Ride most of the way home followed by an intercession by a car followed by a walk home
Note: this blog entry entered under the influence of a couple of ibuprofen followed by a bottle of Cadian Ale followed by a bottle of Australian Shiraz and a quarter a half> best part of a really good bottle of port (feel free to send me a free bottle any time now) this entry may not be 100% accurate.
Today, after the uneventful day yesterday, I was hit by a car. This is the first time I've been hit by a car in the best part of two years - or to put it another way, 15000 km. As I was riding home, I was hit by someone reversing out of their driveway. I slowed down, saw their brake lights, and (thinking back) rather stupidly assumed they saw me and were stopping. I continued on, they jackrabbited out, and I, for lack of better expression... hit them. I insisted that the driver call the police. She immediately admitted responsibility and offered (in fact, almost insisted) to call the ambulance. Since my son has Cerebral Palsy and needs (really the ambulance on occasiona, unlike some other people) an ambulance), I elected to call just the police. Kudos to the driver, she called the police, told 911 I delclined an ambulance, and did everything possible to make me comfortable (provided me with an icepack and a towel for my bruised fingers (most appreciated) and a chair for my bruised stomach (not quite so appreciate but it's not her fault - if I'd sat down I'd probably not have gotten up).
When the police (Const. B. Boone) arrived I was impressed at how careful he was. First he talked to us both to get an idea of what happened. I wasn't overly impressed at what the driver said (she said only the back half of her car was out of the driveway, but I was sure more of it was out) but regardless, the police officer immediately said the driver was at fault. After spending a while digging through what I said vs what the driver said the police officer came to the conclusion that (a) I was riding my bike uphill in an orderly fashion, (b) the driver was driving her car out of the driveway and (c) she hit me coming out of the driveway without paying due care and attention. To the best of my recollection, she was given a ticket for "failing to reverse out of a driveway without due care and attention". I get the feeling that I'm going to have to get a book of offenses and study then - I didn't realise there was such an explicit offense, and after finding out that bike lanes are parking lanes if vehicles can fit 4.5m or less of their vehicle close to the curb I'm going to have to investigate further.
As part of my discussio with the officer I was slightly surprised to find Constable/Sergeant/Officer Boone was a biker himself - he drives a Norco Nitro. We were talking about insurance and he gave a ballpark figure of what the damage cost. I gave a ballpark figure of $150-200 (admittedly somewhat pulled out of my jacksie - based on my idea of an hour for someone to true the wheel plus straighten the forks plus check over and repair any other damage) and he gave me the nod and asked me how much I thought the bike as a whole was worth. I said I'd claim off my insurance as $600, amd he said he had his down as $500. After looking on the internet, his seems to be somewhat newer and aimed more at the cyclocross arena, so I may have undershot it a touch. I supposed regardless, I've only spent $400 or so on it, so I'm ahead anyway. I'm going to take it into Idealbikes tomorrow anyway to look at the bent forks - hopefully it won't take much, since I'd like to ride it next week. I'm hoping that worst case scenario I'll need new wheels - since it's a steel frame I might be able to get away with cold setting it back into place, instead of buying a new set of forks.
I'm going to give a statement to Constable Boone on Sunday evening (when he's next on duty at a time that matches up with us both - big brownie points to him for being on duty at 10pm on Saturday but I'll be in bed or not in a good state to give reasonable evidence by then). He offered to drive my home bu looked slightly surprised when I told him I really don't like going in cars - his immediate reaction was "oh, fair enough, you have a phobia?" but he seemed slightly surprised by my reply of "no, I just don't like cars".
When I got home, I wrote down what happened; here's a cut and paste:
"I was riding uphill up Convoy Avenue at a speed of 20 to 25km/hr. The road was wet due to a light misty rain that was falling, and it was cloudy. I noticed a car with reverse lights on parked at number 53, and as I approached I saw it slowly roll back. As I was passing the neighbour's garden I saw the brake lights come on and the car slowed down as it approached the edge of the driveway, so I continued. When I was approximately 10 metres from the car it continued out in front of me. I braked hard and swerved to the right, but due to the wet road my brakes took about 2 seconds to wipe off the rain and start biting and I hit the side of the car, with my left hand hitting the right-hand mirror and my left leg from knee to foot hitting the door. I estimate I hit the car at approximately 10km/hr. Damage noticed at the scene was:
* bent forks
* handlebars twisted around
* derailleur lever hanger loose
In addition, my index finger and middle finger were damaged due to being
caught between the brake levers and the car's mirror, and my right knee was bruised on the upper side from hitting the handlebars."
Distance logged: 14.873km
Time: 65:48
Average speed: 13.6km/hr
Max speed: 53.3 km/hr
Temperature: 15. misty
Cumulative distance: 3327.149km
Cumulative cost per km: $0.47
Monthly distance: 212.501km
Monthly cost per km: $0.32
Today, after the uneventful day yesterday, I was hit by a car. This is the first time I've been hit by a car in the best part of two years - or to put it another way, 15000 km. As I was riding home, I was hit by someone reversing out of their driveway. I slowed down, saw their brake lights, and (thinking back) rather stupidly assumed they saw me and were stopping. I continued on, they jackrabbited out, and I, for lack of better expression... hit them. I insisted that the driver call the police. She immediately admitted responsibility and offered (in fact, almost insisted) to call the ambulance. Since my son has Cerebral Palsy and needs (really the ambulance on occasiona, unlike some other people) an ambulance), I elected to call just the police. Kudos to the driver, she called the police, told 911 I delclined an ambulance, and did everything possible to make me comfortable (provided me with an icepack and a towel for my bruised fingers (most appreciated) and a chair for my bruised stomach (not quite so appreciate but it's not her fault - if I'd sat down I'd probably not have gotten up).
