Yep. Just minding my business in the Home Depot parking lot and walking toward the greenhouse…when this very elderly gentleman, out for a shopping trip with his wife, threw ‘er into reverse and fortunately didn’t gun it too hard, and didn’t mistakenly hit the gas when I flung my hand (armed with a fistful of keys) against his hatchback’s rear window and scared him out of a year’s growth…
I waved at the pair and walked on. I don’t think he even yet figured out he’d hit me. And he was real, real old and with his wife and it was Mother’s Day so I didn’t explain, I just walked on to the store.
But then my neck and shoulders began stiffening up, so the jolt was worse than I thought. So we came home, I took two Aleve and spent the better part of an hour with an icepack between my shoulder blades. Amazing how a little vector change can rearrange your back…
I’m glad you weren’t run over! imho, autos running into (or over) motorcycles, bicycles, and pedestrians has much to do with a change of perception once one is in the driver’s seat. Unfortunately, drivers are looking out for other cars, and seem to look right past anything smaller.
I have never been a small woman, and I have used a bicycle and a moped, wearing a bright yellow windbreaker and helmet. You’d think I’d be hard to miss ;). But I was hit twice on the bicycle, once a driver making a right turn, and the other a driver making a left turn! Both of them said “I didn’t see you”! (The second impact ended the bike’s career, and did me some damage too.)
At least with the moped I could usually get out of the way, but I can’t tell you how many times I almost got “nailed”.
As a pedestrian, I assume someone doesn’t see me unless they wave me through – but, I’m not always aware when someone is starting to back out, always a danger point.
I recall one instance where I was in my old flaming orange superbeetle, the one my students called ‘the Pumpkin’, going down the high speed Broadway Extension in OKC, when somebody pulled out in front of me, dead in front—and I swerved onto the unstable shoulder (this was in Edmond) and cursed him for a hundred yards getting stopped on gravelly surface. He at least had the courtesy also to pull onto the shoulder and get out. I got out and we met.
He: “I just didn’t see you…”
Me: [waving arm extravagantly toward the Pumpkin] “You didn’t see THAT?!!”
[I was not at my best at that moment, and upset because I had an elderly passenger. So had he. So we exchanged good wishes and parted company.]
….I think some cars are just too bright to be believed…