Today A Car Hit Me–Intentionally

[Mykeru]

Today I was biking in later than usual due to a dentist’s appointment.

My normal route takes me along the Reflecting Pool, past the World War II Memorial, where I take the path down to the lock house where I cross 17th and Constitution. To me, this intersection is notorious. For whatever reason cars making the turn have divested themselves of the usual DC driver’s attitude towards crosswalks, that they are optional and a proving ground for asymmetrical power relationships. Instead, many of the cars making that turn have a “no way in hell am I stopping attitude”.

This intersection.

So, for that reason I’m normally very cautious. I slow, even stop at the lip of the curb and clearly indicate my intention to cross and, if need be, let a seemingly impatient or inattentive driver do what he’s going to do.

Today I slowed, then stopped at the crosswalk. I let one car preparing to turn go and then, at about 10:10 am, entered the crosswalk.

I was perhaps one and a half bike lengths into it when a car which has been stopped behind the car I let go first suddenly gunned it, nearly turning into my back wheel and laid on his horn.

What. The. Hell.

I immediately unclipped and swung the bike around, effectively blocking the vehicle.

I pulled the muffler from around my lower face and the conversation ran like this:

“What? It’s a CROSSWALK”

Behind the glass the driver, a late middle-aged white guy wearing a fleece cap, angrily mouthed at me, gesturing that he wanted to turn, which apparently trumped everything.

“I was in the cross walk BEFORE you”

The driver continued to shout and gestured dismissively. Apparently he had important things to do, or, at least, far more important than me going through a crosswalk in a safe manner.

I yelled at him: “Well, maybe if you weren’t such an ASSHOLE we wouldn’t be wasting time like this!”

Now, I have to give props to this aging sedan driver. He played it perfectly. He held up his hands apologetically. Although I doubted his sincerity, I thought I made my point.

No sooner had I swung my bike back around, almost clipped into the left pedal so I could throw my leg over, he gunned it, catching my back wheel and causing the bike to slice under me, knocking me off my feet. The engine roared, I felt the contact and the next thing I knew, I was watching his front driver’s side wheel passing six inches from my head.

Totally suckered. I swear: He literally waited until my back was turned.

Then he took off. I scrambled to right the bike and chase after him, but as luck would have it, the light further down 17th street was green and he got clean away. I’m not sure if the light was red if he would have stopped.

Don’t believe it? Yeah, well, even as I write this, I still don’t believe how quickly and easily some Washington DC driver graduated from being an inconsiderate prick to a hit-and-run felon.

On reflection, there are a few things I will do, anticipating the next incident, and you can be sure there will be one:

1. I was too fixated on t he driver to really remember the make and model of the car, let alone the license plate. All I know is it was a late-model sedan, in that weird metallic mauve color. In the future, I will take special pains to note the license number.

2. For that purpose, I have an Oregon Scientific helmet cam that I used to wear. It’s coming out of storage because I’m sure some people on the forum either think I did too much to provoke the driver, or didn’t do enough to provoke him into nearly running me down (and so therefore it didn’t happen). From my own experience and other’s, I wouldn’t waste my breath telling the cops about this without a flight data recording of the incident.

3. Back when I rode a motorcycle I carried 6 oz lead fishing weights in my tank bag. Time to start carrying them again. You can string them from the hole that runs through them, securing them to the handlebars with twine that will hold them in place, but is easily broken if tugged. You can figure out what they’re for.

Now, I can anticipate some of the responses of people on this forum, especially the one’s so concerned about “bad apple” bicyclists who think everything will be hugs and bunnies between motorists and us if we just manage to enforce a 100% good- biker-all-the-time policy.

First, I’m not a “bad apple” biker. Bad ass, maybe (insert wink here), but not bad apple. I stop at read lights. I make my intentions clear. I give right of way. I’m kind to pedestrians. At night I’m lit up like the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree.

I also bike all-season, rain, sleek or snow and deserve common decency and respect because, most of the time, I give it.

Now responses:

1. You’re too confrontational.

As I said, I deserve respect. If someone is unwilling to respect me, then they can fear me, occassional forays into getting run the hell over notwithstanding. My mistake in this instance was giving the motorist benefit of the doubt for not being a yellow bastard whose courage came from 4 wheels and a chassis. I wasn’t seeking confrontation, but this motorist was. Or, at least, thought he could have it his way without consequences.

That’s what situationally sociopathic human sphincters count on: That they can do their thing while everyone else is too timid to do anything but just let it happen.

