Many of you also know that about 6 weeks later, after being back on my bike for about a week, a van to my left turned right within 10ft. of signaling, leaving me no place to go. I pushed off its sidedoor and then tucked and rolled. The verdict: A sprained wrist, and some really nasty road rash on my knees and right shoulder (along with 30min of mild amnesia).
And now...
At the intersection of 3rd and E St. NE Tuesday, an oncoming car made a left turn in front of me, with no signal. I was kinda doomed from the outset. I yanked the bike right, to turn with her and avoid her, but to no avail. Within a split second, I knew we were going to meet. So, I opted to throw the fattiest, least vulnerable piece of myself at the car and hope for the best.
When my lower back met the rear of the passenger side, the window immediately blasted out from behind me, reversing my trajectory somewhat, and rolling me with the bike off the back foot or so of the car, into the street.
Within the next hour, the cops showed up and took a report, my front tire burst from the tension of a bent rim (my stem ripped out as soon as the bike made contact with the ground), a client of mine walked the 6 blocks from her office to clean out the cuts in my lower back, I bled a solid red into the white material that Dickies puts on the inside of the waistband of its work shorts, and I caught a ride home with my bike in tow.
The cop told me the police report would be available Friday. By 8am Wednesday, personal injury lawyers in the area had read it, determined it to be a slam dunk, and were lighting up my cell phone (I still haven't seen it). There's more to the story, but it'll have to come later.
2 comments:
You'd be surprised to know: It wasn't brake-related. And while I appreciate the concern, I also can't help but resent the instinct that when someone behind the wheel of a multi-ton machine fails to abide two basic traffic laws at once, somehow something I could've/should've done is the moral of the story. You know?
We were at an intersection, I was pretty much crawling out (having, per usual, adequately "braked" through the cranks), and all of a sudden she was right in front of me. The main reason her window went out was that my bike lock was in my back pocket, and was the first thing to make contact.
The way intersections sort of intuitively work, braking or not, if the driver of a car isn't paying attention, you're fucked. It's why left turns require a yield. Had I stopped completely in the middle of the intersection, I'd have either gone over the bars or the car would've dragged across the front of the bike (which could've been a lot worse).
Given the worst of my injuries are -- albeit serious -- flesh wounds (no broken bones, no ruptured organs, no seriously damaged muscles)... Clearly, taking myself out of the path of the car and minimizing the force of my impact was the way to go. For well over a year, I commuted from Mt. Pleasant to the Hill for work, almost daily. I crawled down 16th, 14th, 18th, Mass. Ave., etc. in and out of rush hour traffic. The only spill I ever had resulted from a dickhead in a car (and was relatively minor).
Now, my longest jaunt is 2mls at best. And I think the recurrence of my encounters with cars is down to the culture of drivers along and around corridors like M St. SE/SW, and Florida/K/H NE. Oftentimes, you can hear and see (quite plainly) the way in which "driving in the city" (as many of these folks are commuters from PG County) becomes a vicarious reverie of class mobility or status, to which I am merely an unwelcome "other" (read: obstruction). Driving, as for everyone, is a performance. Only, the performances entail varying degrees of cognizance of the sheer deadliness immanent in anything propelled by a combustion engine.
Basically, this kinda leaves me a bit less tolerant of cars. When I come back from Vermont, my wallet is moving to my left back pocket, to free up the right for my u-lock, where it can be more easily drawn and wielded. And each new claims department I have to deal with is going to find me increasingly demanding. If there's an industry willing to insure this backward crap, they've officially made my list of things to do.
It's no longer a matter of courtesies and rights and common sense. It's a matter of "You are wielding a deadly weapon, and I am not. If you are unable to perceive the seriousness of that, I will make it profoundly clear for you."
As I said to Mark on Tuesday, I hope you're at least getting some money for all this. Feel better man.
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