The Truck Incident

On December 23, 2002 I was almost killed. I was riding my bike home from work when a truck passed me. As it came up behind me, I didn’t realize what a large truck it was. As it was beside me, I realized it was WAY too close! I let my speed drop down a bit so it would be past me sooner, but not so much that it would be hard to balance. But seconds passed, and the truck kept passing and passing and passing. Just how long was this thing? Crikey, I realized then it was a semi that was passing me! And the idiot didn’t even bother to change lanes?! And then, it was so close the side of the truck actually touched my handlebar! I felt my hand vibrate! I just thought to myself “Don’t panic...don’t panic...remain calm...just keep pedaling...just keep upright...” And somehow I did.

After the truck was finally past me and I could see the back of it, I could see the large Kroger logo on the back. I surmised that the truck was probably about to turn into the Kroger parking lot just a few blocks ahead to make a delivery. I rushed to catch up. I had guessed correctly. While the delivery truck was backing into the loading docks at the back of the store, I locked up my bike and went in and told the store manager to call the police.

The dispatcher was trying to discourage me from having the police come out, I sensed, but I asked the store manager if he could make sure the truck driver was still there when the officers arrived, and he said yes. I told that to the dispatcher, and she seemed more agreeable. The manager went to go talk to the driver while I waited for the officers to arrive, and then the driver came to the front of the store and talked to me. What a disagreeable person. Maybe he thought he could intimidate me. Hardly. I was so angry, I ended up swearing at him.

He insisted he hadn’t bumped me because he hadn’t felt anything. What a stupid argument. Of course he hadn’t felt anything. He was driving a semi. I was riding a bike. I felt it. It was inches from my hand. I felt my hand vibrate. I told him he should have passed me with at least 3 feet of clearance (note: I now think this is enough clearance for cars to pass cyclists, but large trucks and buses should pass with at least 5 feet of clearance. But 3 feet is what I told him, and obviously it would have been better than zero inches), and if he couldn’t do that safely in the same lane, he should have changed lanes to pass me. He said he did pull partially into the other lane to pass me. That’s when I swore at him. Obviously if he passed so close that he touched my handlebar, he did not pull into the other lane. And then he implied that I should have been riding on the sidewalk. At that point I was so angry I couldn’t even speak. He then said that he wasn’t going to wait for the police to show up and returned to the back of the store.

I stood and waited. The manager offered me coffee, but I don’t drink coffee. I thought it was nice of him to offer though. I sipped my water and noticed my hands were shaking.

When the police arrived, I told them what happened and said I wanted to file a police report. One of the officers asked me some basic questions and asked what I wanted to see happen. I said I wanted to file a police report, and I wanted him to understand he should pass cyclists with at least 3 feet of clearance. I said “I ride on the street everyday, and buses pass me, other trucks pass me, and no one has ever come anywhere near that close to me before! If other people can pass me safely, he should be able to too!” I said that because I wanted the officer to understand that I’m an experienced bike commuter and I know how to ride on the road. I know what the laws are, and I know what my rights are. He said “Ok, we’ll talk to him,” and they walked away.

At that point, I wasn’t sure if the driver was even still there, but the manager told me he had talked to him and convinced him it would be in his best interest to wait to talk to the police. I left then and went home. That’s when I realized just how close I came to being killed. I could have so easily been knocked off balance. If I had been knocked off balance and fallen over, I probably would have ended up under the truck. I would have been killed.

I went to bed at 8:30 that night, completely exhausted by the adrenaline.

It occurred to me the next day that neither of the officers had introduced themselves to me or given me a card or a report number. I wondered if that was a bad sign. Maybe I was just being paranoid, I thought. At the end of the week I called the police department and talked to a woman in records about getting a copy of the report. She asked me for the report number. I had a sinking feeling in my stomach as I told her the officer hadn’t given me one. She asked for the officer’s name. Nope. Ok, she searched by my name. She found nothing. I didn’t really expect her to by that point. She said to try again in a few days, that maybe there was a delay because of the holiday. I told her I would, but I had a bad feeling about this. I didn’t think there was going to be a report. I suspected the officer I talked to intentionally didn’t give me his name.

