Near Miss
So I ride a bicycle to work. It used to be because I was afraid of cars. I was a terrible nerd (“was,” he says) and didn’t get a driver license until I was 22 or 23 years old. I didn’t own my first car until 2003. So in all that time, I got around with a bicycle, and my perfect twin spherical hindquarters are there to prove it. Har.
Now, it has been my habit of late to work rather late, and therefore arise rather late, and therefore arrive at work rather late. Los Angeles traffic isn’t really that bad at 10:30AM, and at such an hour a cyclist can regularly run the gauntlet with perhaps only one life-threatening event per week.
My habit came to an end this morning. I actually went to bed at a decent hour last night, and was able to make my trip to work before 9AM. As such, it’s looking like I’ll be seeing a life-threatening event every day.
There were many cars. The problem with many cars is that it increases the likelihood of there being a less wise driver behind one of the many wheels.
Now, whereas there is the ever present danger of being crushed by a motorist who is screwing with their cell phone and not watching in front of them, and whereas the probability of such a terminal bodyshaping increases with more cars, there is a bonus to bicycling to work in heavy traffic. No matter how bad the traffic is, you never have to wait at the same red light twice. You always roll right up to the line before you stop, passing all the cars who may not cross the intersection until the traffic signal has passed through its cycle numerous times.
This morning I was passing two lanes of cars stopped at a traffic light. They were probably backed up 30 or 40 deep. One of them wanted to turn right before the intersection, into a Whole Foods, I think. She had her right signal on, and she had moved over to block my path. I decided to go around her on the left. This was dumb. She suddenly realized that the enormous garbage truck paralell parked on the side of the road was blocking her route to the Whole Foods, so she veered back to the left, towards me.
I was right next to her as she started coming. Happily she was going very slowly, When she saw me, she probably crapped herself, but she had time to stop. I was crapping myself, in any case, and swerving and braking and watching her to see if she was going to whack me.
I forgot about the guy in front of us, who had been slowly rolling forward. I figure at about the time I focused on her, he stopped completely. So I ran into the back of him.
Happily I was going very slow, too. I don’t think I caused any damage to his car. I just thumped his bumper with my front wheel and unceremoniously stepped off my bike. So no harm no foul.
The problem is that I decided I should teach her a lesson. I suppose past experience has led me to believe that if you behave like a screaming, foul-mouthed angry psychopath, people who shop at Whole Foods will be intimidated and let you have your way. Such was the case here. The woman mumbled back at me from inside her car by way of defending herself, but I couldn’t hear, so I just kept screaming at her. When the guy from the car I thumped got out, I got really calm and told him there was no damage, he only got run into by a bike (I didn’t actually check, though…I just very much wanted his shiny new Mercedes not to be hurt in any way). I think I may have dropped one last f-bomb on her, then I took off.
So, in hindsight, that was all crap. Admittedly, she shouldn’t have been swerving all over the lane, going left while signalling right, yada yada, but that’s L.A. People make mistakes, and that’s not even necessarily a mistake: it’s just getting where one is going, no harm no foul.
I behaved like a total jerk, though. I suppose you can chalk up some of it to adrenaline and fear of death, but the reality is that I’m just an angry nerd looking for someone to bawl out because I don’t love my life.
So what I’m taking from this: I’m not going to stop riding to work or being somewhat aggressive about it. I am going to make an effort to curtail the anger and cursing that seem to be part of any day’s ride, though. It didn’t really do any good for me to ruin that lady’s day. In fact, I probably just made such a big ass of myself that she and all the other witnesses will be less prone to be understanding or forgiving should another similar episode befall them. So the lady gets a demerit for questionable driving practices, but I get several for being a oaf about it.
Amen.
This entry was posted on Monday, September 11th, 2006 at 11:26 pm and is filed under Stuff that Happened. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
