So I stop at a red light, heading north, and go to turn east at the intersection when BAM! (no, not Emeril) a bike heading west across the intersection pulls in front of me and I hit the guy.
Had looked west for oncoming traffic and didn’t see any, but didn’t think to look for anything coming along the sidewalk from the right. Luckily, I just tapped him and his new bike…he scraped a knee and the bike looked fine.
I got him to the corner, and pulled off to the side and made sure he was okay. Was going to give him a ride home, but couldn’t fit the bike in the car, so he used my cell to call his mom to pick him up. Hung out with him there until she arrived, but a cop stopped by before then…ended up getting a ticket to fail to yield to a bicycle.
I’m fine paying the ticket (although I apparently have the option to “accept responsibility with explanation”)…fine paying whatever happens to my insurance rates…just pissed at myself that this would happen to me. I gave my number to him and his mom and asked that they call me tomorrow to let me know if he is still okay and that his bike (new, by the way) is still working (the medics did show up and check him out, and he was fine, so declined a hospital visit).
Crap crap crap. There goes a relaxing evening…for both me and him.
No, my perception of driving is fine. I find it to be highly enjoyable. A life spent behind the wheel, up until this point, had been a veritable Fahrvergnugen. Or what have you.
Funny that. After he called his mom on my mobile (sorry, been watching Coupling on DVD), he looked at the paper I gave him with my number on it, and he asked “This is your real number, isn’t it?” Showed him where my number was programmed into my phone. He then apologized saying “You never know these days…”
Hey Lockseer, I’m glad everything turned out okay. Maybe some good will come of this - you know how perceptivity is heightened after a scare sometimes? Maybe this incident will help you avoid something worse.
Take care.
A whole family in a big blue family car stopped to see if I was still alive after I struck their car in exactly the same fashion you describe, one fine August day 21 years ago.
Since there weren’t “mobiles” back then, I walked over to the public phone that was a few yards away and called my mom. As soon as I was occupied with the phone, the cowards slunk away, leaving me alone with my cuts and bruises and a busted bike.
Rotten bastards.
The memory of that whole thoughtless cowering family still frosts my cookies.