How often do you almost get hit by cars?

[IvonaDestroi]

Fellow urban commuters will likely feel my pain...

Today, once again, I barely missed being squished by a gargantuan truck with an oblivious driver.

I was riding up to the red light, as close to the curb as I could be with all the traffic in the road, and the cars had stopped just ahead of me. As I slowed near the edge of the intersection some oblivious driver in a big old tan truck with a cab on it started to pass me. The light turned green and he started going ahead while simultaniously veering right and pushing me into the curb. I had to stop the bike just inches before being completely squashed into the curb/sidewalk.

It was obvious the guy just wasn't paying attention, he didn't look behind or next to him as he moved vicariously over to the right. I knew how to react and I did the safest thing I could which was stop and hop halfway off my bike and get out of the way.

I don't blame him so much for it, you can't expect people to be on high alert ALL the time, esspecially at lights when they've already stopped. The side of his truck was just one giant blind spot as well. Although, during the potential squish I was close enough to see his face through the window. And he had just passed me but I didn't feel like he had seen me.

The other day I was testing out my roomates recent abandonment find, a peugot mixte and for some reason I just got a horrible feeling about staying on the road and ended up riding the sidewalk for quite a bit. (This is another extrememly busy ghetto street where people don't pay much attention to the road).

Ever since I hit this railroad track a few months ago and flew over my handlebars landing on my face I've been extremely paranoid about my skinny tires getting stuck in potholes and things, even though it's pretty unreasonable because my bike almost always handles that kind of stuff pretty well. It was an unusually diagnolly angled track with a big hole in front of it.

Am I just being paranoid? I swear lately when I ride I always feel like I'm about to get hit by a car or get in some kind of accident. Are they premonitions? Or just paranoia after the accident (it ended in lots of blood, stitches, a black eye and not being able to close my jaw for a week).

Along the lines of premonitions, I also recently got a ticket for "not stopping" for a pedestrian. Actually I was the only person in my group who stopped for him, everyone else I was with had passed him and since I was last in line because of it the cop got to me first. I'm wondering if all these things are some type of warning...

How often do you urban commuters experience these near-accident types of things with cars and obsticles? I don't know if my routes are just unusually dangerous (these near misses with cars have happened to me quite a few times) or if I'm somehow being a bad rider...

I commute through Oakland/Berkeley/San Francisco and all 3 areas seem kind of high risk, especially Oakland and SF... Here's a link to a picture of my local area streets/routes to give you an idea...

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_lO6vIF0-s5...IMG_2766_a.jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_OPA9LAdgtY...0/IMG_4302.jpg