It had never happened to me before, but on October 5 1996 I got buzzed by a car. Normally cars leave sufficient space when passing, and the first one did that after the light turned green, but the second passed me at an extremely close distance, got in front of me, and braked with squealing tires. All for no apparent reason, no other car was in sight. I was riding at the speed limit (30 km/h, it was a small residential street), about one meter from parked cars.
A car can stop faster than a bicycle because it can safely skid all four wheels, and at a distance of about 30cm there was no chance of stopping in time. I locked the front wheel and flew over the trunk of the car, hitting the edge with both knees and the top rear window edge with my helmet. The driver got out, threatened to sue me, and got the police.
Rule 1: wear a helmet.
In this situation always call the police. It's free and you can't know the damage to you, the car, and your bicycle, and later claims are messy if there is no police report. You'll have to deal with insurances (mandatory for car drivers in Germany), and insurances are in the business of not paying if it can be avoided. Anyway, the police came, collected IDs and reports from everybody involved, including two witnesses (I was lucky here, they saw the car passing and heard the wheels squeal). While waiting for the police, I was asking the witnesses to stay; they were in a hurry but felt it was their responsibility to stay. The police later wrote a favourable report based on the witness reports.
Rule 2: always call the police. broken knee X-ray, 3.9k
Also, make sure that you get the reference code from the police, information about your opponent's insurance, and the names and addresses of your opponent and the witnesses.
After the formalities were completed, one of the policemen recommended that I go to a hospital immediately. I felt fine, except for pain in my knees and a mysterious inability to ride home. So I walked all the way to the hospital, where they told me that my kneecap was broken into three pieces and I'd have to stay. I guess I was under shock since the accident: everything seems ok but that is just because your brain is censoring all serious damage. After an accident you are not able to judge the severity of your injuries.
Rule 3: see a doctor.
In the hospital, the first thing I did was take a piece of paper and wrote down exactly what happened. I figured that the legal procedure may take months (it did) and I'd have forgotten all the details by then. The witnesses, in fact, were later unable to elaborate on their initial reports.
Rule 4: write down what happened.
Well, they cut the knee open, put some screws in, kept me for a few more days, gave me crutches and I was back to work. Bicycle riding was out for several months. They'll want to remove the screws after nine to twelve months; I'll have that done when the summer is over. Anyway, I requested and got a detailed report from the doctors about what was wrong and what they did to fix it. They also said that permanent damage cannot be ruled out, which I thought was important to have in the report.
See also "dealing with insurance"
