One of the first things we learned when I started doing martial arts was to duck and roll when you see that you're falling. I used that again on my ride into work this morning, and I was glad I had the practice. My commute takes me across 2 busy suburban roads, and it seems that I always end up getting stuck waiting for the light to change at both of these crossings. This morning wasn't any different and like most days I'm going to continue forward while most of the traffic turns at this intersection. This means I usually have to wait for the turn arrows to finish before the light turns green for the cars continuing forwards, and this morning I waited the usual 3 seconds after the turn arrow changed back to red before proceeding forward. Except this morning the car behind me hadn't tripped the sensor and the light turned green for crosstraffic as I pedaled through the intersection. The last car hadn't seen me and started to go as I got too close, resulting in my doing an uncontrolled stoppie that ended up with me on the pavement. No real harm was done beyond some sore spots (I found out that another benefit to wearing a backpack is the padding when rolling like I did), and my days of waiting for the light to change instead of safely running the red light are over there.