An e-bike rider in West Virginia who nearly got pancaked while stopped at a red light shared the harrowing footage on Reddit.
The nine-second video shows a huge SUV accelerating around the poster on wet pavement. You can hear the roar of the engine as the rider comes to a stop, and the driver enters a dedicated turn lane to blast dangerously through the intersection. The light for cross traffic is already green.
"I WILL speed up to pass at an illegally close distance in my SUV and I WILL run a red light right before a school zone," the poster wrote, channeling the Yukon driver.
They said they immediately called the police, who were not willing to investigate because an officer was not present and did not make a traffic stop.
"Maybe they just didn't see the person in front of them in the full body bright yellow with reflective strips rain gear," someone said sarcastically.
The poster responded, "I was in super stealth mode, to be fair."
This experience highlights the need for drivers to be aware of the damage they can do. The automobile could have obliterated another vehicle legally in the intersection, and a pedestrian or cyclist would have been lucky to escape with their life in a collision.
Infrastructure such as a bike lane with protective bollards would have also been helpful to the poster, who was recording because of the perils cyclists face on the road.
Even in supposedly bike-friendly cities, those on two wheels constantly run into problems, whether it's parked cars, drivers unwilling to yield, or a rogue ambulance. Yes, an Oregon cyclist was hit by one — and then asked to pay $1,862 for their ride to the hospital.
🗣️ Do you think motorcycles are too dangerous to drive?
🔘 Yes 👍
🔘 No way 👎
🔘 Depends on your driving experience 🚘
🔘 Depends where you drive it 🛣️
🗳️ Click your choice to see results and speak your mind
Bicyclists may seem like an inconvenience to drivers, but they help reduce traffic. It's also far cheaper to use a bike than a car, and it's a low-impact way to exercise.
Cycling doesn't produce any heat-trapping pollution, either, which is an essential consideration as the planet warms and causes health problems and increasingly frequent and severe extreme weather events.
"I've always hated how car culture focuses on getting to your destination as fast as possible," one commenter wrote. "As a result, people feel the need to perform dangerous things in these death machines because getting to where they're going a few seconds earlier is worth running someone over."
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