texting while riding | Mommy Adventures

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The unobservant biker

As soon as I turn onto the residential street that connects to my dead end road, I slow the car down. The road isn’t marked with lines, and is fairly narrow, plus kids could be at play, or animals could be running across the street. Going the speed limit here doesn’t seem safe. As I turn the final corner onto my street, I see a teenager on a bicycle riding towards me, on the left hand side of the road, going the wrong way in my unmarked lane. I can’t see his face because his head is down, looking at something that is not the road in front of him. Slowing the car down even more, we drive towards the centre of the road to avoid the wayward cyclist.

He still hasn’t seen me. He isn’t looking where he is going at all. Is he texting? One hand is on his handle bars, but the other is in front and below him, holding a phone. He is veering towards the centre of the road, so I stop the car completely.

My mind is racing. Should I honk? What if that startles him so much he falls off. If he breaks his phone, he might get violet. kids can be crazy these days. No, surely he’ll look up soon, he has to check where he’s going. He’ll look up before he hits me.

He’s still riding straight towards the car. Everything seems to be in slow motion but I’m frozen inside the car, unable to decide whether or not I should honk. The thought that he has to look up before hitting the car is winning the honking battle, but he’s still coming closer and closer, not once looking up.

My hand migrates towards the centre of the steering wheel. He’s seconds away from hitting the car. I’m about to honk and scare the daylights out of him when finally, he looks up. He is so close that I can clearly see the panicked look on his face as he instinctively swerves away from the car, narrowly missing a head on collision.

And that, people, is why you don’t text and ride.

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