resolvedI can't find it, and I want to send this:
Dear sirs
I wish to lodge a serious complaint against Taxi Number 739. At between 7.25pm and 7.30pm tonight I was heading north (cycling) from Waverley Bridge, turning right to head east on Princes Street. As I was making the turn from the bridge I became aware of a car very close behind, the engine loud, clearly trying to get past before we reached the central reservation that narrows the road.
As you will be aware there are tram tracks here, and in order to cross tram tracks safely the last thing a cyclist should be doing is making sudden changes in direction. Crossing both sets of tracks onto Princes Street is relatively easy in terms of the angle at which you cross. However as the tracks curve off towards St Andrew Square the angle is immensely shallow, and the guidance issued (by all sorts of official sources, not just in the UK, but around the world) is that a cyclist should essentially move around the road in order to cross the tracks at an angle that won't trap the wheel, throwing the rider to the ground.
That's difficult to do when a taxi has decided that the moment you are crossing those tracks is the time to overtake. With only 6-9 inches to spare. If my wheel had become trapped I was under the taxi. Simple as that. I couldn't help but let out a shout of, "Jesus Christ! Come on!". That was all I said. The passenger side front window was open a couple of inches (it was close enough that these details stick) and I was clearly heard by the fare in the back (an oriental couple) who kept checking back. I know this detail because the whole manoeuvre won the driver... ten yards.... There was a queue of traffic at the next red light ahead.
The pointlessness was rammed home as I followed down Leith Street, and then down Broughton Street, easily keeping pace (before I turned off for my destination). I said nothing the whole time I followed. Quite frankly my time is best not wasted arguing with morons. The fare kept checking through the rear window.
I realise that even if you do take the step of speaking to the driver it will turn into 'his word versus mine', and quite frankly I have no doubt he will concoct some version of events that bear no relation to reality. But your driver is very lucky on two counts: firstly that I did not end up under his wheels due to such imbecilic and essentially pointless impatience; and secondly because the battery on the video camera I have on the bike had run out, as if it had not I would have been sending the video to the police.
This driver is a danger to the public if he drives like this all the time, and it does our city no credit to have people like him behind the wheel at a time of festivities and tourists.
Finally, it brings home just how much of a joke it is that the Taxi Association has signed up to the Nice Way Code. This driver wasn't very nice, his driving wasn't very nice, and the feeling was close enough to brush the taxi while crossing a road surface in precisely the worst manner possible was not nice in the slightest.
Yours ever
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