Yesterday I was riding my bike and passed a courier that had been rolled hard by a minivan. He foolishly didn’t have his lid on and his face was messed up pretty bad. From what I could see it looked like he was in the left lane and the minivan changed lanes without looking and BLAM courier soup. He was sitting up, and talking to the paramedics, but his bike was a mess, and it was clear he was going to be feeling it for a long time.

The strange thing was that because of the ensuing traffic snarl the only people moving were the people on bikes. There was like six of us, we all shot through the traffic like it was invisible and had the road to ourselves. We chatted about how much it sucked that the courier had been hit, about the general lack of care shown to bikers by cars, and how much we loved riding. The conversation moved to the topic of getting hit by cars, and almost every one of us had been struck by a car within the last three months. The guy to my left (another courier) had been hit just that morning. He said “I have been limping around all day” I guess when your job is to ride, if you don’t ride you don’t eat.

It was great to have the road to ourselves for once, and the girl on the city bike smiled as if to say “hey isn’t this cool we own the road”, but it got me to thinking if all of us have had so many run ins with cars that result in us getting struck, obviously something is wrong with the way the city is set up. The space seems to be putting cars and bikes into a fight for space. Boston is starting to try. The mayor has also hired a bike czar, and has made pledges to add more bike paths, more bike racks, etc.

It really can’t come too soon as it seems from my very unscientific poll of a couple of avid cyclists that it is not a matter of if, but when you will be hit by a car. The longer your exposure time is to the street, the higher your chances of being hit are. Until the city gets it’s act together and improves the infrastructure, I would ask all the cars, trucks, vans and pedestrians (especially the ones that like to run out between cars, you know who you are) to check for bicyclists, we are all over.