After I calmed a bit and stopped yelling at Geico (who also tried to tell me bike law, refuting what I was reading off of the Oregon DOT website, that a bike in motion is a vehicle and being in a crosswalk doesn't automatically make you a pedestrian because ped means WALK), I went to school yesterday and was almost hit twice on the way home by people turning their cars into me.

Which brings home what really irritates me about this incident.

We'll side with Kevin first. So he's got this residual pain after the accident, and he goes to the emergency room because he's got no insurance for a standard doctor and when you don't have insurance you go to emergency (which I had to clarify for Geico: he went to an emergency room for treatment, but it was NOT an emergency), and they say well there's some swelling, blah blah blah, we can give you a prescription to something, blah blah blah, but how are you going to pay for this? And he's got no money (unless he sells the bike and the cellphone), so he pins it on my insurance, but to make it really worth going after, he's going to have to throw in the damage to the bike, and he'll have to increase that damage, because a ding in the rim is going to be too small for Geico to pursue.

Now, since I was in the car and he was the vulnerable vehicle, and regardless of how he was or wasn't riding, I ran into him (although, in a funny touch, the fire department report states "bike into car") and I've got to take care of these problems. Whereas if he really was considered a vehicle, it would be his fault for riding the wrong way.

So, what irritates me, is that when I ride legit with helmets and lights and all and sundry, and some car hits me, rather than sorting out damage and fault in a reasonable way like car drivers, this kind of mentality comes up -- "she's a bike. shit. she's going to take me to the cleaners over this" -- and that's why we have hit and run. And we have a lot of that in Eugene because we have a lot of bikes and a lot of guys like my pal Kevin who think that bike law is this free-for-all that allows them to behave however they want on the road and then they get compensation when stuff like this happens -- and he'll probably get it too. That's the cherry on top. Geico started in on me with the assumption that it was my fault -- probably because I didn't report it, probably because there was nothing to fecking report! -- and will look at the 2 ton car versus the 5 lb bike (and 200 lb man), and make me pay up money I don't have to a guy that doesn't deserve it. And, regardless of detail, I think that's probably an insurance industry standard (correct me if I'm wrong, Mr. Bascomb). You can call it a vehicle, but when something happens it's suddenly the drooping violet in need of protection against the evil smog monster.

You know, I should have blown off going to Econ and taken his bike right to Center for Appropriate Transport and watched them take out the ding for free. But I didn't. I told him to call me with the cost of repair and he didn't. Now I have to fight against the stuff I've been fighting for, because the details are against the stuff I'm for, and it's turning me into the ugly driver fighting the vulnerable righteous cyclist and it's just wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

I leave you with a paragraph from my paper on vehicular homicide (my horn - tooted), incorporating the words of the great John Forester:

Considering their bicycle as a vehicle inspires confidence in the cyclist. John Forester states that “The vehicular-style cyclist not only acts outwardly like a driver, he knows inwardly that he is one. Instead of feeling like a trespasser on roads owned by cars he feels like just another driver with a slightly different vehicle … other drivers treat him largely as one of them” [18]. Among the top fear cyclists have of riding is the interaction they’ll have with motor vehicles and the implications of an accident. If a cyclist is confident that he has as much right to the road as a motor vehicle driver, this fear soon dissipates, and, with proper education about the rules of the road, in all but subtle differences in speed, a confident bicycle driver is equal to an automobile driver on the highway.

It's hard to have that confidence when regardless of the law you're still looked on by drivers as vulnerable and out for a lawsuit. Thanks, Kevin.