Who was wrong here? (Bike vs. car question)

In My Humble Opinion
1

This happened months ago, but yesterday I returned to the scene of the incident and found myself pondering it again.

I had stopped at a corner store on a narrow back road. The store had several parking spaces in front of the store, which directly abutted the road. There was no easement, grass, or sidewalk, just road-white line-parking spaces. When I parked my tiny Nissan Sentra there, there was maybe 2-4 feet between my car and the road.

I made my purchase at the store and went outside. There were two men on bicycles who had stopped to talk to a woman, several (maybe 10?) feet away from my car. I got into my car and got ready to back out onto the road. Now, the store was on the right side of the road, so I didn’t have to cross a lane of traffic to get to it, and I wanted to continue in the same direction on the road. All I had to do was check the one lane of traffic I was backing into, and then I could be on my way.

So, I checked to my right. I checked to my left to make sure there weren’t any pedestrians/people driving the wrong way down the street/bicyclists I needed to worry about. There weren’t. So, I checked the right again, all clear, and started to back up. Since I was backing out to the right I kept looking in that direction.

Before I had moved maybe 2 feet (I drive a stick shift with no power steering, manuevering in tight spaces takes me about 3 times as long as you), I heard a noise and looked to my left- the two bicyclists I had seen moments before chatting up a woman were now dangerously close to my left rear bumper. I stopped.

The woman, still in the parking lot, says, “Damn! That would have been such a lawsuit!” The men continue on their way, riding their bicycles on the wrong side of the road. I return home peeved.

Now, who would be at fault if there had been an accident? I don’t know if they were in the road or still in the lot, but if they were in the road, they were riding on the wrong side of it (as they continued to do once I let them pass) so I think they would be at fault. Even if they were still in the lot, they chose to ride their bicycles behind a car they had just seen start up and start backing out. I’d say their idiots, and that’s their fault. What do you say?

2

You probably would have a case of shared responsibility, albeit unequally shared. Replay this in your mind, substituting a car for the bikes.

  • You would have been in the wrong for not assuring your path to the rear was clear.

  • The cyclists were in the wrong for being in the wrong lane for travel.

3

Well, but the path to my rear was clear. When I checked to the left, the guys were still standing on their bikes (straddling them, but feet on the ground) talking to this woman. In the few seconds it took me to check the right again, and start backing up, they had started riding. They weren’t quite behind me when I stopped, they were a split second from being behind the car.

The lawsuit comment really pissed me off, though. Even if I were in the wrong, I was going perhaps 2 miles an hour. It’s a stick, I hadn’t even gotten past that point where you ride the clutch a little too much when you first start moving. So, even if I had hit them, I might have knocked them off their bikes. Might. There’d be some bruises, absolutely worst-case scenario a broken wrist or something. That’s not lawsuit worthy, unless I was totally wasted and saw them coming but tried to beat them to the road or something. And even then- you don’t sue somebody unless they fuck you up pretty bad. My insurance would have covered it.