handlebar, i grabbed both brake levers and cut to the right as hard as i could without running into the curb. My heart was racing and I was heated, I couldn't believe that this bus driver would've made such a negligent/dangerous mistake! I kept riding and further down the road I saw the same bus, as I passed the bus I stared in to get a good look at the driver and make sure that he saw me and saw my face. Then after a few more traffic lights the bus came up behind me again and the driver passed me again, DOING THE SAME THING AGAIN. ALMOST KILLING ME AGAIN. At this point i was shaking with fury and fear and a million other emotions. I avoided getting killed again and started angrily pedaling to try and catch the bus, fantasizing about what was about to happen when i caught up with the bus at a traffic light. I caught up to the bus. I pulled my bike up inches from the front right corner on the bus, knocked on the glass of the folding door and yelled at the driver that if he ran me out of the lane again we're going to have a problem. That he almost killed me and he just did it twice. To which he responded by laying on his horn, i guess telling me to get the fuck out of the way. Which was probably his attitude when he saw me in the road and then maybe tried to show me that i need to stay the fuck out of his way by running me out of the lane when he passed me. I was even more angry now. I pulled off to the side of the road and called HRT. The person who answered asked me the bus #, which in all this chaos I didn't get. I told him what time it was, what time the incident had happened, what direction we were heading, and what crossroads we were at. He didn't seem to care that I almost died, i don't think he apologized and he transferred me to a voicemail complaint line before I could finish asking for his name.

Sometimes letting that person get away with saying something really ignorant at a traffic light or letting that person cut you off without trying to catch up to them and yell at them, which in the end makes you look crazy as shit to anyone nearby, is the safest thing. I've had a ton of intersection arguments with motorists who were ignorant of the traffic laws regarding bicycle riders and only in maybe a few of them did I feel okay after I rode away.  The more you ride, the more stupid shit you're going to encounter. Private neighborhood security harassment, parks and rec cops "pulling you over" to tell you that it's dangerous to ride a bicycle in the road (do parks and rec cops not get trained on the same laws as regular cops?)I'll probably share both those stories in full at some point, there are lots of em. But having fun while riding should definitely be priority #1. Actually staying alive should be #1, enjoying it could be #2. Either way, if you're not enjoying it, then why do it?

The point: Bicycle commuting or bicycle riding in general puts you in a predator/prey relationship with motorists. Fortunately the predators aren't always trying to kill you. You can probably safely assume that they are never trying to kill you. But they certainly have the potential to. Sitting in traffic is nobody's idea of a good time, but being on a bike is alot more fun than being stuck in a car that isn't moving fast enough to get you home in time to watch your favorite TV show. In one second of misjudgement, one second of looking at a text message or a crying kid in the backseat, could be it. The only thing you can do is try to make yourself as visible as possible. Get the brightest lights with the most eye catching blinking pattern and WEAR A FUCKING HELMET!