COMMENT:
It's the ones I can't see that I worry about. It's an ugly feeling knowing that had I been a half a metre further to the right, or made the turn I was signalling a couple of seconds sooner, that I'd have been cleaned up, probably killed, by the recklessly speeding driver behind me. The shock sets in an hour, maybe even a day, later.
I suspect the poor man on a bike who was killed, allegedly by a drink driver, on Queen St on Saturday night never saw it coming. Maybe he heard something before the impact. That's often the best you can do, and I think people who ride in traffic with earbuds in are fools. Your ears are your eyes in the back of your head, you know.
The two or three times riding that I've felt my family was close to not having a dad were all like that: what might have been a stolen car suddenly swerving across into my lane, two commercial vehicles racing each other and crossing the centre line to go around me as I was turning, a similar situation when a car crossed double yellow lines. All in daylight, all on local roads where the speed limit was, in theory 50km/h.
Not all cycle accidents are the result of that kind of driver recklessness. Sometimes we – drivers and riders – just make mistakes. Ironically, one of the things I like about riding a bike is that when you're trying to not to screw up and to anticipate the other guy making a mistake (honestly, I probably knew you were going to make that bad turn before you did), you have to be fully present. There's no room in your head for that silly thing that's been bugging you when you're concentrating on not being dead.