Shock
One of a bicyclist’s biggest problems after an accident is the temporary mental disorder commonly called “shock.” It causes bicyclists no end of legal, financial, and sometimes medical problems.
If you get hit by a car on your bike, I can pretty much guarantee you that you are going to start acting irrationally. A huge percentage of my clients report to me that their first reaction after being hit was to apologize to the driver and insist that nothing was wrong with them and that the accident was their fault. Some try very hard to leave the scene even though they are injured — and some succeed at it, pushing wrecked bicycles along as they go.
Many (actually, most) report to me that they experienced feelings of intense shame and embarrassment at being a victim of an accident, and wanted badly to just to go home.
Of course, motorists in this situation are experiencing something similar. Assuming the bicyclist is up and moving around, they usually feel a mixture of shame and horror that they hurt someone along with great joy and relief that the accident wasn’t worse. Both parties want the thing over with.
And that, of course, is where the problems start. Police don’t get called, witness’s names don’t get recorded, and sometimes injuries get exacerbated. Everyone goes home. But the cyclist goes home with potentially huge injuries and no idea who hit them, and the motorist goes home with a scratch in the hood.
I spend a lot of time trying to figure out what to do about this. The problem is, you can tell cyclists they need to stay at the scene and let the police come and let people take care of them, and they will hear you and believe you. But when they are in shock it all goes right out the window. I am by no means certain that should I be hit one day I won’t do the very same thing that many of my clients do. I’ve been in shock before and I know that my overwhelming response is to get the hell out of there.
Where does the shame and embarrassment come from? An astonishing number of my clients sheepishly report to me that almost the only thing they remember from their accident is an overwhelming feeling of shame. These are people who have been right-hooked, left-hooked, broadsided, doored, hit from behind in the bike lane — it doesn’t matter how little their own fault played in the incident, they report that at the time of the accident they felt completely responsible.
Simply put, they weren’t thinking clearly. They were in shock.
Perhaps the best thing is to just keep reminding ourselves that should we get in an accident, we need to first make sure of our own health, and then shut up and insist that the police get called. Just that little step can make all the difference. If nothing else, witnesses will be recorded.
–Erik Ryberg
July 25th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
All cyclists should discuss with their primary care physician (assuming they have one)their tetanus vaccine status. Corrective action involves repeating the sequence or a booster. Wrecked cyclists are prone to abrasion and puncture wounds and who knows what shat upon that broken glass you pick from your palm, forearm, shoulder…