When the police (Const. B. Boone) arrived I was impressed at how careful he was. First he talked to us both to get an idea of what happened. I wasn't overly impressed at what the driver said (she said only the back half of her car was out of the driveway, but I was sure more of it was out) but regardless, the police officer immediately said the driver was at fault. After spending a while digging through what I said vs what the driver said the police officer came to the conclusion that (a) I was riding my bike uphill in an orderly fashion, (b) the driver was driving her car out of the driveway and (c) she hit me coming out of the driveway without paying due care and attention. To the best of my recollection, she was given a ticket for "failing to reverse out of a driveway without due care and attention". I get the feeling that I'm going to have to get a book of offenses and study then - I didn't realise there was such an explicit offense, and after finding out that bike lanes are parking lanes if vehicles can fit 4.5m or less of their vehicle close to the curb I'm going to have to investigate further.
As part of my discussio with the officer I was slightly surprised to find Constable/Sergeant/Officer Boone was a biker himself - he drives a Norco Nitro. We were talking about insurance and he gave a ballpark figure of what the damage cost. I gave a ballpark figure of $150-200 (admittedly somewhat pulled out of my jacksie - based on my idea of an hour for someone to true the wheel plus straighten the forks plus check over and repair any other damage) and he gave me the nod and asked me how much I thought the bike as a whole was worth. I said I'd claim off my insurance as $600, amd he said he had his down as $500. After looking on the internet, his seems to be somewhat newer and aimed more at the cyclocross arena, so I may have undershot it a touch. I supposed regardless, I've only spent $400 or so on it, so I'm ahead anyway. I'm going to take it into Idealbikes tomorrow anyway to look at the bent forks - hopefully it won't take much, since I'd like to ride it next week. I'm hoping that worst case scenario I'll need new wheels - since it's a steel frame I might be able to get away with cold setting it back into place, instead of buying a new set of forks.
I'm going to give a statement to Constable Boone on Sunday evening (when he's next on duty at a time that matches up with us both - big brownie points to him for being on duty at 10pm on Saturday but I'll be in bed or not in a good state to give reasonable evidence by then). He offered to drive my home bu looked slightly surprised when I told him I really don't like going in cars - his immediate reaction was "oh, fair enough, you have a phobia?" but he seemed slightly surprised by my reply of "no, I just don't like cars".
When I got home, I wrote down what happened; here's a cut and paste:
"I was riding uphill up Convoy Avenue at a speed of 20 to 25km/hr. The road was wet due to a light misty rain that was falling, and it was cloudy. I noticed a car with reverse lights on parked at number 53, and as I approached I saw it slowly roll back. As I was passing the neighbour's garden I saw the brake lights come on and the car slowed down as it approached the edge of the driveway, so I continued. When I was approximately 10 metres from the car it continued out in front of me. I braked hard and swerved to the right, but due to the wet road my brakes took about 2 seconds to wipe off the rain and start biting and I hit the side of the car, with my left hand hitting the right-hand mirror and my left leg from knee to foot hitting the door. I estimate I hit the car at approximately 10km/hr. Damage noticed at the scene was:
* bent forks
* handlebars twisted around
* derailleur lever hanger loose
In addition, my index finger and middle finger were damaged due to being
caught between the brake levers and the car's mirror, and my right knee was bruised on the upper side from hitting the handlebars."
Distance logged: 14.873km
Time: 65:48
Average speed: 13.6km/hr
Max speed: 53.3 km/hr
Temperature: 15. misty
Cumulative distance: 3327.149km
Cumulative cost per km: $0.47
Monthly distance: 212.501km
Monthly cost per km: $0.32
posted by steve at 6/10/2006 12:09:00 am
2 Comments:
Aww Steve, I hate reading this. It sounds like your ok exempt for bumps and bruises, I'm glad for that. Be careful out there. Hope you get your bike fixed soon. I got your hints on fixing up the old bike I got, Thank you. I was going to email you about it but you read my post before I got a change. Take care, I'd send you my Tawny Port if I could but it's half gone....yum!
Michelle
Thanks Michelle, I had sore shoulder muscles all weekend and a nasty bruise on my leg where the bar end got me but I'm pretty much OK now. My hand ended up being fine after all that, so I got away pretty lucky.
David, it's a steel frame so it's far more resilient than an aluminium , CF or Ti frame - that's one of the reasons I like riding it. It's an antique bike so I'm going to try my best to keep it original as possible, but as I just wrote in my last entry it looks like I'm going to lose the wheels, which sucks - they're steel, and look a lot nicer than aluminium and give a very smooth ride.
Thanks for the kind words about the blog - to be honest, I'm not sure why people read it regularly as it's largely for me to log my mileage, but I seem to have several dedicated readers :-)
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