Bike accident
Tuesday, June 25th, 2013 12:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lethargic_manBah, got knocked off my bike again this morning. I'd been trying out a new route the last couple of weeks, which was slightly shorter and involved a more main road, but it had a cycle carriageway so I thought it'd be safer. It wasn't. There were gaps in the kerb between the cycle carriageway and the motorists' one every time there was a drive, and one of them had a lorry parked right up to the gap, so the car turning left across the cycle carriageway couldn't see if there was anything coming, and I went into him at full tilt.
Bastard wouldn't accept it was his fault, either; said it was "an accident". He said, "you're all right" when it had become clear I had suffered no worse than cuts and bruises, "but look at the mess you've made of my number plate." Screw your number plate; I'm a human being! I made two mistakes then: first, I lost my cool and started shouting at him (and he started shouting back), and secondly I cycled off (my bike apparently being undamaged) without getting contact details of the pedestrians who'd observed it was definitely his fault, so if I'd wanted to contact the police, it would have been my word against his.
I hope I'm back to normal in time for my coast-to-coast ride in two and a half weeks. After spending an hour this morning transferring an ice pack between my various bruises, they're not too bad, but breathing with my ribs (as opposed to my diaphragm) is a bit painful. It would probably be best for me to go a little while without cycling, but I need to get to Tesco on Thursday to buy fish for the Shabbos lunch I'm hosting this week. I'll (probably) see this evening if I'm capable of cycling home; if I'm not, I'll probably become aware of it quite rapidly, and can turn back and take the Tube.
I'm a bit concerned that I seem to be coming off my bike so much; I don't get the impression from other cyclists that they have so many accidents. Some of them are of course my fault (such as when I failed to realise the noise from my bike was the front mudguard about to fall onto the wheel and stop it dead), and some bad luck (such as when I slipped on black ice when stopping to help another cyclist who'd come off on the ice, when the temperature was 2° above zero and there was no ice anywhere else on my route to work), but still.
I see other people cycling with a child on their bike, but no way if I ever have children would I take that risk. If I have children, I'm getting myself a car.
Bastard wouldn't accept it was his fault, either; said it was "an accident". He said, "you're all right" when it had become clear I had suffered no worse than cuts and bruises, "but look at the mess you've made of my number plate." Screw your number plate; I'm a human being! I made two mistakes then: first, I lost my cool and started shouting at him (and he started shouting back), and secondly I cycled off (my bike apparently being undamaged) without getting contact details of the pedestrians who'd observed it was definitely his fault, so if I'd wanted to contact the police, it would have been my word against his.
I hope I'm back to normal in time for my coast-to-coast ride in two and a half weeks. After spending an hour this morning transferring an ice pack between my various bruises, they're not too bad, but breathing with my ribs (as opposed to my diaphragm) is a bit painful. It would probably be best for me to go a little while without cycling, but I need to get to Tesco on Thursday to buy fish for the Shabbos lunch I'm hosting this week. I'll (probably) see this evening if I'm capable of cycling home; if I'm not, I'll probably become aware of it quite rapidly, and can turn back and take the Tube.
I'm a bit concerned that I seem to be coming off my bike so much; I don't get the impression from other cyclists that they have so many accidents. Some of them are of course my fault (such as when I failed to realise the noise from my bike was the front mudguard about to fall onto the wheel and stop it dead), and some bad luck (such as when I slipped on black ice when stopping to help another cyclist who'd come off on the ice, when the temperature was 2° above zero and there was no ice anywhere else on my route to work), but still.
I see other people cycling with a child on their bike, but no way if I ever have children would I take that risk. If I have children, I'm getting myself a car.
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no subject
Date: 2013-06-25 02:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-25 07:48 pm (UTC)I didn't come off my bike very often - once when I had to suddenly brake going downhill (front wheel stopped, back wheel somersaulted, so did I - and a number of times on ice, but London can be rather scary, and I suppose if you rack up the miles, you rack up the idiots :-(((
no subject
Date: 2013-06-25 07:55 pm (UTC)I learned that mistake (applying front brakes only) when I was about eight. It probably hurt less, as I had considerably less mass at the time...
but London can be rather scary, and I suppose if you rack up the miles, you rack up the idiots :-(((
Unfortunately, in this case I don't think the driver was an idiot; with the lorry blocking his view, there's no way he could have seen what was in the cycle carriageway before his bonnet crossed it. I shall be writing to the council demanding yellow lines either side of each access point across the cycle carriageway.*
In seventeen years of commuting by bike, I've only had two accidents (not counting near-accidents) caused by idiots; one of those was a pedestrian, the other a hit-and-run driver. The latter was the only other time apart from today I've been knocked off by a car.
* [ETA:] Or maybe not: Looking at Google Streetview, it appears there already are single probably-yellow lines (it's difficult to tell), though not for as long before the gap as I'd have preferred. So although one could argue that from a moral point of view the lorry should not have been parked where it was, from a legal one, there was nothing wrong with it being where it was at ten past eight in the morning. :-(
no subject
Date: 2013-06-25 08:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-07-02 02:26 pm (UTC)In a decade's worth of Cambridge cycling I have crashed through my own drunken stupidity, my own sober stupidity, and an overabundance of ice. But I've fortunately never actually managed to seriously damage myself (I did hurt the bike quite bad though).
no subject
Date: 2013-07-04 01:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-07-04 02:04 pm (UTC)