Reply #4: In the end it's not about the collision [View All]

I made eye contact with the woman in the Dodge and started across the quiet little side road. Now she looked right at me and nodded a bit but apparently she had been daydreaming or something because she began to turn right and plowed into me, knocking me off my bike and skidding across the blacktop nearly into the traffic on the much busier street.

Then she backed her car up, my mangled bike wedged in the grille of her car skittering up the road with it and started to drive out into traffic again as passersby yelled at her to stop.

I got to the side of the road. Some kind strangers called the police. I was shaking and a probably in shock.

When a cop arrived, he listened to the witnesses, who all insisted the woman in the Dodge had looked right at me and that I was appropriately conscientious in crossing the street. He listened to me being magnanimous and declining to get her insurance information and go after the replacement cost of my bike (I loved it and it fit me perfectly but it was inexpensive and not worth the hassle.) He listened to her swear she'd never seen me, on a crystalline day at an unobstructed intersection.

I left push my mangled bike to my appointment and cleaned my scrapes in the bathroom when I got there. She got in her car and went wherever the oblivious go. Probably shopping.

Two weeks later I got a ticket in the mail. Something about unsafe crossing of an intersection. That stung far more than the road rash.