The next week I called again. Still nothing. She suggested I try again later. I realized I could keep calling for the next 6 months and there wasn’t ever going to be a report. I wanted to know who the officer was. After getting the runaround I managed to talk to a sergeant who was able to determine who had responded to the call after I told him what time I talked to the dispatcher and what time the officers arrived at the store. He talked to the officer who had talked to me and found out no, he had not filed a report. He was having him work on a misc. incident report now and it would be ready in a few days. He gave me the report number and we hung up.

So it was true. No report had been filed, even though I had told the officers twice I wanted to file a police report, and they never said they weren’t going to file one. I felt they had lied to me, even if it was a lie of omission. I wondered how complete a report filed so late after the incident would be. Had the officers bothered to ask the truck driver for his name if they had no intention of filing a report when they talked to him? I suspected not, and I had been hoping to get the name of the driver and the name of the trucking company from the report so I could write a letter of complaint about his dangerous behavior. I decided I’d better try to get the information from Kroger on my own. The store manager had told me that the driver wasn’t a Kroger employee, but an employee of a trucking company, and that there were several companies. They all kept logs of who made deliveries at what times. I didn’t know how long they kept the records though, so I wasn’t going to wait too long.

A call to Kroger yielded the phone number of the trucking company, but when I called them and told them what happened and asked for the name of the driver who made the delivery at that time and date, they were shocked that I would have the nerve to ask for that information and said they didn’t have to give me that. So I called the Kroger manager again and explained that I wasn’t going to be able to get the information I needed on my own. He called their risk management department, who called the trucking company and told them to call me and give me the information I needed. When someone from the company called, though, he didn’t identify himself as being from that company. He made it sound like he was from Kroger, though he didn’t actually say he was. He said he had the address I needed and gave me that, and gave me his name and title, and then somehow it became clear that he actually worked at the trucking company. When he had given me the address, he didn’t actually include the name of the company in the address. I had to ask him point blank “What’s the name of the company?” before he would tell me. Trying to hide something there, buddy? When I asked him the name of the driver, which the risk management people must have told him I wanted, he acted surprised and said “Oh, I don’t know that. I’ve got 74 drivers!” I pointed out to him that he kept logs of all the deliveries and told him which store it was, what kind of delivery, and the date and time of the delivery. “Oh, well, I’ll have to get back to you...” Yeah, right. I figured I’d give him a week and then call him again.

Meanwhile, I was very unhappy about the way the police had handled things. I had a very strong sense that I had been lied to, and that did not sit well with me. I really don’t like it when anyone lies to me. Perhaps I was naive, but I felt that the police should value honesty. There were two main reasons I had wanted to file a report from the very beginning: 1) I knew immediately that I wanted to write a letter to the driver’s employer and planned to get the relevant information from the report, and also to include a copy of the report with the letter as proof that the incident had occurred (I certainly wasn’t expecting the driver to mention it to his employer on his own, and if I sent a letter with no report, if they questioned him about it, I assumed he would deny everything); and 2) I know that bicycle-related accidents are extremely undercounted. Statistics about bicycle-related accidents are derived from police reports. Most cyclists who have accidents don’t report them, and when they try to, they feel the police discourage them. But how can any useful information be gained from statistics when the police say “we haven’t received any complaints”? So there was no doubt in my mind from the very beginning that I wanted to file a report, and I didn’t let the dispatcher discourage me. To find out later that even when a cyclist says “I want to file a police report” in those exact words, not once but twice, after nearly being killed, still no report is filed, I couldn’t help but feel that the police didn’t take cyclist safety seriously. I was nearly as upset by the way the police had handled things as I had been by the initial incident itself.