You, however, as a bicyclist — and a human being — can be as cowardly as you want while I do the work in the trenches you will benefit from.

2. You escalated the situation.

Again, I hope you find the level of abject, pants-pissing submission and appeasement that works for you. But, as I indicated in a response to another thread, some motorists just don’t like bicyclists and don’t really need a reason for thinking its their road and you have no right to it. So you can try to bike in a certain way, and then give up biking entirely until the only thing that’s bothering the people who are bothered is your very existence.

Ultimately, you can become eligible for a posthumous Neville Chamberlain award for superior appeasement.

3. You just made the whole thing up and/or it didn’t happen that way.

Well, all that tells me is that, despite posting on the WABA forum, you don’t bike in DC much.

Aside from all that, I don’t really have much of a larger lesson to extrapolate from this, except that due to politics or the economy or the gravitational forces of the moon, drivers might be more ugly than usual. Or maybe they’ve always been that way. Something in the dynamic is wrapped up in the American fixation with status and power and kicking anyone perceived as weaker or more vulnerable.

Most importantly, it’s worth keeping in mind that half the people you deal with in any situation are, by definition, below average intelligence.

Topic

[Mykeru]

@acc 1774 wrote:

I am glad you are ok and came out of this misadventure in one piece.

Well, luckily it was a glancing blow to the bike, which then took me out, but considering, it could have been a lot worse, like this idiot trying to explain what happened to a cop with my head flat on the pavement.

I am sorry you weren’t supported in your cycling, that stinks on so many levels.

Yes, well, it was that kind of relationship, but, as I said, I still have the bike.

Please let us know of any new soreness or injuries surface over the next two days. As a former nurse I can tell you it may not hit you for 48 hours. But you already know that I am sure.

Hmmn, a former nurse…well, I do feel a bit of soreness right — well, that probably won’t work

Most of all, keep fighting the good fight and look into that RPG thing, maybe a small caliber machine gun mounted turret-style would work.

I have a vintage M1 carbine I take camping, but right now I think I’ll stick with the 6 oz. fishing weights.

[acc]

I must be naive or simple-minded but I do not understand the reference to the lead fishing weights, obviously something sinister but I can’t come up with a clear mental image of what exactly is going on.

I assume you fish with the M1 carbine, right? lol

I was a Navy nurse and took care of sailors and Marines but they were sick and a little scared so they at least pretended to relate to me as a sister or an authority figure, and I mean that in a totally protective way.

Looks like another day of spin class or cleaning the house, or realistically watching movies === “Bicycle Dreams” was terrific, saw it last night. Imagine a coast to coast ride in about nine days.

[Mykeru]

@acc 1781 wrote:

I must be naive or simple-minded but I do not understand the reference to the lead fishing weights, obviously something sinister but I can’t come up with a clear mental image of what exactly is going on.

Lead fishing weights stimulate the auto glass industry.

Hey, it’s snowing! I knew it would as soon as I took off my Continental Spike Claw snow tires.

[acc]

It’s good to know there is at least one viable economic stimulus plan out there.

[eminva]

Hello —

I was telling my husband about this last night and he thought of something I hadn’t — some intersections in DC have cameras mounted on the traffic signal structures (and not just red light cameras that are triggered by scofflaws). If this is one of those intersections, there might be a video record of this incident. The first step of course would be a police report, but it might be worth looking into if there is a camera.

Liz

[Mark Blacknell]

Sorry to hear about this, Mykeru. Good to hear that you’re generally fine, though. It’s a bit late now, but please consider filing a report anyway. No, you almost certainly won’t get any satisfaction out of it, but you’ll be helping your fellow cyclists by building a public record of the problems that we as cyclists face. I got hit in May, and didn’t call the police. I regret that now. Wrote a bit about that here.

[Rootchopper]

I am sorry to hear about this and hope you are okay. Thanks for posting this so others can be wary.

I hope someone from WABA reads this and then asks drivers to sign a pledge to drive responsibly. Maybe they can team up with AAA.

My daughter is learning to drive. She was – for lack of a better word – offended when she saw a cyclist on the nearly empty GW Parkway in Mount Vernon this morning. I asked her 2 questions: “Why weren’t you similarly offended when we saw all the cars in the bike lanes on 9th Street the other night?” And “Who or what is that cyclist harming?” To the latter she said “If I were driving, he’d really scare me.” To which I responded, “Then you’re not ready to drive on the Parkway.”

The anti-bike attitude is deeply ingrained in the American psyche. It’s going to take an awful lot of time (and maybe some $5 gas) to change people’s minds.

