I was almost crushed under the wheels of a small SUV. Here's what happened: This morning I was biking to school as usual. I took a right turn at a green light, in a continuous bike lane. I was watching closely for pedestrians, and suddenly I was jolted by the side of an SUV. I strained against the vehicle to keep upright. I yelled to the driver, but she made no response as she lowered her cell phone and straightened the path of her vehicle.After pedaling for a few yards I was able to get my head around what just happened. Luckily, I was okay. But it could have been catastrophic. If she didn't run me over with her back wheels, someone else certainly could have; I could have broken an arm on the curb; my bike could have been demolished. Thankfully, it was all the "could have's" that kept me unharmed. They also pushed me into action. She could have sent me to the hospital or an early grave and she didn't even know it.
So with new found resolution in my two skinny wheels I raced after her. I followed her through another right turn and caught up on Alder. As I paced with her passenger window I shouted again. This time she looked over but figured it wasn't important, I guess. So I followed her as she turned left and finally got right up to her driver's window at the next stop sign. I yelled for her to roll it down. I shouted that she drove right into the bike lane a couple turns back and almost flattened me. She needed to be more careful. She needed to watch the bike lane. All she could say was, "Really? I'm sorry."
And isn't that the way it goes.
We have to watch out for one another. It's easy to tune out your surroundings and text while you're driving and listen to music with the windows rolled up, wishing that you couldn't hear the outside world so distinctly as you sped through it. I am not a drone. I am a real person sharing the world and I nearly paid the consequences for someone who wanted to disregard their responsibility and occupy it alone, selfishly. Even though we think we can live in our own comfort-attention bubbles, with iPods and cell phones and earplugs, we can not. It's just not an option. We share the world, and when we forget that, we forget each other. And that does us all great harm.
