One thing that I've been meaning to write about is what it's like to share this road with even calm drivers. My previous writings have focused on the insane, but they're clearly not the majority of drivers using this road.
It takes me about 10 minutes to ride through this stretch of road. During that time, if it's night, my eyes completely adjust to the darkness. This means that when a car comes towards me it completely blinds me and I can't see where the edge of that road is. The driver thinks that just because they've dipped their main beam I'm OK. Well that's just wrong. Plus, after the car's gone, now my eyes can't see in the dark either, having adjusted some to the lights.
The end result is that if I'm riding in the dark and I see a car coming, I just stop and pull over.
The speed limit is set to the National Speed Limit, which for a single lane in the countryside has, if I'm right, a limit of 60mph. Let me tell you this: when a car comes past you with a gap of a few feet and it's doing 60mph it's TERRIFYING. It's especially scary since you know that in about 5 feet there's a hole 12 inches wide that you've got to go round and the drive neither can see it nor cares nor is expecting you to have to go round it and so only leaves 3 feet space.
The end result is that if I'm riding and I hear a car coming I start maniacally looking over my shoulder ever 3 seconds to see how fast and close the oncoming car is.
What I'm trying to get across here is that ever single vehicle using this road makes life very hard for cyclists.
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