Be safe out there. .

[catfish]

Glad it wasn't a hit and run. And the bike can be replaced. The fact that you are OK is great news.

 

[phantom]

Glad you were not hurt beyond what you described..... There must be a thousand personal injury attorneys out driving around the Atlanta area looking for situations just like this.

 

[COB]

Always keep in mind that basic law of physics: "He with the most lug nuts wins".

 

[Jimmy V]

I have been lucky. Have had some close ones. I drive for a living and so I need to be very aware of my surroundings all of the time. I feel that has helped me as a rider too. In your case Thonyv it looks like you did everything right and Mr Mustang made a sloppy stop and didn't see you. Great that you will be OK! I crashed a few weeks ago riding a friends nice 57 Hornet. We were crossing a busy road and I went to turn onto the bike trail and my front tire hit loose sand at the edge of the road and I went down. I had a nice road rash on my right leg, but thankfully the tank and the Rocket Ray seemed unscathed! I was mad and a bit shaken up, but we rode on.

 

[Boris]

Don't have to tell you how lucky you were. Glad to see that you're still around to relate the story!

 

[vincev]

Glad nothing serious happened. I know in my area the bikers dont obey any signs They think Stop signs mean for everyone else but them. In Indiana a person on a bike has the same rules as a motorized vehicle and will get ticketed. glad you didnt get hurt badly

 

[MarkKBike]

Sorry to hear, glad it was not worse.

I'm always nervous ridding on the street, and try to stay away from traffic. Living in the suburbs It something I have never got accustomed to. luckily I live in area that has several bike paths that are separate from the road and run for what seems like endless miles linking up the local preserves. One nice one is just 3 blocks away, and another is a mile away in the other direction that spans 61 miles of trails.

I know technically I'm not supposed to ride on on the side walks in my area, but I do about 3-4 times a week, just to get to a bike path. I have never been stopped, and have seen many other people ride on them as well. I will continue to do so until I get stopped.

A friend of mine also got hit a few years back and took several months to fully recover.

 

[Autocycleplane]

Glad you are OK for the most part. I’ve been hit by 4 cars, doored once - I feel your pain.

One tip I learned years ago at a motorcycle safety course was to ride as if you were invisible: never assume anyone can see you and behave accordingly.

 

[49autocycledeluxe]

I know in my area the bikers dont obey any signs They think Stop signs mean for everyone else but them.

when you are invisible to everyone around you stopping at stop signs really doesn't make any difference in the odds of getting hit by a car. super awareness, no headphones, and knowing you are invisible is what keeps someone from getting hit.

 

[Duchess]

when you are invisible to everyone around you stopping at stop signs really doesn't make any difference in the odds of getting hit by a car. super awareness, no headphones, and knowing you are invisible is what keeps someone from getting hit.

I don't think it's necessarily the relative safety of stopping or going through a stop itself that's the problem as much as the perception of us to observers. On the roads, it's not just the dangers of indifferent phone-huggers, vehicles that require excessive rollover protection because they are stupid designs and have a multitude of blind spots as a consequence, and people who lack the brains to process visual information and have their bodies react quickly enough for operating an automobile beyond the most basic level that clog the roads, it's the angry cyclist-haters who see us as some kind of parasites using the roads without paying taxes (even though the few people who cycle who also don't own cars in the States is an insignificant number who are either too poor to be paying taxes in the first place or also own cars and likely pay property taxes, which are a large source of road maintenance funds), wussies (even though it takes far more balls/ovaries to ride a defenseless bike in the street than 2 tons of cage and the exercise tends to mean we're probably in better physical condition than that driver and superior aerobic health becomes extremely important in any fight lasting longer than about 30 seconds), and scofflaws. When I'm on my road bike, cars get much closer to me and morons shout or even throw things (a pretty rare occasion, but it's happened). I make a point of obeying the rules of the road and I do not take the center of the lane except in the case of a narrow bridge or something where there would be little room to get by me and, when past, I immediately move back over (alternatively, I will take a sidewalk when available and unoccupied or dismount if occupied). I blame their behavior on the common and largely unwarranted anger of entitled people in this country (nobody's walking miles through rapist-infested woods to get crocodile bathwater filled with dysentery and malaria mosquito larvae just to have something to drink everyday) and the spandex warriors on road bikes that are the biggest offenders around here for holding up traffic by riding in the middle of the street and rarely stopping for lights/signs or yielding properly. I think when these angry people see the curly bars, they just see me as another spandexer and not a person. When I ride my USAAF bike with my boonie hat and the drab clothing that's my usual pallet, I get more space, courtesy, and the only shouts I'll get are either compliments or what sounds like dumb jokes about the goofy hat as they pass by (tough to understand due to the doppler effect and wind noise, so I'm going by tone). It could be that I'm taken for a veteran, but I get treated similarly riding my custom Spaceliner or the rocket bike (get more jokes with the latter). I think it's riding something unusual that marks me out more as an individual instead of "one of them". I make a point of obeying the rules of the road as much as possible (except when there's a safety issue or if taking a sidewalk would make drivers less nervous or angry at "being held up" . . . speaking of which, where the hell are all those impatient people when I'm driving?—the jerk-offs are always in my way, then!). Yes, of course, many of these drivers disobey the same rules they're angry at cyclists for breaking or are only having their sense of fairness triggered because they couldn't get away with breaking those same rules like a cyclist can, but the visibility is important. Most importantly, they can kill us with impunity. As long as they're not impaired and stick around until authorities arrive (or even if they hide for a few days and claim they didn't see us or were scared and panicked, the consequences are usually minimal), drivers are seldom even given a traffic ticket and they're only otherwise out their deductible for fixing their vehicle while the cyclist could be dead or facing years of physical pain. I've read about people running over kids on sidewalks in NYC—a supposedly bike-friendly place—and not even being cited by NYPD because the driver was "avoiding a squirrel" or some phantom cyclist that makes for a convenient and absent culprit. The predatory tax collectors ticket people for all kinds of essentially harmless BS, but kill a kid and their grandparent on the sidewalk?! Eh, that's OK, those damn cyclists are always busting out of side streets and parked cars, am I right? I had PTSD for a long damn time, so I understand anger and the feeling of being in a defenseless position will probably never sit naturally with me, but sometimes you have to be the bigger person and wave an apology you don't owe while smiling courteously . . . while thinking of castrating the bastard on his front lawn in front his weeping family. Or something.