WHY WHY WHY

So as some of you know, I drive an electric scooter to work on some days so that Taylor can have the car. I have the Razor e300 scooter which goes 10-15 mph.

My office is only a mile away, but it's a scary mile because I have to cross through this road called the Central Expressway. There's traffic lights but you can go like 60mph on it. I enter the expressway at a traffic light, only when I get a green left arrow (which only happens if a car is there to make the light change), and I stay in the bike lane.

I am on the central expressway for 200 feet where I take the first exit to Middlefield Ave. The exit ramp of Middlefield ave is about 300 feet long. Once you are off the exit ramp, you are no longer in Sunnyvale, but you are now in Mountain View.

Once you hit the border, there is a bike lane, and a giant sign that says "Mountain View is a Bicycle Friendly Community". Remember that too, it's also important later on.

I am on Middlefield ave, a two lane road, for approximately 3/4 mile, then I turn right onto Ellis Ave. At the intersection of these roads are companies such as Verisign, HP, AOL, and so on, and some place called Synopsys.

Today I took my scooter to work and I got onto Middlefield ave. When I got to the entrance of the parking lot to Synopsys, which is right before 237 in the map image, some lady drove right along side of me and then made a right turn into the parking lot without looking. I had no time to react and went right into the side of her car. Didn't get hurt or damage the scooter somehow.

I don't think she even noticed. She got into the parking lot and I started banging on her window and told her to pull the fuck over and stop about 5 times. She stopped and parked.

I took out my cell phone and called the Mountain view police. I gave them my exact location and they told me that I am not in Mountain View, but I am in Sunnyvale. They told me they would contact the Sunnyvale police and have them send someone.

I waited about 15 minutes and no cop, I called the Sunnyvale police and they told me that I need to call the Mountain View police because I am in Mountain View. The dispatcher was very rude. They insisted that no part of Middlefield Ave is in Sunnyvale, which is sort of true, only the exit ramp onto it is in Sunnyvale. I argued with them for a few minutes and finally they decided to call Mountain View police and I guess have a police to police negotiation about what city I was standing in. Anything to avoid wasting precious police resources.

The cop finally showed up and I told him what happened and the lady didn't dispute anything I said. The cop asked what either of us want done. I said, "I think she should get a ticket."

The cop asked why, and I said "In California, it is illegal to make a right turn without first looking to see if it's safe, and then hit someone, therefore she should get a ticket."

The cop informed me that since there were no witnesses, I had no injuries, and there was no damage to my scooter, that he had no basis to write a ticket. Apparantly I didn't learn my lesson from the guitar bandit, which is that before yelling a stream of obscenities for 10 minutes, find a witness.

I asked the cop whether it's even legal to ride the scooter in the bike lane. He told me that it shouldn't be in the street because it goes less than 25mph, and it shouldn't be in the bike lane or sidewalk because it is a motorized vehicle. I asked him whether it was legal to ride it at all, so he went and got out the california vehicle codebook. He read through it and couldn't find anything that said whether it is illegal or legal, so he said someone would call me back.

The lady went away and thanked the officer. I thanked her for hitting me.

The end