bad drivers are fun
 

I just got back from a little chicago-suburb's bike action and a funny thing happened. I was biking on the gigantic sholdur of a two-lane pseudo-highway when a blue sunfire pulled out right in front of me. I slammed on my brake and did a skid to slow down. The sunfire peeled out and lost traction and was headed right off the side of the road when the driver tried to correct and get back on the highway. Mistake number 2. Instead of making it back on the road correctly she just spun out and hit a tree.

I slowly rode up because the driver was trying to dislodge her car by going forwards and backwards to no avail. I got up to her window to make sure she was okay and at first she just started screaming at me for "causing" her to crash! and threatened to sue me! Other drivers stopped to help and I called 911 (oddly for naperville I was the only one with a cellphone). The other driver's backed me up and told the officers that she almost killed me and two other drivers. I still got chided for being a biker in the 'burbs, she got a ticket. Cool thing was the car behind me thought my skid stop was "amazing". nice.

safe biking everyone
jeff

You're alot nicer than I would have been. I wouldn't stop except to maybe tell her she is an idiot and she got what she deserved. I sure wouldn't have called 911 for her benefit.

I guess someone has to be the nice guy in this world, but it ain't me.

it was just so comical. in a way I thought being nice was sticking it to her more than getting mad...or even.

jeff

i remember this one time i was out riding with my girlfriend down some side-streets in allston, MA ("suburb" of boston). anyway...this guy in some dumb truck was driving realllly slow behind us, and like, being obnoxious about it by gunning his engine ryhthmically so we'd get out of his way...thing is, we were riding single file and he totally had enough room to go around us. so we're pulling up to an intersection where the cross traffic doesn't have a stop sign, and he decides right then and there that he's gonna just GUN IT around us. he runs the stop sign and plows into the woman's car that was already in the intersection.

it was truly a thing of beauty. all the neighborhood people came outside and we just shocked by it (no one got hurt, of course), but me and the girlf just stood there at the stop sign trying hard not to laugh at this poor shmuck...then someone drove by and looked at us and pointed at the accident and gave us the "WTF is wrong with some people!?" look and laughed and smiled at us. it was great. i thought he was gonna come after us and yell, but he didn't. probably because he felt like such an ass for running the stop sign. :) stupid drivers are funny when they don't hurt you or anyone else.

Can you say "schadenfreude," boys and girls? I knew you could. :)

Yeah, I once saw a nice (stupid) accident by my house like this. A guy gets cut off and nearly flattened by a turning car -- mind you, the cyclist was in the bike lane, the driver just didn't bother to check-- and the driver stops to yell at the cyclist. Things get heated, and the driver takes a swing at the bike dude. Bike dude throws his whole Trek onto the hood of the parked car, undoubtedly scratching the **** out of Mr. Aggro's paint job. The cyclist then defends himself by swinging his u-lock madly as the driver chases him around the car and smashed-up bike, just as the cops roll up. I think they both got tickets...

My neighbor got hit on his $15 women's Schwinn 3-speed. Totaled the bike (no injuries), and the SUV driver cut a $300 check on the spot. That's some luck...

People can never admit to being a moron. I had some lady hit me and start to blame it on me!! She pulled out without looking, while talking on a cell phone. I left a skid mark to prove that i had very little time to react, and i still got blamed!! i was so pissed, that i forgot that my leg hurt like hell!

Don't know about the USA, but that's illegal in England. If you were part of an accident you have to stick around and wait for the cops to take a statement or arrest you or something. Of course if you just saw someone being a dumbass you're ok.

:) i can! "schadenfreude" great word...sort of.

I had a school bus creeping behind me today revving his engine rhytmically like that and the funny thing was I was going 25 in a 25. It was a friggin SCHOOLBUS that wanted to go speeding around the residential streets that I was on! I also had one car creeping to the up behind on the left on the wrong side one car creeping directly behind and then another coming towards the whole mess I just looked around and determined it best for me to take the WHOLE STREET and point my turn coming up and get the hell outta there. People got stupider over the winter

i've been part of incidents before and the cops show up and don't even bother to ask questions, even though i'd witnessed the whole thing...

in my dumbass crash situation, me and the girlfriend stood there for about five minutes, neither driver made any attempt to come over to talk to us, so we left...we hadn't done anything wrong...and we were actually riding single file and had left enough room for the guy to get around us...as he actually did go around us before speeding into the intersection...also, neither one of us felt like sticking around to watch the moron try to blame us for the crash.

i had that happen with the shuttle bus for my old college. the guy was seriously 3 feet behind me in a giant charter bus doing the same thing, and also using the bus's squealing brakes to let me know he was there...no possible way for him to avoid hitting me if i had to make a quick stop, and i had nowhere to go to get away from him. then he cut me off later on down the street..tried to wedge me between his bus and the curb. i knocked on the door and flipped him off as i rode by. i waited at the drop off point to confront him and he just let people off down the street so he wouldn't have to deal with me i think, because the drop off point was totally open. then i went and filed a report with my school's "public safety" office. they didn't believe me. and on top of not believing me, there was a real cop in there who started harassing me because i didn't have my "numbah" on my bag. then i told him i wasn't a "couriAH" and he got even more pissed but couldn't say anything about it. that was a super day. the streets were all wet and slushy too...

