Always Wear Clean Underwear...

A car hit me yesterday. I was on my way home from work, and as I was cruising down Lake Street, not going too fast since there was a red light at Oak Park Avenue, some guy from Missouri who really needed to get into the parking lot of the US Bank cut me off and I hit his rear passenger quarter panel. Here's the graceful bit: as I go down, I hit my shoulder on his car, which stops me from getting my hands down to slow my impact, and my feet won't come out of the stirrups. I splat pretty hard on my left side; my elbow got all bloody and scraped, my knee was all wonky, and my shoulder was not in a happy place. So I get up to go and talk to the guy, and he just drives around the parking lot, and starts to head toward the exit! WTF, is he fleeing the scene of an accident? I step in front of his car, and one of the better exchanges I had for the day went like this:
"Hi. Did you know you just hit me?"
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. You cut me off and I fell."
"Oh..."
"..."
"You okay?"
My left forearm is covered in blood, and I am standing on one leg, my knee swollen to the size of a grapefruit: "I don't know. I just got hit by a car."
"Uh, yeah."
"I think there might be something wrong with my knee."
"How's your bike?"
"I don't know. I just got hit by a car."
"Okay." BTW, he's still sitting in his car, the engine running, and his seatbelt is on. "Well, are you okay?"
"I don't know; I just got hit by a car!" At this point, I see a man in the car next to us get out, and he's wearing a Police Sergeant's uniform. I point and say, "I think this guy is going to want to talk to you."
The look on the driver's face is fucking priceless.
It turns out that I have two witnesses: the cop and an off-duty ambulance driver! More cops come, along with an ambulance that bandages me up, and Zeepdaddy comes and picks me up because I am not sure as to what might me wrong with my bike, or me, and I don't want to take the chance.
What became hilarious is when the cop finishes her accident report, I’m sitting on the sidewalk with an icepack and Mr. Careful in his car mentally calculating the rising interest rates for his automobile, she then has to explain to him why it's his fault.
"The witnesses both said that he (me) was in the far right lane of the street, as he should be. When you cut him off, you left him no room to stop and he hit you. So it's your fault.”
"But you said he hit me."
"Yeah, with a bike."
"But he still hit me." The way she stares at him made me fall in love with her.
"Sir, he's on a bicycle, and he was obeying the rules of the road that cyclists have. Two creditable, unbiased witnesses saw the accident, and their descriptions are very similar.”
“But he hit me, right here,” he says, pointing to the driver’s side left quarter-panel, where there is significant scraping.
“No I didn’t!” I chime in. “You were turning right; I hit you here!” I am pointing to the little bit of skin left on his car, which I wipe away when he tries to claim it is paint damage. He says, “That wasn’t there before.” I wipe; “And it’s not there now.”
The cop then explains to the guy that I don’t have a seat belt, safety glass, airbags or an enclosed frame. I have a helmet and gloves and brakes. His Chrysler Concorde weighs well over 800 pounds; my bike and me don’t even break 180. “Clearly,” she says, “caution should be on your side.”
He tries to say something else and she says, “If you hit a cyclist who has two witnesses, one of them a police officer stating that he was obeying the rules of the road at the time of the accident, then it’s your fault. Be at the courthouse on your date, and if he (me) doesn’t show up, you won’t get a ticket. If he does, or if you don’t, then you get a ticket.” She hands me her card with the court date on it and says to him, “This guy could’ve stayed at the emergency room, but didn’t, because he was being honest. He saved you a lot of trouble, so just be thankful that the most that will happen will be a ticket for failure to show proper care.”
If she were just a little bit hotter, I so would’ve asked her out right there. She tells me after he leaves, "You better show up!" Don't worry, my hot cop, I will.

So the rest of the night is fairly uneventful; I don't have to work because of my jacked-up knee, so that's nice. I'm taking the bike to Dan's and have them give it a check-up. I'm sure that the front wheel will need truing and my pedals got jacked up. Also, my cell phone doesn't work, so I will need a new one.
Now comes the pertinent question: anyone know the way I get this stuff replaced by Mr. Careful's insurance company?

-Zeepdoggie