I have a 30 mile commute. Because of the distance, I drive in on Monday with my bike in the car, and then I bike home. Tuesday I bike in, put the bike in the car, and drive home. Repeat for Wednesday and Thursday, and I get a 30 mile ride in each day.

Last night I was just 4 miles from home, on a four lane divided road, coasting and slowing as I approached a red light. The light turned green when I was about 30 meters away so I started pedaling, and was accelerating when I suddenly found the right front headlight of a Lexus pushing my left leg out from under me. Dude was going maybe 20 MPH or less and I was doing maybe 15, so the speed difference wasn't enough that the impact of the car was significant. What was significant was that damn 2000 LB piece of hardware just did not yield, in the slightest. I recall feeling the right front fender of the car sliding gently along the left side of my body as my feet came unclipped from my pedals and my bike kept going forward without me on it. I landed on my right buttocks and right forearm.

Nothing broken but I'm bruised pretty bad. I didn't even get a lot of road rash, I guess because I wasn't going that fast when I hit.

As I was laying there groaning on the pavement, the kid (in his 20's) driving the Lexus (and older model) was apologizing profusely. At first he tried the old "You swerved in front of me" defense, and I immediately shut that down "NO, I did NOT swerve, and even if I did, you didn't give me 3 feet of clearance as required by law". To which he just started apologizing. OK, at least he stopped and was apologetic, so the only lecture I gave him was "You know, there's an old Doors song that goes 'Keep your eyes on the road / your hands upon the wheel'. You weren't paying attention!"

Still laying on the pavement, I crawled over to my bike, dug out my cell phone, and called my wife. I tried to tell her not to panic but she did anyway. Then I called the police, who showed up while I was still talking to the dispatcher, who was trying to decide if I was still inside the city limits (I was). By the time my wife arrived I decided she could take me to the emergency room (big mistake - you get treated much faster if you arrive by ambulance).

At one point there was another driver who'd witnessed it and pulled over, an older guy who looked like your average uneducated trailer park resident, started to tell me, right in front of the cop "You shouldn't be riding out in the road like that!"

I pointed at the bumper sticker on the rear fender of my bike and angrily retorted "You see what that sticker says?! SAME ROAD, SAME RIGHTS, SAME RULES! I have a RIGHT to be in the road. You drivers simply need to PAY ATTENTION when you drive!"

Then the cop turned to the old guy and said "If all you're going to do is say things to aggravate this gentleman, then you need to just stand over there." And then he wrote a ticket for Careless Driving to the kid.