I WILL SEW YOU A NEW NUMBAH SOLJAH!!! THEN WE WILL PWN DA STREETZ!!!!1

oh, and i almost just got hit about 15.356 minutes ago because some anxious driver was trying to get a parking spot on the right side of the street and didn't see me. luckily, i kept my cool and just trial hopped onto the back of the car and then rolled down the hood. man, i sure do kick ass.

It sounds like he DIDN"T cause the wreck, it was the stupid lady driving the car. She did it all on her own. As long as you are not involved in the accident, you can go on your way.
Cops here mostly don't care about witnesses or actually what happened in most instances. They just take a report and thats the end of that. I have plenty of first hand experience with cops and accidents. Not from an involved state, but a work related state.

I just read the post again because I'm bored and I do those kind of things when I'm bored and enjoying a post-ride bevvie...Anyway it reminds me the time when I was in college and I was driving through a parking garage on an exam day and I got T-boned by this lady. She jumps out of her car and starts yelling and flailing and all other sorts of nonsense. As it turns out she was late for one of her exams and it was all my fault. I am such a bastard.

P.S. I had a great ride today. I've drank a beer or two and I'm listening to the Butthole Surfers...I REALLY feel like typing out some outrageous stories but I'm afraid that 1) The mods won't like it and 2) see 1

Yesterday, it was 'selfenfreude' that got me through the day. If you can't laugh at yourself...

Hmm, if I witness an accident, or at least a major one, or see one that just happened (no first responders yet), heh or am involved in one - I always stop. It seems like the right thing to do. I have sometimes a general disdain for people, but... it still seems like the right thing to do. Plus, I have First Aid/CPR certification as well, and if nothing else one can just be a comfort until professionals arrive. <shrug>

My dad{75} was going through a crosswalk down at the beach when a lady put him on her hood and his bike under her front tire.Her story was he ran into the side of her fender while she was just sitting,waiting for him to pass.Under her breath she says,these dam bikers,messing up our beach area.The police say it the same way,she went home,he got a ticket.I havent figured out how to hit the side of the car and your bike ends uo under the front tire?

While on the motorcyle, I happened upon a bike accident...a couple of roadies had collided and a woman had her inner thigh all sliced up from the chainring (think she endo'ed). Turned out to be only a flesh wound, but the hysteria at the scene would have been a lot to merely ride away from. All the blood, shock and bawling was pretty alarming. I went to the nearest house and got 'em an ambulance. At the time, it looked like something serious might have been severed or broken-- better safe than sorry.

I collected a funny stupid driver story about two weeks ago. My wife and I were riding up a street near my work one Saturday. We took a left against the red arrow (illegal, I know) by going around the car waiting at the intersection. We had just completed our turn when the idiot we passed at the light tried to make his left turn against the light too. Too bad he didn't look both ways because BANG! he got T-boned by a minivan. The speeds were low so it was more or less a fender-bender, but the wife and I had a good laugh and got the hell out of there. PDX po-po don't like bikers all that much so the risk of being blamed or at least hassled was high. Besides, it was his own dumb fault for not looking first. How do people drive around so unaware of their surroundings? Beats me.

My first ride on the fixie a few weeks ago almost ended like these stories...but I was able to get away from the weirdos.

I was less than 50 feet from my driveway, I took the lane, ok the whole street (it's a one way street) and had my arm up to signal a right turn as I heard a car coming from behind. I turned my head at the last second to see where the car was and the jackass was trying to pass me on the right! On the right of a one way single lane street! Being it was my first ride on the fixie I couldn't stop as well as normal so I hopped off the bike threw a look and hollered someting to the effect of "What the F@#$ are you thinking?"

Things ended up ok though, he drove away and I didn't get hit by a car, again.

PJ

Sloth, allston a "suburb" of Boston?? You're too kind ;) (I now commute to Brighton once a week from Waltham, I forgot how quickly things degenerate near the city)

well, i didn't know how to explain it any other way...i know it's not really a suburb...i'm not evern sure what it is really...just a neighborhood, i guess. i used to ride my bike to downtown boston every day down comm ave. you have no idea how much fun it is riding a brakless track bike in the mid-winter sludge with bad traffic and stupid peredstrians...