Big Truck, Little Eyes

Chico, United States

28 May, 2026 - 2 weeks ago - on Greenwich Drive
This is the roundabout at 8th Avenue and Greenwich Drive in Chico, late afternoon commute, May 28, 2026.

I entered the roundabout first. I was already established in the circulating lane. There was no traffic between me and the truck, nor behind me. There was no crowd of cars. There was no visual maze. In a roundabout, entering traffic has one basic job: look left and yield to whoever is already in the circle.

I was that “whoever.”

I was not exactly sneaking through the roundabout like a woodland creature. I was upright, in the lane, front and center, with a very bright front headlight, forward camera lighting, rear red lighting, and a flashing rear helmet light because there was a chance of rain. The loud fan you hear in the video is the cooling fan for the front light. Subtle, it was not.

The truck was a Ford F-250 Lariat, one of the largest passenger pickups commonly on the road. It is not a delicate little whisper of a vehicle. So yes, there is some absurdity in the idea that the driver of a massive truck “couldn’t see” a well-lit rider directly in front of her, in the one place she was required to look before entering the roundabout.

The driver appeared to look toward me and continued entering anyway. I cannot prove what was in her mind. I can only say what it looked like from my position and what the video appears to show. From where I was, this did not feel like a simple failure to notice me. It felt like a driver in a very large truck saw a smaller road user already in the roundabout and decided the truck was going to take the lane anyway.

Maybe she misjudged it. Maybe she assumed I would move. Maybe she thought the size of the truck settled the question.

But that is the whole problem.

When I sensed that she was not yielding and was effectively challenging my lane, I pulled back and tried to avoid being hit. I gave an audible warning/callout. It was not enough. The truck continued into my path, and I had to choose between getting hit by the front of an F-250 or bailing out of the line I was lawfully occupying.

I chose not getting hit by the truck.

That sent me off my line and into/near the center divide. The EUC rolled, warned, and crashed in front of the truck. I went down backward, away from the vehicle, which is probably the only reason this was not much worse.

Afterward, the driver made a comment along the lines of not being able to see riders. I am going to be very plain about this. That explanation does not match what the video shows. This was daylight. I was overtly visible. I was already in the roundabout. I was directly ahead. There was no other traffic hiding me. There was no apparent distraction available in the scene that explains entering into an occupied lane.

And then there is the size argument.

The driver was in one of the largest passenger pickups commonly on the road, and somehow the explanation became that the much smaller, brightly lit road user was the visibility problem. That is a neat trick! Enter a roundabout in a massive truck, fail to yield to the person already in the lane, force that person off the line to avoid being hit, and then make the size and visibility of the victim the issue.

Blame the victim. Yeah, that’s a good one.

The size of the truck was not an excuse. It was the reason to exercise more care, not less. If you are driving something that large, with that much mass, height, mirrors, lighting, braking capacity, and modern safety equipment, you do not get to pretend helplessness when you enter an occupied roundabout lane.

When a truck that large enters the path of a smaller road user who is already established in the lane, the truck’s size becomes part of the threat. Whether intended as a threat or just handled with reckless entitlement, the effect is the same. The smaller person gets forced out of the lane or gets hit.

And here is the other part drivers need to understand: hitting a person is not like bumping a Yugo.

A bicyclist, pedestrian, scooter rider, or EUC rider may look like the “small” thing on the road, but if you hit them, they may become the most expensive “vehicle” you ever hit. The cost is not just a bent bumper and a body-shop estimate. It is medical treatment, follow-up care, lost time, damaged equipment, pain, injury, replacement gear, possible long-term consequences, insurance exposure, personal exposure, and litigation risk.

Auto insurance limits are not magic either. Injury claims can outrun ordinary policy limits quickly, especially when the driver hits an unprotected person rather than another enclosed vehicle. Once the policy is not enough, the rest does not just disappear into the roundabout mist. It becomes personal money, personal assets, attorneys, lawsuits, and years of aggravation.

This one is already several thousand dollars before the EUC has even been fully assessed. Camera. Camera mount. Patagonia rain jacket. Digital amateur radio. Possible EUC damage. Medical/body work. Scrapes, bruises, a nasty elbow bruise, a jammed shoulder/elbow, and a back injury that needed adjustment.

For a driver, an at-fault injury crash is not just “oops, I didn’t see you.” It can mean DMV points, insurance consequences, claim exposure, personal liability, and bills that keep adding up long after the video ends.

This may be the most expensive crash many drivers ever have in their lifetime.

I am not naming the driver here. I am posting the video because this was avoidable, because roundabouts only work when entering drivers actually yield, and because “I didn’t see you” is not a magic phrase that makes a highly visible person disappear from responsibility.

I cannot prove intent. But I can say this: the video does not look like invisibility. It looks like a driver who entered anyway.

Look left. Yield to traffic already in the roundabout. Especially when the thing already in the roundabout is lit up like a tiny parade float and yelling at you not to hit it.