IT is one of those stories every cyclist will have.

If you spend any time on a bike riding around a city, you end up with tales to tell. They will vary in severity from an irritating incident to a frightening close call – and everything on the sliding scale in between.

This one hovers somewhere in the middle and I’m still working out how to feel about it.
On Friday evening I was cycling from the Southside to meet friends at Cineworld Renfield Street.

I took the route, as I usually do, down the South City Way into the Gorbals.

At a set of traffic lights at the five-way junction outside the Brazen Head pub, I was in front and there was a double decker bus behind me.

I was in the bike lane but so was the bus stop where two women were waiting to board the bus.

The driver obviously didn’t have the patience to drive behind me and let me go on ahead. 

At the same time, there wasn’t enough distance for him to overtake me, pull in safely to the left, and have me pull out behind him to overtake him. Swap positions on the road, essentially.

Instead of just waiting and letting me cycle past the bus stop, the driver decided to start pulling in.

So I’m there, on my bike, with a looming wall of bus coming ever closer and closer to my right hand side.

The two women in the bus stop saw this happening and stood up, coming to the edge of the pavement to sort of wave to the driver.

I think they thought he might not have seen me, but he knew I was there and had decided to pull in anyway.

As the bus came closer, I was looking at the kerb, which was relatively high and certainly nothing I could bunny hop up on to.

I had literally no idea what to do. Even if I stopped completely, the bus wouldn’t clear me before reaching the bus stop.

One of the women shouted to me something like “are you going to make it past?”

I mean, I was trying, but I had no idea. Eventually, the driver decided to pull in at a sort of 45-degree angle to the pavement so that the door of the bus was relatively near to the pavement but the back of the bus was jutting into the road.

The women asked me if I wanted to keep going and I said yes, just to get away as quickly as possible from the driver.

Now, I’m not saying the driver meant any harm. I’m not saying he didn’t think he was doing the right thing.

But the right thing was to hold back. It would have held him up for less than a minute. Instead, he chose to drive a double decker bus towards a more vulnerable road user.

Even if there was no real danger, it’s frightening and intimidating to have a huge vehicle aiming straight for you when you have nothing but a helmet for protection.

Glasgow City Council has released its plans for zero fatalities or serious injuries on city roads by 2030.

It’s an absolutely necessary scheme and the local authority has said there will be multiple strands to it, including education.

One of the most commonly cited causes of accidents, according to the council, is people saying they “didn’t look”. Whether driver, cyclist or pedestrian, that moment of inattention is the most common cause of accidents.

As part of any education programme, we need to talk more about really seeing one another on the roads. I don’t mean paying attention to our surroundings – which is obviously vital – but I mean really viewing each other as fellow humans who we must take care of.

A vehicle is a killing machine, it’s really that simple. People who drive can become so caught up in fault and blame but, ultimately, when you drive a vehicle you have all the power.

Maybe the bus driver drove off cursing me for not pedalling faster, maybe he was keen not to keep his passengers waiting.

But if people driving were encouraged to see the roads through the eyes of other, more vulnerable road users, then it would be harder to be careless and impatient.

And patience is going to be vital to deal with another of the council’s plans: 20mph road limits across the city. 

That’s going to be massively frustrating for people who ordinarily drive briskly. 

Everyone runs late from time to time, everyone has places to be and deadlines to meet. Life is stressful and hectic.

We’re all going to have to find patience and empathy if we’re going to hit the target of zero fatalities and serious injuries in Glasgow.

Can we do it? We can, but only with care for one another. Shouldn’t be too hard though ... people make Glasgow, right?