CARS AND BIKES

        About a month ago, I was biking home from campus. My route takes me up that monster hill on Edgewood heading toward East Atlanta. So there I was, standing up, pedaling hard to try to maintain momentum, when a car that apparently didn't feel like waiting to get to the red light at the Boulevard inter- section swerved around me, cutting me off and forcing me to hit my brakes.

        Let me just make one thing clear: Getting going from a complete stop when you're on a hill sucks.I got my momentum back up, and while duck-waddling my bike to the front of the line of cars at the stoplight, my handlebar accidentally grazed the rear- view mirror of the car that had just cut me off. The woman immediately rolled down her window.

        "That's my car you just hit," she said. Without missing a beat, I responded, "And you just cut me Ahh,    interactions between cars and bikes in Atlanta. I didn't try to be conciliatory then, and I'm not going to try to be conciliatory now. While you're driving, ensconced in heated or air-conditioned comfort, sit- ting on a cushiony seat, able to accelerate to tremendous speeds with a mere nudge of your right foot, that cyclist is working their ass off.         

       They sweat buckets in the summer and endure face-, finger- and toe-numbing cold in the winter. When it rains, they get wet. When it hails, they get welts. The clothes they wear have to work on a bike — which means very few short skirts and heels — and tend to be rumpled and sweaty when they finally get where they're going.

And through it all, there's a constant fear of dying.

Nearly everyone I know who's been cycling for awhile has been hit by a car at off."

         I was knocked off my bike by a woman in a van a few years back,and I consider myself lucky, because at least she stopped. Three of my friends have been hit by drivers who just kept going, including one friend who was hit so hard that he ended up lying in a ditch for 45 minutes before he accepted that no one was going to help him and hobbled home with his broken bike.

     Cars and bikes share an uneasy relationship on Atlanta's roads. Although city-specific statistics are unavailable, in 2009, 51,000 cyclists were injured in accidents with cars in the United States alone, and an additional 630 were killed. These numbers don't take into account cyclists who were not injured in accidents. It doesn't have to be

this way. Here are a few rules for how cars and bikes can get along better on the roads. Warning: they come from a cyclist's perspective, so they're totally biased :

* Give three feet. I can't emphasize this enough. Do you have any idea how scary it is when some inconsiderate boor speeds past you going way too fast and leaving a foot of space between their giant metal

* Don't cut bikers off, especially if they're going uphill. If you can't pass a biker safely, suck it up and drive slowly be- hind them. I know it's a pain, but they're working way harder than you, and you can make up your momentum way easier than they can.

* If a biker runs a red light,they probably know what they're doing. This is a complaint I hear a lot from motorists: Bikers should obey the rules of the road. To be perfectly honest, I think they're just envious that they can't do the same. Look, if there's no one coming and stopping at that red light means you'll lose all your momentum, you're going to run that red light. Think of it as a well- deserved perk for using a zero-emission mode of transportation.

*   After parallel parking, check your mirror before you open your door. There might be a cyclist coming, and running into a car door (or "getting doored") is no fun — as in potentially fatal.

         Here's where I'm going to get even more blatantly self-righteous: cars are disgusting. They're loud, they spew pollution into the air, they contribute to American imperialism in the Middle East and the people driving them are usually too busy texting or cramming fast food down their gullets to look up for two seconds and see that they're about to mow down a cyclist or pedestrian who's actually using their body to get some- where rather than being carried by a giant metal robot. Drivers seem to think the road belongs to them, and have no problem scaring the hell out of cyclists or even hitting them.

        Don't believe me? This one anecdote pretty much perfectly sums up the cavalier attitude drivers have toward cyclists. After my accident, my mother was on the phone with the woman who hit me, ironing out the details of the insurance payment. The woman was frustrated with the process, and actually had the gall to say to my mother, "You know, we haven't even discussed the damage your daughter's bike did to my car."

     Without missing a beat, my mother responded, "I think the most important thing here is the damage you did to my daughter."