The day I almost hit a motorcycle cop.

On the way in this morning, while sitting at a stop light. I got to thing about something that almost happened when riding to work one morning.

Washington st in Old Town Alexandria is four lanes of traffic except during rush hour. During rush hour it is five lanes of traffic. Non rush hour times the two HOV-2 lanes are parking lanes. So in the morning it would be 3 lanes going north and 2 going south. In the evening  it is 3 lanes going south and 2 going north. The law says your are allowed to travel in the HOV-2 lane in a car for the distance of 1 block with a single person in the car. Motorcycles are allow to be in the HOV lanes and can travel the whole distance.

It was early morning. I was going down Washington St. As I approach this one intersection there was this car trying to make a right turn from the center lane to one of the side streets. I have seen so many cars almost hit cause they try this. And seen a few hit. One of two things happens. Either the cars behind them will blow the horn and the car will continue down get in the HOV and then turn at the next street. The other is the car will just go for it and almost get or get T-Boned by a car coming down the HOV lane. Anyways back to the story. This car was sitting with the blinker on the cars behind are blowing their horns. There happened to be two Alexandria Motorcycle cops on this corner. They were sitting up on the sidewalk looking for HOV violators. I see one of the cops steep off the curb and walk to the stop car. I am starting to slow down. Not sure what might happen. Is the cop going to stop traffic for the car to turn or is he going to make the car go strait? He tells the car to go strait. I am now only a few feet from him. He steps backwards into the HOV lane and then turns to the right. This now puts his back to the flow of traffic. I locked the rear tire. I wasn't going that fast. So it was just a short screech. It was enough to scare him.

The other cop was still standing on the sidewalk during this whole thing. I ended up looking over at him and he was just shaking his head looking at the other cop who was not stepping back onto the sidewalk.

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