While riding three mph in a bicycle lane I was sideswiped by a passing motor vehicle. Five days later a young woman showed up at my place and said she saw the accident. She described a motor vehicle in the opposite lane that crossed the double yellow line into the adjacent lane, then entered my bicycle lane. It hit my rear wheel and then crossed back into the adjacent lane; back over the double yellow lines and into it's original lane.
This young lady never spoke to me again; the police, my lawyer or my auto insurance company which my lawyer contacted because a motor vehicle was involved.
Here's the small town part. One motorist behind me said I was riding 20 to 25 mph in the middle of the traffic lane and went over my handlebars. A second said 30 to 35 mph and very close to the double yellow lines and went over my handlebars. The problem for the witnesses was that number one testified he was twenty feet behind me before the accident he described; his Ford 250 was also 21 feet long.
Before the accident she described, witness number two said she was fifty feet behind me, which means she would have been nine feet behind the rear end of a large pick up, of which she made no mention in her testimony, and would have blocked her view of the accident.
Witness number one stopped seven feet away from my body after the accident, even though it takes forty feet to stop at twenty mph. Before the accident he described twenty feet behind me, he would have run me over.
The jury found for the insurance company. To have found against the insurance company would have started a hunt by the company for the hit and run driver in that small town. Better to blame the victim than to exercise the auto policy because somebody every one liked would go to jail.