Tuesday I took my bike out for a quick jaunt to the grocery store, because I've been jonesing for lasagna and I needed supplies. (It will be baked for Friday's dinner. It will be delicious.) Also the weather was brisk and sunny and beautiful, and I really wanted to get back on the bike. I made it to the store with no problems, got my supplies, loaded up the bike and my backpack and headed home. On the last stretch of road before my little dead-end street, I was tootling along in the right lane, saw a gap in the traffic behind me and decided to go for my left turn. So checked over my shoulder, held me left hand straight out to the side to signal my intent, and began to head for the center line.
Unfortunately, the girl in the car behind me apparently thought "left hand straight out to the side" means "please, speed up and drive around me". I glanced back again, saw her shiny black bumper bearing down on me, did that swear/pray thing and zipped across to my street.
And then she honked at me because obviously I was the idiot. Obviously. Does it just not register that if a driver hits a biker, there's a real chance the biker could be maimed or killed? Do they not think past "Oh, it might scratch my paint"?
As someone once reminded me, "There's a lot of tired ninnies out there." Be careful on the road, folks.
6 comments:
Since it's no longer on the written driving test, most people don't know the hand signals.
Another part of cultural literacy gone.
From Neal Stephenson's book Zodiac:
"My nighttime attitude is, anyone can run you down and get away with it. Why give some drunk the chance to plaster me against a car? That's why I don't even own a bike light, or one of those godawful reflective suits. Because if you've put yourself in a position where someone has to see you in order for you to be safe -- to see you, and to give a fuck -- you've already blown it."
Chapter 5 (Taylor on riding a bike at night)
I figure if I'm all lit up then I've cleared my way to sue the bejeezus out of whoever ran me over. Plus the light on the front is more for me, so I don't hit a stick or a pothole and make like the Flying Wallendas in the middle of the road.
As a driver and non-cyclist, I often bellyache about the mill run of cyclists who do not follow the rules of the road, but in this case I think you definitely had cause to unload a few shots in her general direction.
Or at least to think about it.
I routinely encounter "salmon" -- that is, cyclists who ride facing traffic, which is STUPID and DANGEROUS and WRONG -- on my commute. They also tend to wear dark, dull colors. Much vitriol is expended before I get safely past them.
My mother tried to con me years ago with regard to which side of the road on which one was to ride. She said that, while I had read in the Boy Scout Handbook that one was to ride on the "right" side of the road, that actually meant the "correct" side of the road, ie., the "left" side facing traffic.
I said, no, Mom, that's not what it means.
She said I'm your mother and ride on the left side anyway.
I wisely shut up at that point and simply ignored her advice.
But I wonder how many people ride on the left because they've been told to walk on the left all their lives.
In related ranting, I find it extremely humorous that people are still riding on the sidewalks downtown on streets where expensive, intrusive and dangerous bike lanes have been carved out of the driving and parking lanes for them.
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