Off the seat of a bicycle
Chapter 28          hit from behind by a drunk driver, I would be seen my entire life as a menace to society
Previous chapter

It was about this time I was becoming more confrontational off the seat of my bike. The more I rode, the more it became evident the world is inhabited by people and ideas that cause motorists to think their haste is tantamount to liberty.

If you don’t believe motorists are inhabited by irrational haste … then ask yourself why ‘school zones’ exist?

Then ask yourself how many little Jonnies were run over before school zones were enacted as law?

It’s like the red blinking lights on top of tall antenna; who would imagine an airplane would run into that, but sure enough planes do. So they passed laws to protect people from that type of head-long debacle.

The way it works is the government tallies up losses from school run-overs and airplane crashes and when the numbers grow large enough, laws are enacted to protect citizens … except when it comes to bicycles.

Well it’s obvious that dangers exist everywhere, but in the case of bicycles, not a single useful law has been enacted to change the car-bike relationship since I started riding in 1959.

Plenty of little bicycle-Jonnies have squeezed their heads through the grill of a Chrysler or been cheesecaked under the wheels of a speeding Mustang, but instead of inspiring legal changes, car-society promotes slogans like; ‘wear a helmet’ or ‘wear bright clothing,’ or ‘put a big red flag on your bike.’ Hell I say put a big red flag up your ass, because I’ve seen repeated acts of intentional endangerment and lawbreaking by cars yet no legal redress has ever been rallied.

It’s because your life is a commodity. How do you like that, you’re nothing more than a cost-benefit analysis that’s got you aimed directly at a plot in the cemetery. And society will happily shoot you in a hole from the slightest misstep on the roadway, with nary a yawn or ball-scratch from the public.

It was 1975 when I got hit from behind by a drunk driver.

It happened on a summer night. I was riding on the extreme right edge of the lane, and my bike had several ample reflectors, however no forward handlebar light. Ah ha! No light the car-drivers jubilantly exclaim like monkeys on a fence! As if a tiny rear light or even airport landing lights glaring in that man’s face would let him see through the alcoholic glaze … but this collision happened back before drunk driving was an ‘offense,’ … and I scoff with the word offense, as if today there is hue and cry to mandate lifetime breathalyzers on recipients of the rite-of-passage DWI.

We even elected a president with a DUI. Nobody gives a hoopty that Bush Jr weaved drunk on public thoroughfare like a giant red-assed baboon. It’s because motor vehicles pay to be on the road, and anybody who doesn’t pay deserves to be endangered. Airplanes pay, schoolchildren pay, but bicycles and pedestrians don’t pay, so voila! Run out the bulls.

I heard him coming. The drunk roared through the stop sign behind me and was charging through the gears. Just as he hit third gear, he hit my back tire and I must have gone over the top of his car, but I don’t know how. Perhaps I gave a jump at the last moment, but somehow I landed backwards on my hands and feet on the pavement completely untouched. The bicycle was crumpled off to the right side, and the driver raced up the road for another quarter mile before coming back looking for me in the ditch.

The only reason he came back was another car witnessed the whole thing … and that person drove on too, for another eighth mile before stopping. I guess neither driver was eager to come back and kick jokes around a head rolling along a curb that night.

I told my lawyer but never reported the ‘accident’ to the police. Hell no, why tell the police? LOL. I just told the drunk man through his open window, ‘you better stop your drinking and driving,’ and he said, ‘yes sir,’ and drove off slowly. If he had suckered me with belligerence I might have put my foot upside his head, but it didn’t happen that way.

Remember one thing, this incident happened when I was honoring the law and riding on the extreme right edge of the road. It happened before I learned to look behind me while riding forward. And it happened before I started demanding that cars follow the law and exit my lane while passing.
 
Nothing has changed since 1975; drunks still fill the roads and nobody tilts a cheek until their loved one is bloody-haired dangling across the hood of a car. And only when that image is seared into memory does anyone join MADD. But no ocean of anguish will make the situation more than a local infraction since everyone is deemed ‘whole again’ by established manufacturing law and civil precedent that pays a market-value for your inconvenience.

That’s what you are; a market-place commodity. The actuarial can dig it all up and come to a total, ding, and don’t forget the tax consequence and lawyer’s fee, ding, and if you invest it right, then your wife’s surviving daughter can afford college, ding, as long as a crew of motivated financial managers don’t gopher you slick with the latest wall-street shenanigan.

The main issue today is not that 17,000 people a year are killed by drunk drivers. That’s an entire suburb worth of people each year, year after year after year.
Nope, the main issue is terrorism that seeks to change our way of life. Terrorism is deemed the threat because they interfere with our oil and lord knows we can’t live without giant 2-ton vehicles to hurl our enormous American asses to McDonalds at a hundred miles an hour.

But the truth is simple: 17,000 people are killed by drunks, year after year, because there are more MFDD (mothers for drunk drivers) than there are MADD (mothers against drunk drivers). And that’s because it’s about money: alcohol and cars and developers mean big money, and nobody has the nuts to say otherwise.

That’s been my life’s fight. Fisted warts pocking my face or not, I am not a market-place commodity. I am me. I have a right to live as a free man, free from the threat and endangerment of others, but what an odd paradox that, from the loud explosions of my temper to the long-past commission of property crimes, I would be seen my entire life as a menace to society. I was the terrorist seeking to change our way of life.
Chapter 29) Sex: the primordial reason a cyclist would demand safety
Index of chapters