Full Moon Sunday Drivers: Licensed to Kill

Someone just tried to kill me.

Not intentionally. Just through really crap driving.
I was cruising along in the bike lane.
The B I K E L A N E.
If I'm not safe there then what's the point of a freaking bike lane?

I take back all those good things I said about the council's painting new bike paths all over the roads. We don't need bike lanes. What we need are non-crap drivers. Motorists who can actually drive properly and safely. We need driver education.

I was riding along the bike lane, when a white sedan suddenly pulled across me, heading for a parking space they'd spotted and must have been desperate for.

I scream, I swerve, at light-speed my mind plays the future scene for me: the impact of the white car with my bike; me flying off and hitting the road hard, or hitting their car; tangling up in bits of my bike; the injuries, mutilations, pains; the potential death. My mental vision is a horror movie, clear and shocking.

Then the reality filters through. The car slowing and halting last minute, me missing the car by a margin too horribly small to think about, my turning back in amazement at the driver with a "What the FUCK?!?!?" expression and seeing dimly through the windscreen, the driver waving to me apologetically and continuing to park the car. He has NO fucking idea how dangerous those last few seconds have been.

Adrenalin hits my muscles. I ride slowly, stunned, to the next set of red lights, and am thankful for a reason to stop. My legs are wobbly, I think my chest aches a bit, breathing is a bit odd, and another car pulls up slowly beside me. Are they checking to see I'm ok? I can't look up at them. I feel tired, my eyes prickle, and there's that pressure in my head that I get when I'm about to cry.

But there are no tears. I'm actually pretty okay, dammit.

I want to blubber, drop my bike in the road, sit on the kerb with my head between my knees, and show everyone how I'm feeling. Show that fucking retard who should not be allowed to have a licence, that this was not an "Oops that was a bit close," kind of moment but a "Holy fuck, I nearly killed someone," kind of moment. And why the fuck hasn't he gotten out of his car and come to talk to me?

Because I'm still on my bike. I'm not sobbing or screaming on the roadside. I'm tougher than that. Apparently.

The lights have changed green, I breathe deeply, think about moving versus not moving, then push off and slowly ride home, knowing my moment to go back and do anything has passed.

I am really, really pissed off, but can't do anything about it.

It happened so quickly that I'd just kept cycling.

In an alternative reality, I get off my bike when I see that impotent windscreen wave and walk back to the driver and yell at him "Do you realise you could have killed me just then? If I hadn't braked and swerved, if the timing had been just one second off, I'd be lying on the road right now because of what you did." A bystander calls the police and I have the driver booked on the spot. 3 points off his licence just like that. Better still, licence revoked.

A driver's licence should mean you understand what a bike lane is. And that the average car weighs over 2000 kgs, and that when that mass hits a soft body.... Well I don't want to think about it; though all drivers should.

But I didn't go back and confront him because, even in the shock of the moment, instinct knew it would have been pointless. Yelling at him would not have turned him into a non-crap driver. He would have just gotten angry and defensive and somehow turned it into my fault.

As a cyclist it is my job to be ready and expect the worst. Cars have pulled out in front of me in the past (like the one who'd cut me off just a few minutes before this nightmare - and I should have taken that as an omen) and they'll keep cutting me off for ever after into the future. Especially when there's a full moon.

So I'm not even safe in the bike lane.

I go home and find myself sweeping(!) the kitchen floor with a frustrated energy.

I sweep the floor, and sweep and bloody sweep the dust and fur and hair and crap into the dust pan and throw it off the balcony and wait for the wobbly adrenalin and the impotent rage to fade, while the small part of my brain that isn't spun out plans letters to everyone about driver education.