Commuting - Maintenance or else

Been riding my commuter/touring bike quite a bit lately. I have a trailer for it and will get grocerys or go do laundry on the bike. My little town isn't even 3 miles long so starting the truck up to go anywhere is kinda dumb. I had noticed that my brakes had loosened up a little bit, I put new pads on 2 months ago and have been towing the trailer quite a bit. So I bust out the tool kit and get everything ship shape. Time to go to work, I load my cooler and some empty bottles in the trailer for grocery shopping after work. I try to keep a reasonable amount of speed going on the ride to work, drivers seem to respect me more if I am doing 20 than if I do 10. I have my head light on even in the daylight and the trailer has a big yellow safety flag on it. I approach the one intersection between me and the job, all of the sudden a car pulls out of a driveway past the intersection cuts across 2 lanes of traffic into the left hand turn lane, no blinker, and I realize she isn't going to stop. I literally locked up both wheels with the trailer pushing me, screaming at the top of my lungs. The young lady in question never saw me, never looked up, and even though I came to a complete stop 2 feet from her rear quarter panel, screaming, she still has no idea that she almost caused my untimely demise. She was paying absolutely no attention to anything around her. My stomach is doing flip-flops as I write this, it is still that scary in my mind. I spent the evening replacing the rear tire on my tourer. I considered it too damaged from the incident to be safe.

Thank god I fixed the brakes, don't let a minor bit of maintenance go till tomorrow you never know when you will need your equipment to work perfectly. If I had left the brakes till "tomorrow" I would have t-boned that cavaliar.
Jim

I am posting this on a couple of boards.

All of a sudden? Hmmm you weren't paying attention either, now were you.

All of a sudden? Hmmm you weren't paying attention either, now were you.

Well that is the definition of caught off guard is when you're paying attention and all of a sudden a car just flies over at you.
Hmm... time for disc brakes heh.

I get the evil part, "genius".

Sorry to hear about your experience but I was honestly chuckling at your "screaming at the top of your lungs" part :D

1) Please don't double post (or multiple post) in bikeforums. It creates disruption and unnecessary repetition. Thanks. Koffee B, Forum Mod

2) Sounds like a terrible experience. Didn't you try to notify the woman so that she doesn't unthinkingly try to pull out of her driveway without looking first? Sounds like she got off too easy.

I'm glad to hear you're ok, though. What a scare!

Koffee

Ok, I won't double post again. It was a factory entrance that this lady pulled out of, totally blind I couldn't see her till she was there.

Why were you over riding your sight line? In other words, you could not see if someone was there, so why did you assume that no one was there.



Well that is the definition of caught off guard is when you're paying attention and all of a sudden a car just flies over at you.
Hmm... time for disc brakes heh.
I didn't mean she was right.
I meant if one is not on guard while riding then one is also at fault.
The definition of "caught off guard" is, not being on guard or not having your guard up. That is not paying attention.