Bike Story

RE/

Quoted message said:

I had always heard stories of people having close calls. I never thought it would happen to me.

Think percentages.

It's probably not mathematically valid, but to me the "one-percenter" phenomonon converts into
inevitability once you've been exposed to enough passing cars.
--
PeteCresswell

In article said:

As the sound of the car is on me, I get the most incredible impact and stinging sensation on my
butt. My eyes must have bugged out of my head 3 inches, tears and all. For the next 5 seconds,
that seemed like forever, my mind says WOW, I haven't been spanked like that since I was a kid, if
ever. I'm thankful I'm still upright and not in the ditch. Anger erupts into my brain as I see
this Honda Civic pulling away from me with the outstretched arm and hand of the passenger lazily
dangling out window. I'm sure he wanted me to see what he slapped me with. The mind doesn't work
fast enough in that surprised state to get the license plate.

That [censored] is lucky if he didn't break his hand. I hope he did; that would teach him that cyclists
are often harder than they appear. Glad you're OK.

Greg
--
Gregory S. Sutter "How do I read this file?" "][email hidden] "You uudecode it."
zer0.org~gsutterOpen ↗ "I I I decode it?"

(Pete Cresswell) said:

Quoted message said:

I had always heard stories of people having close calls. I never thought it would happen to me.

Think percentages.

It's probably not mathematically valid, but to me the "one-percenter" phenomonon converts into
inevitability once you've been exposed to enough passing cars.

The issue there, AFAIK, is the lack of qualification of the term "one-percenter". One percent of
cars passing bikes? One percent of bicyclists? One percent of bicyclist-hours? One percent of
bicyclist-miles?

That's something that irks me about birth control statistics. Sometimes you'll find numbers that are
qualified with all the appropriate information, but usually it's missing info.

If we know that one out of 100 cyclists will have a close call each year, than it's reasonable to
believe that any cyclist who rides for 100 years has a strong chance of a close call.

Of course, many such statements may make more sense to statistics experts, who may know something
more about implicit qualifications or assumed standards..
--
Rick Onanian

I had a very similar thing happen to me several years ago in Orlando, FL. I was riding along a busy
street that had multiple lanes and plenty of room for me to ride along with the traffic. All of a
sudden, I get this "WHAM" on the middle of my back as some truck goes speeding by. The passenger
dediced he would have some fun and slugged me with his closed fist. I was suprised that I didn't go
down given how hard he hit me.

I too was so distracted by what happened to me, that I didn't get their license plate. But I did get
a nasty bruise on my back. I still can't believe that someone was so incensitive to do such a thing.
I felt fortunate that more damage wasn't done -- just imagine if I would have fallen and could have
easily been hit by are car on that busy road.

"Prometheus7" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

I share this to show you just how stupid some people can be. Don't underestimate what some people
will do for fun.

[snip]

I'll second that. A couple summers ago I was hit by a .5 liter bottle of water as I was nearing the
crest of a hill. The passenger in the car threw it (55 MPH zone!), hit my side, bounced into my
wrist and hit my cyclocomputer. I had a large bruise on the side, a smaller one on the wrist and a
small crack in the clear plastic speedo window.

I thought I was clipped by a mirror and didn't figure out what happened until I stopped. The
motorist disappeared over the hill in moments and I didn't get the plate number. I kept the unopened
bottle as a momento. While riding around the corner from there a few days later I found another
unopened bottle with the screw top bashed in. It was the same brand and from the same lot. My guess
is that I wasn't the only person they got.

Moral of the story: pay attention to license plates. I got a good description of the car, but that
wasn't good enough.

Jim

D. Keith Arbuckle said:

I had a very similar thing happen to me several years ago in Orlando, FL. I was riding along a busy
street that had multiple lanes and plenty of room for me to ride along with the traffic. All of a
sudden, I get this "WHAM" on the middle of my back as some truck goes speeding by. The passenger
dediced he would have some fun and slugged me with his closed fist. I was suprised that I didn't go
down given how hard he hit me.

I too was so distracted by what happened to me, that I didn't get their license plate. But I did
get a nasty bruise on my back. I still can't believe that someone was so incensitive to do such a
thing. I felt fortunate that more damage wasn't done -- just imagine if I would have fallen and
could have easily been hit by are car on that busy road.

