I got knocked off my bike by a car one
evening. It wasn’t late, I hadn’t been drinking.
At a corner, I signalled left, and turned
when the light was on green. A car hit right into the back of me, sending me flying
into the air. I landed smack bang on my bum on the hard concrete.
After that it was a bit of a blur, I was in
shock. Someone came and helped me off the road; someone else put my bike on the
pavement. Someone called for an ambulance. The police came and talked to the driver.
The ambulance “Feuerwehr” men were really
nice and comforting, and reassured me on the way to the hospital. But at the
hospital in A&E, it was a drunken man to the left, and an over-friendly
Turkish guy to my right. We were all in for a bit of a wait.
Eventually I was seen, x-rayed and given
painkillers. Meanwhile, the police came to talk to me. I explained what had
happened and they asked me to draw it on a scribble. Where I was, the position
of the car. The lights. Did I signal? Had I looked behind? Was it raining?
I answered, and eventually they said that actually
I was at fault, because in turning, I
had taken the car’s right of way. Even though he had come into my back, which at least in the UK is
their wrong.
So, never mind that I was the one in
hospital, that I’d been hurt, it was my fault that he didn’t see me. Luckily
for me there had been no damage to the car because that would have been my
fault too!
3 months later, when the incident had
become just a funny anecdote of , “because it’s Germany”, I arrived home to find
a letter from the police. After deciphering the German – it seemed that for the
pleasure of being hit by a car and knocked off my bike, I had to pay 35€.
There wasn’t really anything that needed to
be paid for, except police time, which I believe I have paid more than enough
tax for already. But apparently, so the letter said, I should think myself
lucky because they had charged me a bit less, as I had been hurt by the
accident. If the car been damaged, I would have had to pay for that too.
Well, that’s brilliant, mate. Thanks a lot.
I was biking while noticeably pregnant on kottbusser brüke (there is a bike lane on the street there but it is scary). I was going slowly and yielding to pedestrians. Meanwhile a man with a kid on his bike went past really fast, aggressively ringing at pedestrians. There were police on the bridge and which biker do you think they stopped? Me, of course. When I asked why they'd stopped me and not the speeding guy, they said, because he has a kid and is allowed to bike on the sidewalk. I pointed to my belly and said "kind." As the policewoman started to lecture me, I got back on my bike and biked slowly away.
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