Not counting the two or three times I was physically brushed back by passing cars (the standard negative three inch passing clearance), I was hit once as a pedestrian and once as a cyclist, both in the past three years. The ped incident happened when a motorist in Portland, OR ran a stop sign while turning right onto the street my son and I were walking on (residential street with no sidewalk). He would have hit both of us, but I pushed my son to my left and then couldn't quite clear his passenger-side mirror. I got my hand up to block it and it broke off easily. The driver was unhappy, but decided his safest course of action was to stop cursing at me, get back into his vehicle and leave; I was running out of patience and he was at least bright enough to realize what would happen if he escalated.

The motorist who hit me on my bike did the same maneuver as that physician was convicted for in SoCal last year: pass aggressively and skid to a stop in front of the bike. Lucky for me I was going less than half the speed of those guys, maybe 20 mph, so while I couldn't stop in time I could still land on my feet. It was somewhat of a pleasant surprise to find that I could still stick the landing after a full flip with a one and one-half twist while wearing sandles. My poor old Raleigh one speed needed a bit of head-tube rewelding, which a friend did for me.

After nearly 40 years of using a bike as my primary means of transportation, I am amazed at how dangerous it has become over the past decade or so. I am not sure if it is a geographic issue (most of the first 30 years were in NorCal, the past decade has been in OR), or if it is just our growing lack of civility and lawfulness in America in general. I hope things improve, or at least stop degenerating, before I lose what little athletic ability I have left; I really can't count the number of times I have had to take action to avoid being road pizza, but it is happening with greater frequency every year.