October 2007 was a brutal month for Portland cyclists.īut this time, I survived, and attended the memorial ride, dumbfounded by the sheer stupidity and total lack of awareness of the driver who had right-hooked me, but even more so by the you-can’t-make-this-stuff-up irony of what had almost transpired on my way to the memorial ride. And then 10 days after that fatality, another Portland cyclist was right-hooked (although, thankfully, she survived with serious but non-life-threatening injuries). Probable headline: “Bike lawyer killed riding his bike to memorial ride for fallen cyclist.” And in fact, 10 days later another Portland cyclist was killed, right-hooked again, this time by a garbage truck.
I had just left the Bicycle Law office, and was heading to the memorial ride for Tracy Sparling, who had just been killed the day before, right-hooked by a cement truck in downtown Portland. But what a news story it would have been. My emergency turn saved me, so I didn’t make the news that night. Instead of getting right-hooked-not today, careless driver-I made a hard right turn, carving a beautiful arc in sync with the car. I didn’t get hit, because I could almost see the car making the right turn before the driver actually turned right, so when the driver actually did turn right, I wasn’t taken completely by surprise. This is the part of the story where we often read that a cyclist was hit by a car or truck making a right turn. The car pulled slightly ahead of me-I was still riding next to the car, but it had pulled slightly ahead-and then the driver made a right turn at the street to our right, cutting me off and violating my right of way. I could almost see what was going to happen next. And to my left, a car began to pull even with me. I was riding in the bike lane, heading from the Bicycle Law office to downtown Portland up ahead, there was a T-intersection with a street to my right.
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