Biking To Church, Only 1 NDE

NDE=Near Death Experience. Easy to come by when you ride your bike in the suburbs. I can not believe how careless drivers are with their cars. I rode my bike last night about 9 miles from my home to church. And had to be so alert it was unbelievable!

Okay, here's my NDE. I'm riding on the sidewalk down John R. towards Square Lake Rd. As I'm approaching an intersection, a street, at a fairly good pace, a woman drives up and across the crosswalk. She never even looks to her right, only her left. She's on her cell phone. I slam on my brakes and my bike skids out and I come within an inch of her car. I really wanted to hit her car, but since my bike would have been damaged, and because it wouldn't be the right thing to do, I didn't.

I yelled something like, 'hey, lady, watch out!' She still doesn't look at me--too busy with her cell phone conversation, probably--and I yelled something else like, 'you almost hit me! get off your cell phone!' She never acknowledged me, I'm not sure she ever saw me...scary.

Since I'm on a rant, I may as well finish with how to walk/jog/bike on a sidewalk--just some common sense things. So if you ever walk/jog/bike on a sidewalk, keep these things in mind. And if there's something I'm overlooking, please share your comments, I want to be a polite pedestrian/runner/biker.

Keep to your right. Don't have your ipod on so loud you can't hear someone yell at you. When you hear 'on your left' that means someone is behind you and going faster than you and is planning on passing you on your left--don't move to your left, just stay where you are. If there are three of you walking and you see a biker coming from the opposite direction, one of you should move. Really, just one. If your house has bushes that block the sidewalk, please trim them. When someone passes you and says, "thank you," it's ok, and even polite, to say "you're welcome."

To those few of you, and I do mean few, who let me pass in front of their car, waved me through, and the one guy who said, "you're welcome," THANK YOU for making my ride safer!