Thursday, December 31, 2009

Yikes

I saw my first bike accident last night.


It was a lot warmer on the way home- I was actually hot in all my gear from the morning.
I got passed on the Longfellow bridge by someone who I first thought was a woman wearing a skirt and opaque tights.  I was thinking that would have been super cold in the morning!


When I pulled up at the light, I realized that it was a guy wearing wool cycling knickers and wool kneesocks.  He was running a double Schmidt  E6 lighting system and we chatted about it briefly.


A couple of blocks later, I had just looked over my shoulder before moving further over into the lane.  When I looked back ahead,  the guy was hitting the pavement ahead of me.  By the time I caught up to him he was getting up.  I tried to shine my lights to help him pick up pieces of one of his E6s.   He thought he had hit a pothole and although he thought his tire had blown, it seemed to be OK.  A very nice driver (with a dual roof rack) stopped to ask if he was OK and if he needed a ride, which he declined.


This guy was doing everything right-  riding conservatively, stopping at lights, running a good lighting system.  It just shows that anyone could do it- and to me it's sure a good argument for wearing a helmet, which he was.  

3 comments:

  1. Yikes! Glad to hear he was okay.

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  2. yikes is right... i've witnessed several bike accidents around somerville and cambridge (including one in which i was involved). it's very unpredictable, and does indeed show that it can happen to anyone, regardless how defensive and careful you are!

    it was very kind of you to stop to offer help... and good to know that there are fellow cyclers out there looking after one another!

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  3. thanks for stopping, cycler, and apologies if I came off as a little terse in the aftermath. I was feeling a little foolish for missing that pothole. Glad to hear, though, that from the point of view of an outsider, I wasn't doing anything wrong. I kept on rewinding that scene in my head on the way home while nursing a sore knee and trying to figure what I would've done differently.

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