Monday, August 04, 2008

Driver Safety Tip #1001


this story begins on Sat, Aug 2nd for purely anecdotal intents and purposes.
Harpo and I, for reasons mundane enough to omit, had to bus up to queen anne to bike up my bike. We were on the Route 3/4. If you look at the map, you'll see that from 3rd avenue the northbound 3/4 turn right onto Cedar Avenue. Typically, this is a fairly uneventful portion of the trip. Obviously, if this was the case on Saturday, I wouldn't bother to mention. However, luckily for everybody something out of the blue occurred. I did not see all of the events as they came to fruition, but Harpo saw some and I saw others. As we were en route down cedar a woman in her car decided not to notice her red light in time to miss the bus passing in front of her. She appeared to try and stop, because she slowed down substantially before hitting us. However, the regular sounds of brakes and tires locking and swerving were not to be heard. She hit the articulated bus dead in the center. The bus driver stopped, quite freaked out and shouted: "What just happened? My light was green right?" I turned around in time to see the light we had just driven through turn yellow and then red. It was interesting, because I didn't really have any idea that a car hit the bus for a minute or so, because the entire incident was rather quite and from inside the bus it just seemed like we maybe bumped a shopping cart.
I couldn't tell if the woman in her car got immediately onto her cell phone or if she had been on it the whole time, but the moral of the story is hang up and drive!