Phase One was “I’m doing it, but I am really, really scared!” I was so frightened that I lost consciousness of everything other than the wish not to be killed. Truly, at some moments I couldn’t see or hear much of anything—and I was in the middle of the street! On a bicycle! During rush hour!
Phase Two is the same as Phase One, but undertaken in a professional-quality safety vest, even in broad daylight.
During this period, I got an email from Mily saying she was now positive I was a lesbian, since no straight woman could get so excited about a safety vest. The subject line of her email was “Excuse me … but you are such a DYKE!”
Phase Three was “Maybe I shouldn’t always ride smack in the center of every lane. In fact, maybe I should edge over here to the right more. Yes, that does feel better! Oh, but now cars are passing me way too closely again.”
In Phase Four, I’m back in the center of the lane most of the time, but not as a religion, and I try to keep my focus on myself—la la la, here I am enjoying a nice ride up the street!—instead of on the driver behind me and what he might or might not be about to do.
If I must think anything about that driver, and it's not really required, this works well: The driver behind me has no doubt dealt with a million cyclists, is probably perfectly calm, and will either pass safely or continue to motor suavely behind me.
Funny how many fewer would-be murderers I’m encountering now, though I still get freaked out fairly regularly. At least I’m not colluding in it so much.
Yesterday I saw a cyclist get doored as he approached a red light on Market St. He was riding between the stopped cars and the curb, and a car door began to open. The cyclist said, “Whoa, whoa,” and kept coming. So did the door. The cyclist was going very slowly, and the door was also opening very slowly and wasn’t open very far, but the cyclist was suddenly lying on the sidewalk with his bike on top of him, which just goes to show you how dangerous this is.
If the cyclist had been going very fast and the door had been flung entirely open very suddenly …
Technically, this is entirely the fault of the motorist, but it’s good to remember that this cannot happen to a cyclist who hasn’t placed himself in dooring position, assuming that motorists won’t drive right up next to a moving cyclist and throw open a door. I suppose that has been known to happen, but, generally speaking, doors on moving cars do not open, so in that respect, moving cars are safer than stopped ones.
This morning I saw a motorist nearly hit three cyclists who were in a bike lane. The motorist wished to turn right and, instead of merging safely into the bike lane and turning when he reached the corner, simply went for it.
I noticed this was happening when I heard the cyclists yelling “Hey!” and was immensely pleased to see that one of the three cyclists was a uniformed police officer. This should make an indelible impression on the driver, for one thing, even though what the police officer was saying to him (“You need to use your turn signal”) wasn’t quite on the mark.
More gratifying and correct would have been “You may not turn across the bike lane, and you need to watch carefully for cyclists. Next time, merge safely into the bike lane behind the cyclists, and then turn.” (Alas, even some cyclists don’t know this. It’s disheartening to see cyclists screaming at a motorist who is doing the exact right thing.)
But it was also good because that police officer got a taste of what other cyclists deal with all the time. I see quite a few police officers on bicycles, but if they are moving, they are generally on the sidewalk, where the risk of being struck by a car certainly is reduced, though, again, not eliminated.
When it comes to teaching motorists that cyclists are entitled to use the roads, being behind a car is just as good as being in front, because the motorist who sees a cyclist right smack behind him in his rearview mirror is getting yet another view of a cyclist safely and properly using the road. Sooner or later it will begin to look almost normal.
When I’m stopped behind a car at a stop light, I like to say this little mantra to myself: Bikes behind, bikes in front, bikes to the left and bikes to the right. Bikes all around.
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