Hi, my name is Tarah, and I ride my bike as my main source of transportation.

To and from school, down to the post office, for fun when I have time.

I like being warm, I like being safe. I'm sure you do as well right?

Well if you're not like me, you don't ride your bike, and you might drive say, a car. But you are probably like me in the fact that you like to stay warm, and safe.

Now okay, why am I bringing this up?

Often I have to bike three miles to get home in the dark, possibly misty, cold night. I have lights, I am vigilant, I pay attention to break lights and I stop at stop signs. I like to be safe, because I value my life.

Now in regards to you, possible car driver, you like to stay safe as well, I'm assuming. So therefore, you probably, abide by the speed limit and stop at stop signs and oh I dunno, yield at roundabouts when you need to.

Tonight on my bike ride home in the misty cold dark I almost got hit by an impatient driver.

I was going down a hill, which was also a roundabout, no cars were coming so I did not have to yield.

I bike really fast because I like it and I like to get home in a timely manner, and with the momentum of the hill I was going at least 20 miles per hour. Guess what happened?

Someone, in a car, thought that they could go fast enough to get ahead of me, or they didn't see me, gliding right in front of the "yield" portion and right in front of them. Did I mention I have lights?

I had to slam on my break and to avoid running into them, so I wiped out. I was in the middle of the road, right in front of a exit from some road and right in front of where cars going down the roundabout would be coming down any minute. Even though I wiped out, and rolled a little bit, I hurriedly got up to avoid really getting run over.

I'm surprised I didn't break my wrist while trying to stop myself from falling, or dislocate my shoulder as I slid on my stomach. Luckily all that I am as of right now is sore.

There are a few reasons I'm writing about this. First to bring awareness to the fact that people need to pay more attention to what they're doing. YIELD when it says so, and pay more attention to bikers for fucks sake. If I had been in a car they most likely would've yielded to me because I could do them harm. It makes me angry that bikers aren't taken as seriously.

Secondly, the car that did this, (or I should say person in the car, often I lump the person with the car, leaving them to be just a car in my eyes, woops), DID NOT EVEN STOP TO SEE IF I WAS OKAY. This has happened before to me in different circumstances and it really irritates me that someone could be so rude to not even stop to make sure someone is okay.

Gosh just be a nice person. It's not that hard.

If they didn't see me, that's another story. But they probably did.

I keep thinking about if things had been different in that instance. For example, if there was a car preceding directly behind me who knows if they would have stopped in time to avoid running me over, and if there had been a car directly behind the "impatient driver" as we'll call them, would they have even seen me either?

I am a lucky person in a lot of regards but in this situation I am lucky that I didn't get seriously injured, my bike is okay and I can still ride it, and that there weren't a lot of cars on the road tonight. I acknowledge that, and I will try to do what I can to be a safer biker, maybe more lights perhaps? Then I might be seen? I don't know, but I just hope that the drivers reading this will reflect on themselves and their driving, and do what they can too, to be a safer driver.

Thanks for reading, stay vigilant; and be a good person.