I planned on filing a complaint after receiving the misc. incident report. I wanted to see if it had the driver’s name or not, figuring if it didn’t, that would be one more thing to complain about. In the meantime, I emailed my concerns to my city councilmembers. One of them forwarded my email to the police chief with a message saying, essentially, that this was serious and to follow up on it. A few days later I got a call from a lieutenant who was investigating the matter. He said he agreed that a report should have been filed, and that the truck driver’s name should have been in it (I had received the misc. incident report by now, and not surprisingly, it didn’t include the driver’s name). He said both officers had been reprimanded. He said they would get the rest of the information and revise the report. I gave him the information I had managed to obtain and told him the only thing I hadn’t managed to get was the truck driver’s name. I pointed out that the man I had talked to was extremely evasive. He called back the next day with the truck driver’s name. Oh, to have been a fly on the wall...

A few days later I got the final report with the driver’s name. It actually didn’t have any employer information as I had anticipated, so it was a good thing I had tracked that down on my own. But it was good enough. I would be mailing a copy of the report to the trucking company with the letter I wrote. I was satisfied with the outcome. I was glad that the police recognized that a report should have been filed. My hope is that in the future whenever a cyclist says “I want to file a police report” they will file the report as a matter of routine. They will take cyclists’ safety seriously.

My purpose in writing all of this has not been to embarrass the police, but to help other cyclists should they find themselves in a similar situation. I learned what I should have done differently. When the officer did not volunteer his name or the report number, I should have asked. I should not have let him walk away without giving me that information. I know now he deliberately withheld it. I did not know I would need it, and I was too full of adrenaline to think clearly. Now I know it’s crucial information, and if I’m ever in that situation again, even with a body full of adrenaline, you can bet your sweet patootie that even if a police officer doesn’t volunteer his or her name and a report number, I will remember to ask, making if very clear that I will be calling later to get a copy of the report.

My purpose here is also to point out what did work: emailing my city councilmembers. I’m not saying this will work for everyone. It depends on how responsive your city council is. But it worked for me, and will probably work for a lot of people.

Lastly, my purpose is to present the following four documents in PDF format, in the hopes that other cyclists may find them useful:

My Letter to the Trucking Company -- This is the letter I sent, minus the names and addresses. I also sent a copy to Kroger, along with a brief letter of explanation in which I also stated that their store manager had been extremely helpful and kind, and I was grateful for that.

Share the Road Handout (for trucks) -- This is the handout I enclosed with the letter. I had seen various “Share the Road” handouts, but they were aimed at motorists in general, not truck drivers. I decided drivers of such large vehicles needed some information written specifically for them, so I wrote it. Also, I thought maybe drivers might be more willing to follow the instructions on the handout if the handout explained why cyclists do the things they do. Note: the original handout I sent specified 3 feet of clearance for passing; I changed it to 5 feet for this version.

Share the Road Handout (for trucks and buses) -- This version is nearly identical, but it’s for trucks and buses. Both trucks and buses are large vehicles driven by professional drivers, so I think one handout could be used to send to both trucking companies and bus companies or to give to individual drivers.

Share the Road Handout (for cars) -- This one is for drivers of cars. There are others out there, but I still think it’s a good idea to explain to motorists why we do what we do.

Each of the handouts fits on a single 8½" x 11" sheet of paper. The notice at the bottom says “© 2003 Riin Gill. Permission explicitly granted to copy.” You can make as many copies as you want. That’s why I’m including these handouts here, and that’s why I did them as PDF files, so they’re nicely formatted to print on a page. Even if you take them to a copy shop, the clerk shouldn’t give you any trouble because I am giving you explicit permission to make copies. However, I do still hold the copyright. You may reprint the handouts in a newsletter for distribution, but only if you print the entire page, including the copyright notice. You may not take credit for my work. You may not remove my name from it. You may not make any alterations to my work. Please do not put words in my mouth or give anyone the impression I said anything I did not actually say. This is why I only want my work presented in its entirety.

I hope you find the handouts useful.