Saturday, April 25, 2009

PaulC gets hit. Dammit!

First, I am ok, nobody was hurt. Not me, not the other driver, not her 3 year old daughter, not her unborn child. NOBOBY was hurt.

SO, I was cruising through downtown Concord MA on the motorcycle on my home. If you don’t know, Concord STRONGLY enforces the pedestrian crosswalk law (as they should). So, when I saw the woman in the crosswalk, I stopped for her. I was at a complete stop with my feet on the ground.

THEN it started. I heard the squealing tires, the bustin’ glass and my bike shot out from under me, heading straight for the pedestrian! Luckily, the bike feel over on its side before it hit her, that would have been SO bad!

I fell off the back of the bike on my butt, and just sat there all pissed off for a second. :( Then the driver gets out of her car and stands about 10 feet in front of me making sounds, she MAY have been talking, but I think that she was just babbling. She was clearly pretty scared. So safetyPaulC made an appearance.

I stood up and said “Look, I’m fine, don’t cry, don’t worry, I’m fine. Don’t take this personally, but I am going to swear now.” Having given her what I considered to be fair warning, I swore. But really, given the situation, not very much.

She said (any number of times) that she was sorry. She had just said to her daughter that there was a motorcycle in front of her and that they would have to be extra careful. Fucking Karma. :) (actually that’s the fates) the funny thing is, that’s exactly the kind of thing you would say to your 3 year old as idle banter. <sigh>

WAIT! Your 3 year old!? I look in the car, and there is her daughter in the car seat, none the worse for wear. Mom goes to pick her up, she is still fine, then *I* say something and she cries. :( (the child, not the mom) Which is weird because kids usually love PaulC, must have been that I was super stressed and it showed.

SO, she says again how sorry she is, tears start to well up in her eyes. Great, I am making a pregnant woman cry. Nice. So I tell her again that I am fine and that if she has a problem with her pregnancy because of the stress of the accident that I will NOT be fine, so please calm down. That's right, its all about PaulC. :)

The cops show up, the firemen show up, the paramedics show up. The firemen leave, the paramedics leave, the police officer does the paperwork. The driver gets a written warning for “failure to observe the proper precautions while operating a vehicle” or something like that. Now before any of you shit house lawyers start getting uppity about it and say that he should have thrown the book at her, lets look at the facts.

The woman was with her daughter in the car, she was probably distracted and hit me. *I* am fine, EVERYONE is fine. SHE felt like SHIT. She felt so bad that it made ME feel bad. She was a very nice person and clearly she will punish herself much more than the $100 fine that the officer could have given her. AND her insurance premiums will probably go up.

Now, if she had been a doofus and not concerned at all, then I would say that she deserves the maximum that the officer can level at her. And in fact, the officer said as much.

Anywho, I am fine, and will be motorcycleless for a bit. I hope not too long…

3 comments:

  1. Poor Paul,
    NOT a good time to be bike-less.
    Sorry big guy.

    ReplyDelete
  2. First estimate on the bike repair is $4,200, but it will almost certainly be higher.

    ReplyDelete