Getting Hit by a Truck is Not Good Times

I didn’t want to write anything about this until the whole thing got resolved. Here’s what happened.

I live in San Francisco (in the inner Richmond district) and work in Alameda. I ride my bike every day. On the way home, I usually take the Wiggle out of habit. This route takes me from Market up to Fell street, where I jump into the Panhandle to GGP. It’s a nice ride.

On February 5, I was riding westbound on Fell Street after a long day at work. Fell is a supremely busy one-way street, especially at rush hour – it’s one of the main arteries to the west side of town, and cars always travel very fast. Luckily, it has a bike lane on the left-hand side, which I always use.

I had just started from the red light at Divisadero, and this stretch of Fell Street runs slightly uphill, so I was standing on the pedals to build up some speed. I was going about 15-18 miles per hour in the bike lane, when out of the corner of my eye, I saw a silver pickup truck come up on my right. It passed me and then slowed down dramatically – not a good sign – and before I knew it, the truck turned directly into my path, without signaling (or, presumably, looking). The last thing I remember is trying to swerve left out of his path.

I woke up on the ground, tangled up in my bike. People were crowding around and yelling. I opened my eyes – I think I was only unconscious for about 30 seconds – and tried to move my arms and legs to see if anything was broken. Everything seemed more or less intact, so I tried standing. My whole body hurt, but nothing terrible, so I figured I escaped the worst. Somebody called 911 and the police and fire department came to check me out and file a report. I had a pretty bad cut under my left eye, some road rash, and lots of aches and pains, but no broken bones. An ambulance came and I went to the hospital to get cleaned up.

I ended up having 4 stitches under my eye (literally, directly under my eye) where my glasses cut me. I have a little scar there now, but it’s not very noticeable.

My glasses were thrashed, with road rash on the lower left corner – apparently I hit the ground with my face.

Oh yeah, I also had some bleeding in my left eye. That healed, too. This picture was taken about a week after the accident, when it was mostly gone.

I had some cuts inside my mouth, my jaw was knocked around a bit, and two of my front teeth were loose, but that all healed up just fine. My top left incisor was chipped and now hangs lower than its neighbors. My helmet has a few scratches too.

My body ached for about a week and I had some pretty spectacular bruising going on. I had some pain in my shoulders for awhile – I couldn’t lift anything with my right arm – but after some physical therapy, that’s all better now.

My Colnago was destroyed – bent downtube and the top tube was cracked halfway through.

The driver was a really nice guy, and kept checking on me throughout this whole ordeal. He was at fault of course, and his insurance company covered everything, and then some. Wear your helmets, kids.

Advertisement