Utah drivers are jerks

They really are.  Yesterday while I was biking up to campus, a young woman (probably a college freshman) pulled out of a driveway to make a right turn and failed to look both ways before turning.  As a result, she struck my bike, bending my rim and forcing me to replace it.

I got her name  and phone number, spent about an hour (and $54) fixing the thing, and gave her a call.  She didn’t answer any of my calls that day, but she called up the next morning to tell me that she’d talked with a policeman, that I was at fault, and that therefore she wasn’t going to pay me anything.

Of course I was frustrated at all of this, seeing as 1) I was a PEDESTRIAN on the SIDEWALK, and therefore not at fault, and 2) she had failed to look both ways before turning into traffic.  What if I hadn’t braked?  What if she’d hit me full on?  I could have gotten seriously hurt due to her negligence!

So I told her “look, whether you pay me or not, will you promise me to look both ways before you enter traffic?” And her response–I kid you not–was “have you taken a defensive driving course?  If you had, you would know that drivers making a right turn aren’t required to look right before entering traffic.”

WTF.  Seriously?

Apart from the $54, which I figured she wasn’t going to pay for (jerk), this last comment profoundly bothered me.  I only came out of this with a damaged bike–what if the next guy isn’t so lucky?  So I sent her the following text:

As a driver, it is your responsibility to look both ways before turning.  I don’t want you to injure the next guy.

To which she replied with the following:

As a cyclist, it is your responsibility to be on the correct side of the road and to give the right-of-way to who it belongs to.  This mishap happened because of your own wrong doing- not mine. I’m choosing to look past the damage you’ve done to my car, which I could very easily require you to pay for (and it would cost much more than your rim that was “damaged” because you a)were on the wrong side of the road and b)failed to yield the right-of-way. That’s my way of being kind to a disrespectful person such as yourself (you hung up on me in mid-sentence). There is no reason to call or text message me anymore because the issue is over with. Any other text messages or calls I receive from will be considered harassment, and I will file charges against you.

A few things:

1. As a pedestrian, the right-of-way was mine–that was what the Provo police told me when I called them today;
2. While I shared some of the blame for riding on the wrong side of the road, she violated the law by failing to yield the right of way when crossing from private property onto a public street (again, taken from the officer I spoke with);
3. I seriously doubt her car received any more damage than a few scratches, whereas I have the bent rim to prove that the “damages” to my bike were very real;
4. I hung up on her mid-sentence because she kept pushing me to admit that I was at fault and that she was not in the wrong–instead of calling to apologize and work things out, she called to seek validation for shafting me.

What a jerk.  She’s lucky I’m not taking this to her insurance company and trying to resolve it with them.  While I’m sure that she fully deserves the rate hike and the stain on her record, I just don’t want to deal with the hassle.

The next time this happens, though (and I’m sure it will, because Utah drivers act as if pedestrians don’t exist), I’m going to call the police and resolve the issue with the law.  I no longer trust Utahans to be honest and forthright in settling issues like this civilly.  If you’re on the road and they can screw you, believe me, they will.