::A Geek in Korea::

My wife and I needed to take our dog Yoshi to get his third set of shots. We affixed a basket to the back of my wife’s bike, and set the dog in for the ride to the vet. We got the shots, and then got on our bikes to go back home. We crossed one intersection and waited for the light to change.

There was a car that was waiting near the intersection to turn right. As we kicked off to start pedaling, the car continued to go forward despite the fact that we had a clear "walk" symbol and there were at least five people crossing the intersection with us. There was a boy on rollerblades behind my wife’s bike looking at our puppy. Since I was supposed to ride behind to make sure that the dog didn’t jump out of the basket, I sort of looked behind to see if I could get behind the boy. I saw that the car was really close to my bike, but I just assumed it was being very aggressive about turning. I was RIGHT in front of it as it kept rolling forward, so I yelled, "Hey, WOAH!"

The car didn’t stop. I had seen that it was coming for me, so I got my foot and leg out of the way, but the car ran over my back tire. I didn’t fall off the bike, I just sort of let the bike go as it went under the tire. I looked over the hood of the car. The woman driving wasn’t paying attention at all, so I gave a nice curse to get her attention. She had been looking at the person in the passenger seat, not forward.

We were both lucky no one was directly next to me to get pinched by my bike as it got crunched. The driver never realized what was happening. Her passenger got her to stop, and I pulled my bike out from under her car. The back tire was ruined, shaped somewhat like a crescent. The spokes were bent beyond repair.

I hauled the bike back to the curb and expressed my extreme dissatisfaction with the woman for running me over, in so many words. The two women got out of the car and gave me a sorry look. The passenger looked like death warmed over, a woman not much older than we were, but sickly and weak looking. The other woman, which I later found out to be her mother, was not really concerned about my health at all.

The first words out of her mouth was, "Sorry I ran over your bike. We are in a hurry to get to the hospital because of my daughter. Sorry!" It was implied that I should just let them go at this point, but the look I gave them made it clear I didn’t think that was the end to anything.

I’m not sure if they were betting on the fact that I was a foreigner that I wouldn’t know my rights, or that they thought I wouldn’t be fighting for a little more compensation that a token apology said in haste. I really think that it was more that the sick woman was so important to the lady driving that hitting a foreigner on the bike seemed like something not worth worrying about too much if it delayed getting to the hospital for too long.

My wife rode back after she saw what happened and the two women stated that they needed to get to the hospital as soon as possible to her as well. Since I was luckily uninjured, I suggested that we cross the street to a bike store LITERALLY across the street, get my bike fixed, or, failing that, they buy me a new bike. They said that they needed to get to the hospital, but had no money to pay me at the moment. They wanted to go to the hospital, then meet somewhere to sort out the problem.

I’m not sure if this was out of general concern about the sick woman’s health, or a chance for them to skip out on paying. The woman really did look sick, but I refused to let them go without a bike I could ride home, whether it be something new or my old bike in a much better condition. I told them the price of the bike, and I would settle for any bike up to that amount. I really think that this was a very reasonable agreement on my part. They refused to go to the bike shop, and the mother called her son, who was an insurance agent.

We called my mother in law, who is also an insurance agent. She was attending an funeral at the moment, and wasn’t able to come to the scene while we waited for the other insurance agent to arrive. As we waited, the boy on rollerblades that had wanted to look at our dog stayed with us. He was curious about me and the puppy. We wanted to keep him as a witness in case some of the facts were put into dispute. We gave him enough money to get an ice cream cone, got his phone number, and asked him what he saw. He agreed that the car had hit me. He’s probably lucky my bike was between him and the car, because he had a good chance of getting hit otherwise.

We waited for around twenty or so minutes for the insurance agent to arrive. After we explained what happened and what we wanted, he offered to take us to the bike shop to have the tire fixed. He placated his mother, who wanted to blame me for getting in her way when she was in a hurry. We had suggested this very solution at the beginning since the bike store was across the street, and it would have saved her lots of time if she really needed to go to the hospital so quickly. She seemed exasperated that we had wasted all this time having him come to the scene of the accident when the bike store was so close, but she was the one that refused to go there in the first place and had demanded she call him.

The woman desperately wanted to take her daughter to the hospital, so we went with the son to the bike shop. He paid for fixing the bike. This is the only time the bike shop owner didn’t charge an obscene amount of money to fix our bike. I gave the bike a ride around the block and it seemed to be fine. The man refused to give us anything else, and wouldn’t even apologize to us.

The son offered to take me to the hospital, as obligated by Korean law, but I refused. If I had thought there was any chance I was injured, I would have instantly took him up on the offer. There would be no reason to pass up on free medical checks if it would have proven wrongdoing.

I wanted to be honest. I’m not going to go to the hospital and lie about being hurt. On the off chance that I wake up tomorrow and I’m not able to walk, I’m not sure what I’ll do. I was told we got a day to have a checkup performed before I lose all right to collect more cash for the accident. I hope I’m not punished for my kindness.

Looking back now that I’ve organized my thoughts, it’s clear we were in shock, but we made some mistakes. If something similar happens again, not something I’m exactly hoping for but just in case, I’ll be sure to take pictures of everything first. My camera phone was in my hand, but I didn’t think to get pictures. The woman also refused to share information like her driver’s license number or name with us, which is absolutely ridiculous considering the circumstance. While we got the business card from her son, we don’t know who this guy really is to any provable degree. We have the witness’ phone number, which was good, but entirely due to the boy liking the dog long enough to stick around.

I’m okay, which was pure luck, and I’ll just be thankful for that instead of wishing for money.