I had an accident . I ride a little over 5 miles on Milwaukee Ave. in Chicago to get back and forth from the loop to home (in west Logan Square). Today, traffic was stopped and I was coming down the side. Not very slowly but it didn't seem excessively fast either. A silver Mercedes in the stopped traffic decided to pull into the bike lane in front of me as he was going to try to squeeze down the side to make a right. I took out his mirror with my handle bars and left thigh and then went down. New back rim from Velomine (27" CR18) bent badly along with handle bars and rear rack. My Ortlieb Downtown Commuter got hit on the corner and it seems like the plastic inside may have broke. Thankfully, I'm okay but still unsure how to handle this in the future. Going slower is definitely one consideration as is keeping even more of an eagle eye on stopped cars.

As I was getting up, the people in the vehicle in front of the Mercedes said he was being impatient and passing people for a while. They kept on going before the police officer stopped (happened to be driving by). He wrote up an accident report and was extremely nice -- gave me a ride to two bike shops (first closed) and didn't automatically assume I was in the wrong. I had both back and front lights on in daylight and it didn't help this time.

Still annoyed by the whole experience but I'm not ready to give up commuting by bike. The past couple months have been a lot of fun and I'm loosing weight and getting stronger (long term recovery from back injury).