Lesson Learned

Note: I wrote most of this entry on Tuesday, immediately after I got home from work on the day the encounter happened. I wanted to give myself a few days to stew over things before I posted and frankly, I've been pretty busy with the holiday week. Expect a more fun/less wordy post soon.

Right now I'm just about as frustrated as a guy can be. See, I was riding to work this morning, as I do every morning, and I had my helmet cam all set up and recording when I had an interesting encounter.

Let me preface this by saying that I won't ever pretend to be the most "by the book" bike commuter. I don't have any pretenses about being a holier than thou, perfectly courteous rider. I'm sure there are times when I'm in a hurry to get to work, or home, where I pass a little closer to a car than that driver might be comfortable with. Yeah it might give them a bit of a start, but I would never do anything to purposely impede a car's travel. If I ever cut someone off, it's a complete accident, and that's something that I almost NEVER do. I always yield the right of way and do my absolute best to not get in the way. Sure I'll ride through red lights, but ONLY when I've stopped, or slowed down enough to make sure that it was clear and that I wasn't interfering with anyone. And most of all, if I'm behind a school bus on Bedford Ave, I stop while their red lights are on and give the kiddies ample time to get on or off without me impeding them. Which brings me to my encounter this morning.

I was on Bedford, heading north towards the Williamsburg Bridge and I was behind one of these school buses. Yes, I was north of where the bike lane "ends" but legally that doesn't mean anything about whether a person can or can't ride there. It just means there's no bike lane. This bus was in the left lane, in a row of cars that was slowing due to a few cars ahead making left turns. As I didn't want to ride in front of cars that were turning left on their left side, I shifted over to the right side of this row and proceeded to ride by them. As I was going by the bus, and through the intersection where the cars were turning, traffic started moving again. I surged forward ahead of the bus and cut back to the left side of the street, where the bike lane used to be. This is the best side of the road to ride since the missing bike lane still left about a bike lane width shoulder. Once I got back to the left side, the funny business started.

Traffic was moving a little faster than I, so the bus started to pass me. I had just shifted to the left in front of him, so I knew he knew I was there. My move had been a bit abrupt, but I made sure to leave plenty of room for him behind me when I shifted, so I didn't think much of it. As we rolled ahead, with the bus moving just slightly faster than me on my right, there were some cars parked on the left. As we went by them, the bus wasn't giving me much space. I was a little concerned, but made it through alright. Then traffic started slowing again. I tried to pull ahead of the bus, so I wouldn't get squeezed. That was when it became obvious that the bus driver wasn't the most courteous motorist. He sped up as I did and swerved to the left, cutting me off and nearly crushing me between his bus and the semi-truck to my left. I pounded on the side of his bus to let him know that I was there, I wasn't pleased, and he was about to maim me. As we went by the semi, I accelerated again to try to get away from him and he matched me and pulled ahead. At this point I noticed his window was open. I figured I'd be exchanging some words with him, but apparently he was sure of it. He pulled forward and stopped, boxing me from going by him with the front of his bus and a parked car. I rode directly to his window and the exchange went a little something like this:

me: "What the heck are you doing man? Are you trying to kill me?"
driver:"Yes, I am trying to kill you, you aren't supposed to be riding here."
me:"It's a road, It's legal for me to ride here. You cut me off, you squeezed me against that semi! I'm just trying to get to work!"
driver:"I'm trying to get somewhere too, you hit my bus! Didn't you hit my bus!?"
me:"Yeah I hit your bus, while you were trying to cut me off!"
driver:"don't hit my bus, you need to be on the sidewalk!"
me:"It's illegal to ride on the sidewalk!"
driver:Go to the road with the bike lane, get on the sidewalk, etc.

...And so on. At some point I mentioned that I had a camera on my helmet. He was a little taken aback, but immediately reverted to aggression by demanding to see the film. I assured him that he'd see it, and was so excited by the prospect of using this recorded encounter to get this guy off the road, and far away from looking after the safety of a couple dozen children.

So I finally got away from our homicidal child care specialist and excitedly finished my commute so I could check out the clip that would surely be on the evening news later, and definitely get this full on human bulldozer out from behind the wheel for a while. I pulled out the camera's remote handset, and noticed immediately.

The camera wasn't on.

My batteries had died about 5 minutes in to the ride and I had absolutely none of my harrowing encounter on tape! I couldn't have been more disappointed. Someone had literally tried to kill me, and admitted to it ON RECORD and I didn't have the footage. I learned a hard lesson about battery charging. And you can rest assured that I won't be missing any footage like this again.

Many of you know that the area where this encounter occurred, and Bedford Ave. in particular, has been a bit of a bone of contention for the local cycling community over the past few years. The local religious community that makes up most of the population of the area is not the biggest fan of cyclists passing through their "turf." As such they had the bike lane that happily fed conscientious cyclists up through Crown Heights, Bed-Stuy, South Williamsburg to the base of the Williamsburg bridge removed once it gets up in to their neighborhood. The idea was to divert cycle traffic away from their main thoroughfare to ease traffic flow. Really it was a bit of a slap in the face to one of the ideals that I think New York stands for, that diverse communities of people can live in such close proximity without many toes getting trod upon. Removing the bike lane was just a big nod to isolationism.

I know that there are a lot of complicated factors that go in to this issue, and that a big argument against me is that I'm just some naive, white, gentrifying windbag with no respect for cultural traditionalism or community. I'll admit that that's half true. I am white, I might be naive, and by default my presence in a community where my race/religion/heritage is not the predominant population makes me a gentrify-er. However; I like to think that I have some respect for the communities that I end up living in and around. So far, I've had really no problem being one of the young, white, goyim in Brooklyn. But when a member of a community who I thought was supposed to put some stock in the whole "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" thing tries to kill me for using a public road in his community, I lose a little bit of the respect that I had for that community, and that's pretty sad. That's the sort of behavior that leads to the cultural conflicts that can be so poisonous in such an ever changing city.

I'm going to try to not let it get to me though. I'll still ride up Bedford on my way to work every day; I'll still stop for buses and red lights; and even though he basically asked me to, if I see the bus driver running across the street between crosswalks or against the light, I won't run him down on purpose.