Today got my adrenaline up. I live in Berlin and decided to get on my Road Bike and take a tour outside the city. Because cycling here always tastes a bit like suicide, I put on some highly visible colors as my outfit. About an hour in, I was on a cycling oath in terrible condition (as they tend to be here) and switched to the road after checking it. The next car was still far away. In front of me was a casual cyclist. Going into a corner, I was driving quite fast with 43 km/h (the limit for cars is 50 on that road) and as I was speeding past the casual cyclist with a comfortable safety distance between us, a car was speeding past my left side with little distance. There was also a car on the other lane coming our way, making this quite the maneuver.

The overtaking driver even had the audacity to honk at me while risking my life. Since I don't have a horn on my bike, and my bell is a little quiet in comparison, I used both my middle fingers as a means to conmunicate my anger and anxiety. The driver, now in front of me, reacted immediately by pushing the brakes and steering to the right, effectively blocking the entire road. I had to pull my brakes fully and jump back to the pedestrian way to avoid a collision with him or the cars on the other lane.

This made me super angry, I yelled at him if he was planning to kill me. I do get ot that sometimes people are frustrated while driving, but if you're in a 2-ton vehicle, no behaviour justifies risking the life of someone on a 9kg bicycle. Still I keep wondering if I overreacted goving him my fingers, which is technically illegal in Germany. As a cyclist, I get away with it, because I don't have a license plate. But I also don't know an alternative way to react to reckless behaviour. They don't hear me yelling when they're speeding past me, I don't have a horn, and I feel extremely vulnerable and unlrotected in the traffic in this city. But will it get me literally killed if I use my only available method to notify someone "what you just did felt really dangerous"?

This is not my first time in such a situation, I had other drivers react the same way to my middle finger after they almost killed me an initial time.