BobbyG

There have been a few times where I thought I was going to witness a bad accident that I would not be involved in. I hate that helpless feeling and the thought that something awful is going to happen. Fortunately, none ever occurred.

And one time I was able to prevent one. It was a hot summer day and I was driving, stopped at a light. An obviously disoriented woman (possibly the heat) began to cross traffic too late to finish before the light change. And in fact she was crossing from left to right just in front of my car as the light went to yellow. There was no car in the lane to my right, but I checked my mirror and a car was coming up to the intersection in that lane at a high rate of speed, obviously counting on the light changing to green before he reached it.

The woman was about to step past my car and into the path of the speeding car. Neither must have seen the other because of my car. The woman was a step or two away from disaster so I honked hard. It startled the woman momentarily and the car blew past her at a speed that would have been fatal.

Even though that happened in the car, I think I see more near misses and more bad driving while I'm biking. Maybe because being on a bike makes you more vulnerable that driving a car, so you are more aware of other vehicles in traffic, or maybe it's because like me, you're on a bike more than in a car (at least until a change in my employment at the end of 2020).