This (cyclists can make someone else have to make a dangerous manoeuvre) is a very common assertion made during debates such as these.
However, in twenty years of driving (and cycling and walking and running) in a town that's notorious for having an awful lot of cyclists of a less than perfect kind (many thousands of students few of whom think much about personal mortality, many of whom are in a hurry, and many of whom are not particularly concerned with reactionary ruled-based systems), I've yet to see a case where that happened.
So that alone would tend to make me discount the assertion.
But I'd take it further than that - there's an awful lot you can do as a driver to minimise the impact of the unexpected.
Usually if you're forced into a dangerous manoeuvre by someone else's actions, it's because you were driving in a manner that didn't leave sufficient margin for error. Exceptions to this are as far as I can tell rare to the point of practical non-existence.
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However, in twenty years of driving (and cycling and walking and running) in a town that's notorious for having an awful lot of cyclists of a less than perfect kind (many thousands of students few of whom think much about personal mortality, many of whom are in a hurry, and many of whom are not particularly concerned with reactionary ruled-based systems), I've yet to see a case where that happened.
So that alone would tend to make me discount the assertion.
But I'd take it further than that - there's an awful lot you can do as a driver to minimise the impact of the unexpected.
Usually if you're forced into a dangerous manoeuvre by someone else's actions, it's because you were driving in a manner that didn't leave sufficient margin for error. Exceptions to this are as far as I can tell rare to the point of practical non-existence.