Originally Posted by raria

As I was flying over the hood of the car that hit me this Sunday I recall being grateful that the accident happened in my own neighborhood. At least if I was knocked unconscious my neighbors would call my partner, take me to hospital etc. I also figured they'd be able to ID the idiot who was too busy on his phone and rolled through a stop sign so his front bumper hit me square on.

I landed with a thud on my backside and tore up my shorts and right leg badly enough that there was a bit of blood but not too serious.

So imagine my surprise when the neighbors (who I knew but were not close friends with) looked out at me and then promptly went back to what they were doing. Only a ten year old came over and asked me if I was okay. The driver stayed in the car and is not from our neighborhood. Finally a group wandered over to me after a good five minutes and instead of sympathy I got the victim-blaming angle. Why do you cycling on the roads? Are you going to report this so we get speed bumps etc? When the driver finally emerged from his car, they asked him if he was okay. When I explained he rolled through a stop sign they said yes he did, but this was normal and expected and I should have been paying more attention.

By this time I was getting a little annoyed, so I said I would call the police (CAAD 12 was a write off), the neighbors then promptly took the drivers side and said they believed it was my fault. I explained patiently I was not facing a stop sign and the driver had rolled through a stop sign. I pointed to the mark on his front bumper and showed the lack of mark on his front side panel to prove my point.

Amazingly people's memory started to change and they now recalled the driver stopping and me hitting him rather than him hitting me.

I know that some of you will say my memories were impaired but If you have been in an accident (auto or bike) before you may have experience this slowing down of time and burning of the memories into your mind. They even know that the amygdala region of your brain lays down more memories when you believe you are in grave danger. So my recollection is right.

So here I was riding through a neighborhood at 15mph waving to neighbors whose kids go school with mine, whom I say hello to when doing pickups from school. Yet all of that got transcended.

So why do they hate us so much?