What's Wrong with America and How to Fix it:
Drivers who treat bicyclists as potential roadkill
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To those that are interested in why I am so upset at these humans, here is a brief account of what happened when I got my arm broke:
I was riding my bicycle back home and had an accident over in Normal Illinois. As I fell to the road in front of the car, I could hear the brakes of the car screaming in my ear as one of the front two wheels stopped a few inches from my face. At the time, I was thankful that the person was kind enough not to turn me into a speed bump, but I found out a few minutes later that kindness didn't seem to be what made her stop the car, it was more likely the possibility of spending time behind bars for killing me or for paying for my medical bills.
I slowly picked myself up off the road, feeling a little odd but not knowing the cause. I thought at first it was merely the shock of hitting the road so hard but of course it wasn't . . .
My left arm wasn't working and for some reason was hanging loose at my side and I couldn't raise it. I picked up my bicycle with my right arm and carried it to the side of the street and sat down with my back to the telephone pole. I thought that if I rested for a few minutes, I'd feel better.
I soon became aware that all of the cars along the right side of the road where I had fallen were still not going anywhere even though I was no longer in their way. One guy came up to me and told me he had called an ambulance for me. While he said this, a few other people gathered around staring at me. I told him I probably wouldn't need one and I just needed a few minutes to catch my breath. He told me I had a broken arm. I asked him how he could tell and he told me to look at my left arm. I did. A big white bone was sticking out of it in plain sight.
A cop eventually showed up and asked me if the woman had hit me with her car, causing the accident. She had merely stood there this entire time staring at me and not saying a word. She was probably upset because my bicycle put a scratch in her car when it hit me. I was a nice guy and told the cop, "No, she didn't hit me." Besides, everybody knows the cops won't do anything about drivers who try to kill bicyclists or pedestrians. I think a lot of runners have this same problem.
Anyway . . .
Then the driver speaks her first words in my presence. She turns to the cop, smiles and says, "Oh good, my insurance won't go up then!"
I'm sitting on the ground with a propped-up broken arm with a blood-covered bone sticking out of it and her only concern is how much she's going to have to pay for insurance. :-( And humans wonder why I think the way I do about them . . .
On Odin's day, March 26th, 1997 at 8:15 p.m. I got to meet yet another jerk.
This one was driving a silver car pulling out of the 'First Christian Church Disciples of Christ' (or First Christian Church if you go by the sign on that parking lot and the one on the opposing corner to it. You know, the property that was willed to the city as long as they use it as a park for the children to play in. That's what you get for trusting the government! I guess the city figured that it would be better to have a parking lot there (click here to see a picture of it) and the children can instead spend their time spraying graffiti on people's houses, traffic signs, walls of businesses, et cetera, maybe start smoking, hanging around with older children and young adults and being encouraged (or forced sometimes) to do drugs, increase their vocabulary of street slang, phrasing of swear words into sentences that'll offend (hurt) the ones that they're yelling them at the most and possibly even getting pressured into joining a gang, then convinced to participate in crimes such as delivering drugs because the law is harder on young adults than children, et cetera. But, I'm sure that the city of Bloomington is proud or their decision to turn their backs on the needs of the community and the children that're trying to grow up in it free of the fear of coming to a violent death, dying of a drug overdose or being arrested and put in a juvenile detention center, maybe taken away from their parents and put in a foster home. I wonder if 'noblesse oblige' means anything at all to them? Probably not, considering their actions) parking lot.
It pulled out of the parking lot on Lee street directly in front of me and turned South. The car would have hit me had I not instantly clamped on the brakes when I saw it pull out onto the street directly in front of me! Silly me, I thought that I had the right-of-way over a car pulling onto a street from a parking lot.
Now, I know that this person saw me! Those who know me know for a fact that I am not that easy to overlook, being over 6 feet tall! Especially on a big mountain bike moving at around 20 mph! The thing that really gets my tail in a knot is the fact that this was supposed to be one of those christians who are supposedly brought up to live by their 'Golden Rule'. You know, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"?
If this is an example of how christians behave, I'm switching over to Paganism!!!
So that's what kind of people go to that church eh? That says a lot about them! Now, if anyone asks me about that church and the people that go there, I can tell them!
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Pictures pages:
CyberWoLfman's Pix #3. Pictures taken in the ActiveWorlds 3D chat program.
CyberWoLfman's Pix #4. Back to the real world. Includes Halloween pictures, party pictures, more pictures of Bloomington-Normal Illinois including events, people, theaters, et cetera.
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