About to Ride In

The summer has started, and riding in to work starts being a pleasure. If it weren’t for the cars and minivans that cut in front of me, thinking they are fast and i am slow, and hence they can pass me without harm.

Odd it happens so frequently. A car will pass me right in front of an intersection and cut across in front of me. Sometimes it’s some rowdy youngster in a cheap 80’es Jap, showing off to his girlfriend. More often it is a mom on the phone, the kids shouting out loud in the back of the minivan. I wonder what those moms would do if I happened to be one of their kids, and them some other mom about to kill their children out of not-care.

Happened yesterday, as it happens frequently. I was crossing the intersection of North Ave, that after all leads to the hospital, when a big green minivan pulled up behind me, shot across the bike lane right in front of me, and turned right at high speed. I had to do a full stop not to hit it. Some other times it’s less dangerous, once last month I actually hit the SUV – same spot. People must really be lost in thought around a hospital.

I wonder if the policemen that stop bikers passing a red light realize that the gravest threat to us is not ourselves and our behavior, but other people and their carelessness. I discovered that it is much safer to be brazen and cut in front of cars, because then they at least will notice you, as mad as they can be at you. The most dangerous thing, as usual, is silence.