Bike accidents and near misses

Thanks Cat.  The form is good for the state of MA, right?  Not just Newton.

Guess we should all carry a small pen/piece of paper so that we can write down license pate numbers etc when something happened. 

yup the form is statewide, just found it conveniently on the newton website.

I use my phone to grab license plates...mine is a treo, but even a regular cell send a text message, or save a text message.... 

An assault is one thing, and should be reported to the police and prosecuted. Accidents and near misses, I'm not sure. I know that bikes are supposed to be treated as cars, but I know that when I ride I don't stay in a lane, I don't come to complete stops at stop signs unless I have to, I sometimes will go thru reds light if there aren't any cars, I weave thru traffic (called lane splitting, and it's illegal in MA on a motorcycle, so I'm assuming it's illegal on a bicycle) etc. Basically I think if someone wanted to they could write me up more than I could write up the cars.

There are people who are courteous to cyclists and there are people who aren't. Those people aren't going to become more courteous because a bunch of cyclists filed a complaint against them. It's probably only going to make them mad and cause them to be LESS courteous, or worse.

Maybe I get this attitude from riding motorcycles, but YOU are the one that is responsible for YOUR safety. You can't assume that a driver will even SEE you, let alone pass you with plenty of room, allow you to go at a light, etc.

Or maybe I'm missing your point here. It's happened before. 

See I do not do what you do....

So I am talking about cars that get right next to/ behind you and honk repeatedly (harassment) - cars that make turns cutting us off without time to stop (several of those recently resulting in rib fractures....), cars that force bikes off the road....

I am so amazed, and of course I am responsible for my safety, and I ride defensively, but I am dumbstruck almost every ride, and want to fight back and make it safer for all of us out there. 

These aren't examples of accidents, these are outright assault and assault with a deadly weapon. In these cases I'm filing charges, not an incident report. Or tracking them down myself. Luckily I haven't been forced off the road yet and the only time I was cut off was from a dead stop.

Sorry I misunderstood what you were saying.