Blogger’s brush with death

By way of introduction, I first discovered the social media sensation Caitlin Oppermann during the IT module on my LLM (ah - it’s always nice to hark back to those happy days!!) when she was interviewed for an article which appeared in NY Magazine about her rather avant-garde use of social media as a college student.  

She’s an interesting, quirky character (though I’m not sure how much I like her ‘new for 2011’ half shaved head, but hey-ho, each to their own).  She has a huge following and a refreshing ‘edge of your seat’ approach to social media and blogging. 

In short, I like her style (hair dos excluded) and I’ve always felt there need to be more bloggers like that. I think there’s a bunch of legal bloggers out there who can learn a lot from Caitlin.

Anyhow, I digress…

From Caitlin Oppermann’s tumblr blog 27/07/11:

A week ago tonight I was hit by a car while riding my bike.

When the car hit me, I went over the hood and hit the windshield and my bike was thrown away from the car. I didn’t hit my head hard (luckily I was wearing a helmet anyway) but my legs took the bulk of the impact.

When I rolled off of the car and into the street, the woman driving got out, quickly and absent-mindedly asked me if I was ok, and then ran across the street to frantically chase down witnesses to insure that she wouldn’t be liable.

Don’t ya just love what we’ve degenerated into?

My bike was mangled, I was bleeding and swelling and I had no way to get home. I was too out of it to call an ambulance or even the police and somehow I let the lady (and her family, who were all in the car) drive me home with my mangled bike hanging out of the back of the trunk.

I got home, realized that my ankle was swelling and starting to throb as well, and went to the emergency room. I waited for 4 hours, didn’t see anyone, and went home.

The abridged version is that she’s OK, eventually got her wounds seen to and luckily suffered no broken bones.  Sadly, though, she’s been left as a semi nervous wreck with a fear of cycling.

Whoah!  As Crocodile Dundee might have said: now THAT’S a bruise.

(Btw, I wasn’t sure it seemed quite proper posting a picture of Caitlin’s inner thigh.  But hey, we’ve all got them and she was obviously comfortable posting the pictures on her blog in the first place).

I do hope this nasty incident doesn’t put Caitlin off cycling for life; coming from someone who was ran over by a post van as a child, I think it’s important to get back into the saddle as soon as possible. Literally.