"Prometheus7" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

I share this to show you just how stupid some people can be. Don't underestimate what some people
will do for fun.

[snip]

In article <[email hidden]>, Jim, N2VX

Quoted message said:

I'll second that. A couple summers ago I was hit by a .5 liter bottle of water as I was nearing the
crest of a hill. The passenger in the car threw it (55 MPH zone!), hit my side, bounced into my
wrist and hit my cyclocomputer. I had a large bruise on the side, a smaller one on the wrist and a
small crack in the clear plastic speedo window.

I thought I was clipped by a mirror and didn't figure out what happened until I stopped. The
motorist disappeared over the hill in moments and I didn't get the plate number. I kept the
unopened bottle as a momento. While riding around the corner from there a few days later I found
another unopened bottle with the screw top bashed in. It was the same brand and from the same lot.
My guess is that I wasn't the only person they got.

I got a half-full bottle of gatorade thrown in my rear wheel by a couple of teen agers a few months
ago, but it did not get into the spokes and basically bounced off. I actually caught up to them at
the next intersection which the driver saw and chose to lurch out into the intersection and run the
light rather than have a lycra [censored] knock his teeth out... I was just starting wondering whether
catching them was a wise thing since there were three kids plus a car but thankfully I didn't have a
chance to find out.

(Paul Southworth) said:

[censored] knock his teeth out... I was just starting wondering whether catching them was a wise thing
since there were three kids plus a car but thankfully I didn't have a chance to find out.

Remember: Metal cleats on bottom of shoes. Strong legs from cycling.
--
Rick "Okay, maybe not against 3 kids and a car..." Onanian

RE/

Quoted message said:

The issue there, AFAIK, is the lack of qualification of the term "one-percenter". One percent of
cars passing bikes? One percent of bicyclists? One percent of bicyclist-hours? One percent of
bicyclist-miles?

It was referring to the (widely-used?) slang term.

i.e. a certain percent of people are prone to engage in behavior that you and I would
consider wrong.

Call them psychopaths, anti-social personalities, or whatever.

Loosely described by a non professional: among other things, they don't have capacity for compassion
and their moral sense right and wrong is built around what suits them at the moment.

If throwing a half-full beer can at somebody they're passing at 50 mph seems like fun, they'll do it
with no compunction and no guilt afterwards. They're the ones who stand up in court and say from the
bottom of their hearts that they're sorry. And they really are sorry - sorry that they got caught
and they're going to jail. Not sorry about anything else though...

One can argue about the hard, numeric percentage - but I've *known* some of these people and the
concept is definately real. Somewhere I read a hard number for "anti-social personality", but I
forget what it was - except it was big enough to think about if you have a thousand cars a week
passing you on the road.
--
PeteCresswell

I had this one happen as well. I was with a couple friends of mine on an early morning ride that
goes by one of the local high schools. We would ride on this road well before the students had to be
at school to avoid the possible interactions with the teenagers driving to school. But there were
always a couple of kids that got to school extra early and one morning three boys in a car drove
past us and one of them launched a mostly full can of soda at us. It hit my front wheel, but didn't
cause me to fall.

We just happened to be really close to the school, so I pulled into the parking lot just behind
them. Since it was early, there were only a couple of cars in the lot so they were easy to find.
Fortunately, there was a police officer that was stationed in the parking lot and I explained to him
what happened and pointed the boys out to him. He asked if I wanted to press charges and I said no,
but I wanted him to call their parents down to the school and inform them what their sons had done.
He did what I requested and called me back to let me know that he had met with the parents. I still
wonder if I did the right thing in not pressing charges against them.

Cheers. -Keith

"Jim, N2VX" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

I'll second that. A couple summers ago I was hit by a .5 liter bottle of water as I was nearing
the crest of a hill. [snip]

you live in a good nab!! no tuba4?? maybe the yokel broke his arm.

(g.daniels) said:

you live in a good nab!! no tuba4?? maybe the yokel broke his arm.

Hibbity jibbity, a rat a tat tat.

g.daniels <[email hidden]> wrote:
: you live in a good nab!! no tuba4??

What this says is,

"you live in a good neighborhood because the prankster didn't use a big piece of lumber to whack
you with."

--------------------------------
Bob Masse' [email hidden]
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