Ultimate Passive-Aggressive: I just didn't see you, you're dead now. Sucks to be you.

Mon 7.21 9m
Tues 7.22 14m
Wed 7.23 15m

Tuesday, an avid driver tried to kill me in an act of not-seeing-me, which is really passive-aggressive at its best: I didn't see the cyclist, the cyclist is dead now, there's no criminal penalty, and people will offer me (the avid driver) comfort for my trouble.

Classic scenario: I was just riding along (as they say), on a straight twp-lane road, in my lane because there's no shoulder and also no traffic. The driver was opposite direction and intended to turn left into a medical office complex (on my right). The driver never saw me, and just turned into me. This is, according to a lot of what I read, the most frequent category of car-on-cyclist fatality: it's a head-on where the driver fails to perceive the cyclist as existing, probably because they're busy, not expecting the cyclist, operating on memory as much as in the moment, and possibly distracted.

Fortunately, I perceived her and so I didn't die.

So I'm rocking a bright high-viz helmet, a bright orange-yellow jersey, and I'm a big guy; I'm a pretty visible object. When I take myself out of the trajectory and start waving at the driver, hello I'm here please don't kill me, the driver looks at me like, what are you doing there? crazy cyclists!.

To move into speculation, having watched her face, I think the driver was occupied scanning the parking lot at the doctor's office, trying to figure out where they could put the car when it was still in the road, even before starting the turn. That's where the driver was looking while they commenced the turn into me.

My take-away was, what else could I have done to prevent the scenario? And my answer was, my front blinking was in the o-f-f position. What, what, what was I thinking? Was I really focused on saving electricity? I think I'll use up a few more electrons from now on.

Three very nice days of commuting to work on the bike. If I end up inside, at least I can bike back and forth.