It has been nearly two years since I consciously took the steps to become a safer driver.

I’ve never really wrote about it here, but I was in an accident in December 2006. I hit a bicyclist with my car. It was a terribly unlucky combination of dark, rain, time, and place.

I hasten to add that the person I hit was not hurt, though there were several tense hours before that was determined.

As you probably can figure, it was totally frightening and sickening*. And deeply humiliating, as I have so many bikey friends and am booster to the two-wheel community. And now you know why (in part) my long car commute was so painful — I just hated being so regularly accountable for a two-ton machine that had such dark capabilities.

I took stock and made changes right away. The DMV unnecessarily sent me a letter a few months later that said, in essence: “While you’re not the worst driver in California, you are bad! You had better straighten up and fly right, you bad driver!”

Okay, okay, message received! I slowed down and wised up. Changed my commute. Observed more. I can still be a bonehead, but I try, I try!

So, I felt rueful when I got a lovely picture in the mail the other day, a photo of me and my car, taking a left a little later into the yellow than we all would have preferred.

The rue turned to straight up burning pain when I found out the price of the fine.

Four hundred and fifty dollars. Ow.

I fully plan to talk to Someone In Charge and paraphrase what I’ve told you here. It was a momentarily lapse in yellow-light judgment! I was hurrying to the theater! To perform! For orphans, disabled veterans and the blind!

* The accident was a horrifying ending to one of the most dreadful years of my life. Ugh, 2006. Boo hiss.