Somehow a car hit me while I was going full speed on my bike and I’m OK. In fact, I made our daily team scrum meeting. I’ve been riding my bike north on East Lake Sammamish the 7.5 miles to work 2-3 times a week for the last year. It seems like a fairly safe activity and I’m usually well prepared with reflective clothing, blinking lights, a helmet, gloves, and all the other gear you need to make it a daily endeavor. Gretchen worries about me, but I’ve never thought much of it… until now.
I was riding north on East Lake doing around 22mph. There are several streets that empty into what is busy, but scenic, commuter route. I’m always careful to make eye contact and generally get a visual hand wave from people pulling into traffic. Yesterday, however it was someone coming from behind that caused the accident.
I saw a red car out of the corner of my eye quickly cut in-front of me and attempt to turn right onto the cross street without a signal. They did this, without knowing that I was right next to them. I slammed on both brakes, but careened into their right front passenger door. I was lucky the force of the collision unclipped me from the pedals. I flew onto the hood of their car and I heard their tires skid from the brakes. When the car stopped my momentum flung me off of the hood and onto the pavement.
At this point you are dazed and don’t really know what condition you are in. I tried to stand up right away, but fell back to the ground and decided it was better to be slow and try to figure out how bad I was hurt. Two passersby came to my side and asked if I was OK. They asked if I could move my legs and I could. Then they offered to help me up off to the side of the road. I took the offer and they stood me up.
Another person collected my bike and I saw the two women in the car that hit me walk over to me. They asked if I was OK and I said yes. They asked if I could walk and I said yes. They asked if my bike was OK and I said I didn’t know. I really didn’t care yet. Then they walked over to their car and I heard them talking about the damage done to the door. They got into the car and I assumed they were getting a pen and paper or insurance information. They drove off.
None of the other people around got their license plate number and I’m not sure what makes you want to drive off in a situation like that. Thrilled I could walk and high on adrenaline I actually thought I could get on my bike and continue my commute. It turns out that the force of the impact had fractured the carbon crank shaft to the pedals on my bike and also snapped part of the frame. I wasn’t biking anywhere.
At this time Gretchen pulled up in our car with a bike rack. She hadn’t seen what happened and thought these other people may have been helping me with a flat tire. She asked if I needed a ride and I said yes. I think she worried a bit more when the fire truck came by and started asking me questions. If bonehead move #1 was not being more forceful about getting information from the driver sooner then bonehead move #2 was telling the firemen that I didn’t need the EMTs. I think I was still in shock on adrenaline.
The third mistake made was having Gretchen drive me away. When we later talked to the police we found out that by the time they got there (three people had called 911 with the report of “A car hit a biker and the biker is not moving on the ground”) we’d fled the scene ourselves.
My shock took me all the way to a shower at work and to our daily 10am scrum meeting. It was during that meeting that I think everything hit me and my knee started swelling up. Gret took me to the ER and I got a bunch of x-rays. Thankfully they were all negative and I was suffering from severe contusions in my hip and knee. The prescription was for triple strength Advil, ice, and rest for my leg.
I took my bike to the shop later to find out that after just getting past 1,000 miles on my bike in the last year. I found out I’d snapped two pieces of the carbon frame. The shop workers were amazed I was standing and said I should be thankful that the force required to snap the carbon like it did was not applied to me and had gone into my bike instead. I’d totaled a $2,000 bike and walked away.
The police said there wasn’t much we could do. This morning Gretchen and staked out the intersection for 40 minutes looking for the car to make a repeat trip so I could get their information. They didn’t. We’ll try again next week. But if you see an older, dark red, Nissan or Honda, with a huge dent in the right front passenger door riding around Redmond… get their plate #.
In the end I suppose it could have ended a whole lot worse. I’m back at work today and feel mostly OK aside from some road rash and a really sore hip/knee combination. The bike is just money. The scary part will come in attempting to bike again. I know I’m going to be very jittery and cautious, but my goal is to be able to do the Seattle to Portland ride this summer.
