This is a commentary.

Last Sunday I had an interesting situation happen. A beautiful, sunny afternoon and I was riding my Harley motorcycle northbound on Pearl Street through downtown Dallas. As I crossed over Ross Avenue, I saw a car in the southbound turn lane to go into the Meyerson Symphony Hall. He turned as there was lots of time before I was going to be at that intersection.

The next car…a woman driver. She was wearing glasses (not sunglasses) but I was wearing sunglasses. One of the cardinal rules in motorcycling is to make eye contact but that’s kind of hard to do with sunglasses. Anyway, the lady pulled up, stopped, looked right at me - not a glance - a look and as soon as I approached the corner of Flora she decided to turn.

I’ve never been hit on a bike before.

I guess I went into self-preservation mode (for me and my bike) because somehow I had the presence of mind to turn the bike just slightly at the last possible moment so she was aiming towards the Symphony Hall and the car hit my engine guard dead on.

A lot of bikers don’t have engine guards because they say it looks stupid. For me, I’d much rather have chromed steel coming out to protect my bike’s motor should it be dropped than not having it. Turns out the engine guards work equally well in certain situations when cars are aiming for you.

A fraction of a second earlier, it would have been my front wheel that took the hit; a fraction later, hit the back end which would have possible spun me slightly.

As it turns out, by hitting the engine guard, and by going at a rather low speed, the bike stalled and toppled over to it’s right. It landed at a 45 degree angle because of the engine guard.

The first thing I did was get the bike upright, get her into neutral and she fired right up. I walked her over to the sidewalk a few feet away and just let her idle. A number of people going to the Symphony came over to help and I recall one guy saying, “That was an amazing save! How did you do that?” I honestly have no idea.

By this point the lady was writing down her info. The first thing I asked her was, “Did you see me?” She said she had not - even though I know for a fact she “looked” right at me, she didn’t “see” me. To be honest, this comment didn’t surprise me. When I was editor for Thunder Roads Magazine, we did a story on safety and one of the factoids was that women drivers are not conditioned to look for bikers so there is a higher likelihood of a biker getting hit by a woman than a guy.

Kind of sucks for me being a girl and all that I have to deal with this from my own gender!

After I got her info, I took the bike a few blocks away to my friend Peter’s loft. He’s had about 140 bikes in his lifetime and used to be a motorbike courier in London for 3 years where he got hit about twice a week.

Aside from the engine guard being slightly out of whack and the handlebars just ever so slightly out of alignment, the bike looks good. Of course, I DO still have to take her by a mechanic friend of mine for a once over.

And my left leg has a nice menagerie of bruises all over it as it was caught between the car’s bumper and the portion of my bike that didn’t have an engine guard or saddle bag protecting it.

What truly amazed me were the suggestions from some of the people that found out about this. One person suggested that I claim my gas tank because of a tiny dent in it from a trip last year. Another person berated me for not going to the hospital immediately - the fact that I was alone on my bike and had no where to leave the bike and hitch a ride in an ambulance had no bearing on the situation.

But the true finale was the suggestion that I sue. On what grounds? “Intentional involuntary vehicular manslaughter”. Say what?! Sorry people, but I have a life and jacking around with attorneys and insurance companies and doctors does not fall on my top 10 list.

In fact, unless my mechanic says something different, I’m not even making a claim. It was a minor accident at a low rate of speed, my bruises will fade, and life will go on.

I would hope the lady is more aware of bikers now and that people get off this insane desire to profit from every little oops that happens in life.

Besides…now I can say for a fact that American steel trumps Japanese plastic!