Originally Posted by
noglider
OK, I've thought further. When a close call happens, I try to evaluate the part I played in it and ask if I can do better.
I rarely listen to music on the bike, but at that moment, I was listening to music. Did it cause me to be less aware? It's hard to say for sure, but maybe, and that's enough of a warning to me.
A cycling friend suggested that making a signal of any kind to let a driver know I heard the honk can help, so I'll do that more often than I've been doing.
That’s a good takeaway from the situation. I had two close calls last week. One was completely unavoidable, as the driver passed me, made a sudden move into the bike lane, slammed on his brakes and was about to do a u-turn right into me. This all happened so fast all I could do was slam on
the brakes and yell at the guy, who was a couple feet from me when he finally saw me and stopped. The other was an unusual parking situation where cars park facing the wrong direction during the DC cherry blossoms. My takeaway is to avoid that area during this time, or use extreme caution around cars pulling out without looking.