yeah. when drivers see my brake, that's when they decide not to turn in to me when i have the right of way.

glad you got a helmet, and that you told your partner you love her.

every memorial ride, i find myself fervently hoping that there's never cause to have one for me - or anyone, ever again.

No drivers will still do stupid ****. Halving your stopping distance and greatly increasing the amount of control you have over the bike while slowing it down means that you are more able to respond to them doing stupid **** in a way that does not involve crashing or injury.

Are you really so daft you needed me to explain that too you?

i could ask you the same question. because sometimes, they'll still hit you.

it's nice, however, that from your position at your computer, you get to be the artibiter of what would have been different had so-and-so had a brake.

please, though - this conversation has been had enough. we've both made our points way too many times in the past, and we're not the only ones.

asserting, in this thread, that you think riding with a brake is very important - that has its own merit for readers.

so let's just nip this one in the bud and wish humancongereel well.

Indeed sometimes they do and I never said otherwise. The more capable you are of avoiding them the less frequently they will however. I'm not saying this specific case would have been different if he had a brake. There is however a fairly good chance it would have though, and hand wringing about ****ty drivers when you are to hard headed to take reasonable precautions to protect yourself is disgusting.

"Wah wah wah I walked around a ****ty neighborhood counting my wad of cash and I lost it and got pistol whipped..." Grow the **** up and take some responsibility for your own safety when you know other people aren't going to.


Apparently he is fine and if he isn't his childish *principles* seems to be completely to blame for him not receiving any compensation for any possible injury he may have suffered.

there are definitely ways to leverage what happens while minimizing the use of the police and whatnot. you can file an accident, which is nothing more than an official record of the event. you can use this to work some street justice - "hey, i'm okay, and i don't want to raise your insurance rates, so why don't you just cover repairs/replacements and we'll call it a deal." the accident report ensures that should they decide to try to screw you, you've got recourse.

it's sort of like voting - you work toward the best possible scenario with the tools given you, both w/i and w/o the paradigm.

wow, another addition to my blocked list

You know, it's even safer to just never leave the house. And, be sure not to spend too much time in the sun.

BTW, it takes a real ******* to turn an "I got hit" thread into a "get a brake, stupid" thread.

humancongereel, glad you're ok, and happy that this accident made you buy a helmet!

dutret, nice to see you're still singing[beating] the same song[dead horse]. cheers.

Everything has a cost ratio. The cost of a brake is pretty much nil. the cost of never leaving the house is pretty huge. Just because you shouldn't do everything possible to be safe does not mean you should do nothing.

Given HCRs history of posting wreck/incident threads here some of which were completely caused by his refusal to use a brake I see nothing wrong with pointing out once again that this **** wouldn't happen to him as much if he took that one small step to protect himself.

I don't know anything about Columbus laws, but try to file a police report if you can. You don't even have to call the cops, you can just go to the station and write it out.

In your situation, I'm stoked you got a helmet and I'm assuming you got purely clipped and there wasn't **** you could do. However, I'm bummed you didn't hit up the police about it...that's one area that I'm glad they're there for.

you got jeep brah'd

The last time anyone messed with me on the road was a jeep. It was 1:00am on our weekly midnightmass and they threw two coke cans at us. I got hit, by the spray.

It was kinda insulting that they threw coke and not beer.

But glad you're okay!

Although dutret can be immature with his purposely trying to start a brake debate (and that's definitely how it looks, as pretty much everyone knew what he would post here before he posted it), it's just as immature to put him on an ignore list. I'd understand if he were a common troll, or making personal attacks against you, but for every predictable brake post you will avoid by blocking him, you'll miss out on many more informative posts... even if he is an ******* about it.

you know i consider myself like dutret in certain ways.

for example, when i'm drunk, i am goddamn mother****ing brilliant. you have no idea. these beautifully academic sentences come spilling out of my mouth, grammatically complex, insightful, clever, witty, and thoughtprovoking - i think it's safe to say that i drop jewels like paraphernalia. however, in order to hear this, one has to get me drunk past the point of belligerence, when i tend to berate everything around me, including inanimante, non-anthropomorphic objects.

so, you know...

wait what was my point?

so should I make sure you get wasted before Grand Theft Velo? By the way, if you haven't seen the flier yet, it's amazing.

New to this forum, so I'm not aware of any user's history here, but there's truth to this statement.

As both a driver and a city bicycle rider, I can understand both sides.

The simple fact is this...when you ride a fixed with no brakes, you take chances. There are no guarantees when you go out and ride, no matter how experienced you are. I understand that everyday my bike is out.

The only reason I am more aware of bikes on the road when I'm driving my car, is because I ride myself.

the one that was handed out at BAR after april fools? it's ****in' brilliant. there was conversation over on the nyc fixed board about it - some girl found the photo of herself that was apparently the inspiration for one of the drawings on it.

i'm superpsyched for grand theft velo.

one of these days i'm gonna win a race in new haven.

maybe in may...

yeah, that's the one. Hmmm... now I feel an urge to go over to NYCFixed and meet this girl.

were you drunk when you wrote this?

stone cold sober.

I adore intellectual drunks. Some of my greatest nights have been with someone who is drunk out of their mind explaining things that I could never, ever begin to understand while drunk. Its great haha.

i can't see what dutret said, but i was there, and i'll swear on a stack of bibles that even if i did have a brake, i couldn't possibly have hit it in time. it really did happen that fast.

1) Glad your okay...
2) Glad you got a helmet
3) Just take it one day at a time
4) Im not drunk.....yet..

as far as the cops, maybe next time i'll succumb to situational ethics and call them. this time, though, no worries. i talked further with the driver today, and i think we're pretty much done. he was apologetic as hell and i gave him my "don't be sorry, be careful" speech...

funny thing is, he told me what the body shop told him about his car...sounds like he almost came out worse than i did, in a way. i didn't know a 165 pound cyclist could do that by bouncing off a jeep.

oh, yeah...helmet...giro havoc. looks okay, fits great, got it for 60 bucks, so decent price.

and thanks to everyone for...y'know...giving a ****.