Austin's story

Dear Student,

Once upon a time, it was another beautiful day at BYU-Idaho. It was May 5, 2009w aproximately 9:00 am. I was on my bike in the street in front of the Kimball building, whizzing down the street (I was always careful to ride at “walking speed”, but only on the sidewalk where people were), and since it was in the street, I assumed it wouldn’t matter. I was near the roundabout at the end of the street, the street that turns up by the girl’s dorms, when a white truck came rolling at a high speed towards me in the roundpoint. I think that it was a BYU-I vehicle, one of those the grounds- worker trucks transporting sod, but I am not entirely sure. I assumed he would break and slow down to avoid hitting me, but it seemed that he didn’t even see me, because the truck took the turn sharply, and came freakishly close to knocking me over. Rather than being hit, I bailed off my bike and landed on the palms of my hands. The street in that area is also really torn up because of the frequent use by construction vehicles, so I slipped off my bike and rolled out of the path of the truck. My bike was hit out of the way by the truck and he continued on his merry way. I don’t even think that he was aware that I was there. There was a lady over by the Kimball building who saw me and stood and stared as I stood up. I waved at her that I was ok, and I threw my bike in the grass near the girls dorms. By this point my hands were bleeding really bad, so rather than try to make it home and tend my wounds myself, I walked over to the student health center to get taken care of. They had me fil out some paperwork, cleaned my wounds, gave me a tetnaus shot, and bandaged me up. The end.

In retrospect, what I guess I have learned is that I do need to be concient of my speed even on a bike, and to use routes that are less trafficed. Now when I ride my bike I walk it a lot more, which kinda defeats the purpose of a bike, but oh well. I think that BYU-I is a very biker unfriendly campus. This is only accident I’ve had, but I’ve had several other near incidents where I barely avoided an accident. I was also listening to my iPod, so now, I don’t listen to both ear buds at the same time when biking, only one so I am more aware of what is going on around me. I also adjusted the brakes so now I can stop on a dime! They weren’t bad before, but they are much better now. It would be safer to wear a helmet, but it gives me bad helmet hair, so I don’t like that.

Sincerely,

Austin Palmer