softy wrote:.
If you want to convince me most jounalist are decent people you will need a bit more than a few posts. Blaming cyclists for the danger and abuse they experience on the road is their own fault due not rally and lobbying is just absurd. It is the fault of the motorists who are putting cyclist lives in danger! Like this lady in this article.
Hi Softy -
I'm sorry to hear you've have problems with journalists. I won't try to defend them as a profession, but generally, they're just people and there's good and bad ones, and my experience says there's more good than bad. Still, like any group, there's going to be a spread in terms of ethics.
It's not cyclists fault that motorists put their life in danger, but it is up to cyclists to do something about it. Expecting someone else to solve the problem doesn't work well in any sector of society that I know of.
That's all I'm saying - If you're taking anything else from my words, then either you're misunderstanding them or I put them poorly.
I know what it's like to be hit by a car while riding. The one that hit me was doing well over 100 before it glanced off another car and t-boned me while I was waiting to cross the road at a t-intersection. My bicycle was ripped apart, and the steel frame embedded into the car's motor block. My head bounced off their bonnet smashing my helmet ( a proper helmet, not like today's ) and the left pedal was pushed almost completely through my left leg, with enough force that my flesh peeled the metal pedal from the shaft, leaving just the bolt that connected it. I still have the dent in my bones from where it went through and left a gaping hole. The scar is faded, but my muscles remember where it is and I can find it with my eyes closed, even before I can feel the damaged bone.
I was thrown more than 10 meters from there, hitting a lamp post, a tree and a square brick letterbox on a 45 degree angle. It feels kind of like being dumped by a wave and smashing into the bottom over and over again, and your lungs stop working, and when things settle, you don't breath, because none of your muscles work, and you're never really sure if that breath will come. Then you remember seeing the car coming straight at you and knowing it was going to hit, and there being nothing you can do...
That's before you realize every nerve in your body is screaming at the same time and you can't even cry out for help, even though you can hear rescuers have arrived, because you're too far from the road and your bike is so badly mangled under the front of the car, that no one knows it's there for several minutes.... And finally, after you say your prayers and get ready to die, you get your breath back and scream out for help, just as someone says there's a bicycle mangled under the car.
That's when they found me under a tree, well away from the wreckage.
So yeah, I know all about the pain. I know about the damage it does to your life and the pathetic compensation you receive ( I got $300 for the bicycle and nothing for the pain, or what it did to my schooling ). I know about the scars that remain strongest are the memories of the car coming straight for you, and knowing there's not a damn thing you can do, even to prepare for the impact.
I didn't ride a bicycle for over 25 years after that, and I still get flashbacks when I'm somewhere vulnerable and I hear a car screech or an engine racing.
So you're wrong if you think I don't want to do anything about it or that I'm just blaming cyclists out of convenience. I'm saying that I don't want to become a victim again, and I'd really like to see a strong advocacy group take these problems and continuously parade them in front of the media until they realize there's a story there, and put pressure on the politicians to effect a change to the way they deal with bicycles.
Please don't take this as an attack on your comment. I'm just trying to put a perspective forward.
Because I've been a victim too.
David.