The other day I was at one of thous lights where you push the button and wait for it to turn red. A pedestrian crossing. I use it to cross a very busy street. I pulled up to the edge of the intersection, pushed the button and waited. The lights did their slow dance, yellow and then red. It was raining lightly.
I know this light, I know people like to run through it, so I always wait till everyone comes to a full stop before going. I was sitting on my top tube, hands in my pockets to keep them warm, waiting as life passed me by. A young man in a shitty car must not have noticed the light was red until pretty late because he slammed on the breaks locking up the front end and sending his car into a skid on the slick streets. I sat calmly watching as several hundred pounds of metal and glass slid to within a foot of my front wheel.
When it was clear he was done skidding I mounted the bike and drove off. What really bothered me, what really got me thinking later, was that I never even thought about getting out of the way. I never thought “hey this car is about to run you over, move.” I have been nudged, bumped, pressured, bullied, nearly hit, hit and flat out knocked down by so many cars at this point that unless you actually knock me off my bike, I don’t notice.
It’s a statistics game. You spend enough time in the street with people who are more worried about getting from point A to point B at high speed than watching out for you, and you are going to get hit by a car. You can be as safe as can be (and I often am) and all that does is increase the time in between accidents.
I am not a macho man, I don’t think I am tougher than the other guys “cause I ride in the streets”, but something has happened to my outlook. I also don’t do stupid shit, I stop at red lights, and stop signs. I ride on the right hand side of the road. But unless you actually hit me hard enough to break a bone, or break my bike I will get up, spit, get on my bike and ride off. When did the prospect of getting run over stop being scary?
There are things that are starting to bother me though. I have stopped getting excited in heavy traffic. I can be inches away from a screaming cab and the adrenaline isn’t going. I can miss being run down by a bus by inches and my heart rate doesn’t change at all. Something is wrong here. The human body is chock full of self defense measures, and none of mine seem to be working.
People honk, I don’t care, people nudge me, I don’t care, people even scream and throw things. I don’t care. I am going to take my little slice of the road, I am going to ride it into oblivion and fuck everyone else.
A month ago a man tried cut me off (he also almost hit several pedestrians in the cross walk at the same time) so I banged on his hood to remind him that, yes a human being was in front of him. He proceeded to scream out of his window that “I am going to kill you”, he then went on to chase me at high speeds though heavy traffic. He tried several times to run me over, and even got out of his car once and ran at me, the whole time all I could think was that “he isn’t going to catch me, this is kind of funny.” I easily threaded in and out of the heavy traffic and left him at a red light and never looked back. The moral of this story, there isn’t one, it’s just one of a million stories that anyone who does a lot of city riding will be able to share with you.
Is this all just a slow suicide. In a couple of months/years/decades will I find myself splattered all over the pavement because I had the audacity to ride my bike in the street with the cars. I don’t really care, and that more than anything concerns me.