[CCrew]

@Rootchopper 1805 wrote:

I hope someone from WABA reads this and then asks drivers to sign a pledge to drive responsibly. Maybe they can team up with AAA.

Oh, I’m sorry, but this is laughable. It’s not going to stop anything like what happened to the OP.

What someone should do is start petitioning MVA’s or lawmakers across the country to make the law portion of a drivers license mandatory every X renewals. And then be sure there’s a portion of the law test that addresses the laws pertaining to other items they may encounter.. like cyclists or god forbid even pedestrians. Make the test adaptive so that when answer “X” fails it drills in deeper.

Getting people to sign a pledge will only garner the signatures of the people that care to begin with. When Bubba can’t get his license renewed because he can’t comprehend that a cyclist has the same rights as him it’ll sink in. I’m sorry, but it needs to be mandatory. It’s not even touched on in drivers ed – I asked both my kids and they said “never”.

-R

[Mykeru]

@eminva 1795 wrote:

Hello —

I was telling my husband about this last night and he thought of something I hadn’t — some intersections in DC have cameras mounted on the traffic signal structures (and not just red light cameras that are triggered by scofflaws). If this is one of those intersections, there might be a video record of this incident. The first step of course would be a police report, but it might be worth looking into if there is a camera.

Liz

I’m probably really cynical about social mores and the police, but even if there is a tape of the incident, I’m sure the interpretation will be this: The driver is a “citizen”, the guy on the bike is a “scumbag”.

@Rootchopper 1805 wrote:

I hope someone from WABA reads this and then asks drivers to sign a pledge to drive responsibly. Maybe they can team up with AAA.

Seriously? Is the lady who chirped “I HATE bicyclists” going to sign it? If gas hits $5 a gallon, that’ll just give driver’s more reason to hate bicyclists. That’s the fun of irrational, bigoted hatred: It’s fueled by confirmation bias.

[CCrew]

@Mykeru 1812 wrote:

the guy on the bike is a “scumbag”.

Naa, he’s on the bike because of DUI’s and he’s an illegal alien.

[acc]

DUIs and Illegal Immigrant Status? You mean it has nothing to do with a Lycra fetish? I’m soooo disillusioned.

[Mykeru]

@CCrew 1813 wrote:

Naa, he’s on the bike because of DUI’s and he’s an illegal alien.

You know, it’s amazing how many motorists assume because I ride a bike, I don’t have a car. As if being a bicyclist means you’re an anti-car luddite or a homeless person a step up from wheeling a shopping cart.

I have a 2008 Jeep Patriot. Mostly because it’s sort of a sub-compact SUV, my bike fits in it nicely, and the name itself provides nice contrast to whatever leftist, anti-theist magnetic bumper stickers I swap out on the back for long drives.

I have explain to motorists who think that way, that as I drive and bike, I speak from experience, whereas as they are solely fat-assed, dumb motorists who would drive around a parking lot for 15 minutes so they don’t have to walk 30 extra feet, they are speaking from pure ignorance.

It goes over pretty much as well as you expect.

[Mykeru]

@acc 1815 wrote:

DUIs and Illegal Immigrant Status? You mean it has nothing to do with a Lycra fetish? I’m soooo disillusioned.

Actually, it’s more of a black latex fetish but 1. Not on me and 2. It’s way off topic.

That’s another thing. If you follow sites like Fark, as I do, you can always count on one of the “i hate bikes” threads that some motorist poster will go on about having to stare at a guys ass as it pistons up and down clad in black Lycra. Not that there’s anything wrong with that™, but a lot of motorists have a definite latent homo-erotic fixation.

[acc]

Well, as a woman driver I consider it my civic duty to slow down and carefully observe the pistoning black Lycra from a respectful distance of at least 25 yards no matter how long it takes him to get up that hill. Safety first!

But as someone who was hit on my bike in a crosswalk and lived to tell the tale, I wrote a community impact statement on behalf of Stan Miller who was killed on his bike in Montgomery County.
The man who committed this crime will be sentenced Jan. 14th. The information about where to send a letter/email can be found at the Potomac Peddlers’ site. http://www.bikepptc.org/

[CCrew]

@Mykeru 1816 wrote:

You know, it’s amazing how many motorists assume because I ride a bike, I don’t have a car. As if being a bicyclist means you’re an anti-car luddite or a homeless person a step up from wheeling a shopping cart.

Oh yeah. I have 4 cars, but I’ve heard that one so many times I’m just pre-emptive and throw it out first

[Author]

Replies