Hit by a car

Bruises don't have to be visible. In fact in my experience they rarely are. Running down your back are some fairly major muscles that have a huge amount of strength (enough to hold your whole upper body upright against gravity) so they make up quite a lot of mass. Quite often with with such knocks, the bruising is deep below the surface, the skin might show no discolouration even if there is deep bruising underneath.

I'd encourage you to see a GP. No cause for alarm or anything, just to figure out the fastest way to ease the pain. The standard advice seems to be to keep moving as normal so that you don't stiffen up but that's not always right, hence the need to get professional advice. Don't be tempted to go straight in with the deep heat or the cooling gels either, as which one you need depends on the nature of the bruising. Either can make matters worse. For example, deep heat encourages blood flow, which is great if the blood flow is impeded due to inflammation, but if the inflammation is happening because the finer blood vessels have ruptured (as happens sometimes in bruising) then cooling is best, but if you cool it when the pain is due to reduced blood flow, then again it will hurt more. Hence the need to see the GP.

 

Dont want to sound unsympathetic but just let it drop.

 

If you admit to riding on the pavement, the admission may well get you a fine
It would then be a case of weighing up if its worth it.

 

I have to agree. You are both in the wrong so it will be a tit for tat deal. The price of a foglamp for a modern car will be far in excess of a bike wheel.

 

This is what I thought. But while I throw my hands up and know that I was partically to blame in my defense I am not the only cyclist to do it. I see motorists complain all the time about cyclists doing stupid things in the road. I use the road as much as I can but in this instant it wasn't practical and too dangerous. Also I was heading towards a cycle path which was meters away. How else could I have gotten to the cycle path without going across on coming traffic in the road and then got onto the cycle path.

I have uploaded a map where it happened just to explain my predicament. The red mark shows where I was hit and the blue line shows the cycle path which I was heading for. You can see that the cycle path is broken up by two sets of traffic lights that lead onto a very busy bypass. In order for me to get to the cycle path I had to be on this side at I wanted to head down the east side of the cycle path. If I was on the road I would have had to negotiate with the traffic, cut across two ways of traffic going in two directions at the cross roads near the turn off of the A1014 and then somehow got off my bike onto the crossing, then crossed again with my bike on the cycle path, in order to get to the cycle path.



I'm sure there are other ways around this area on the road that I haven't fathomed out for myself yet but please point them out to me if you spot them

 

If it was reversing then there would have been reversing lights on and probably visible exhaust emissions in this cold weather (two things I look out for when driving through cars parks and get ready to hit brakes & horn, seems to happen at least once every week) which may have affected apportionment of liability. Sometimes it's impossible to make "all the necessary observations before and during moving off" such as when a large van has parked beside you, or reversing out of a driveway without vision splays and with walls/fencing/hedges either side and you don't have any passengers.

But are there any witnesses? The driver and passenger may well say they the driver was looking out for footpath users and was edging out very slowly when a bicycle was ridden at speed behind them. What happens then? (I've got a handlebar bike cam)

 

Unless there's walls,fencing, hedging obscuring vision.


P.S. J.J. Do you have legal expenses cover on your house insurance?

 

But what if they claim they did exit slowly, but the bike was being ridden at speed, expected the bike to stop as they were already partially onto the footpath crossover, but it carried on across the front of the car and didn't brake? Who has right of way on that vehicular crossover, a car using it to get on the road, or a cyclist using the footpath?

I don't think there's enough information to make any judgements yet, especially without seeing what that driveway exit is like.

 

We must have had the same driving instructor!

 

If I was you Jane I would move on now. It seems like the 'blame' is 50/50 and the damage to car/bike is about 50/50 so nothing really to gain by pursuing this.