My Alibi

flagrant disregard...

On the afternoon of Sunday, August 11, 2008, I rode my bike to visit a friend. I began the five or six mile trip home in the late afternoon. I rode east on Westchester Blvd., from Chatham Road. I could have taken the bike trail, but having just hours before encountered a lot of broken glass on the bike trail, I thought it best for my bike tires to take a different route.

I continued east through the Seven Pines apartments and the adjacent apartment complexes. I turned north on Gaines Mill Road, then East onto Seven Pines Road/Shiloh Drive, and north on South Park Drive.

Shortly after making the turn onto North Street, I approached the stop sign at S. Park Drive and Junction Circle. For a point of reference, this is the intersection near the entrance to the bike trail right next to the Sonic Drive-In.
View Larger Map Also, it should be noted that North Avenue basically runs parallel with Wabash at this point. However, between North and Wabash to the west is a sort of staging area for the bike path, and to the east is a wide open median of sorts. The Wabash portion of the intersection has traffic lights and the North Avenue portion has stop signs. For further reference, the area between North and Wabash used to be the railroad tracks. People on North Avenue can only go east or west or north. Despite the limited choice of directions, this area makes for a very wide intersection, and potentially dangerous.

Okay, this is where it starts to get interesting. I stopped at the stop sign facing east. I'm at the crosswalk line. As there's no actual bike lane on this part of the road, I'm in the driving lane. I hear a car approaching behind me. I turned my head to the left, and see a white Nissan Maxima. Again, I am in the middle of the eastbound lane waiting for my turn at the stop sign.

The woman driving the Nissan pulled up to the stop sign so that part of her car was in the lefthand turn lane and the other part was in my lane.

I yelled "hey!" After she came to a complete stop, I said to her through her open passenger side window, "you are to close." She started yelling and I immediately began to leave the intersection.

As I began to pedal, she accelerated her vehicle and turned her wheels toward me and my bike. I was forced to veer off the road. Clearly, she was attempting to either hit me or run me off the road.

I jerked my handlebars to the left and in the process managed to catch the back of my right calf on my pedal (I still have a bruise). So, I again yelled at her. I got out my cell phone and called 911.

She went to the used car lot a half a block east (just past the previously mentioned wide median), and turned her vehicle around. She came back. I then gave the 911 Dispatcher her license plate number.

She yelled something I couldn't understand from the street. She drove her car into the bike trail parking lot and turned around again. She then pulled her car up next to me, got out of her car, and started screaming and yelling at me that I can't have my bike in the road. (There is a double wide sidewalk that bicycles can go on. However, you can't exit the road to the sidewalk until past the stop sign.)

The 911 dispatcher called me back. The woman got less than a foot from me. I then pulled out a can of pepper spray, and held it up to her at eye level. I told her if she got any closer I would consider it a hostile action and spray her. She kept yelling "call the police,". at one point she said "how you gonna yell at me wit my babies in the car?"

I'm quite sure she was attempting to engage me in a physical altercation. Fortunately, I am not that kind of person.

She finally relented and got back into her vehicle.

A man in a pickup truck pulled up and said he called 911 too. I felt somewhat relieved someone saw this. I waited 20 minutes for a law enforcement vehicle to arrive. They took my name, address, and phone number, and said they ran the plate and were going to attempt to make contact with the women driving the vehicle. I never heard from the police after that.

Monday, I went to the police station to follow-up. I spoke with an officer, and discovered no report had been made. I pressed the issue, feeling strongly that the women in the car had violated my rights of the road. The officer told me he would fill out a report. I am going to pick up a copy of it this afternoon.

To be continued....

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