Human Encounter/ Social Fumble/ I Felt So Bad

As I was biking home on Friday I came to a place in my route where two paths intersect. I needed to turn left but there was another biker approaching from the other direction, right there in my left-hand turn path, and he needed to turn right. In other words we were right in each others' way. 

He was there first so I slowed down. He saw me coming and, perhaps acting as a gentleman, he also slowed down. Realizing that he was going to wait for me to go first, I sped up and rounded the turn. The other man's bike slowed nearly to a stand still as he waited for me to pass. Without warning, he uttered a low, "Oh, sh__!" and he and his bike fell over sideways to the ground, his feet still locked into his pedals.

Yikes! I've never actually witnessed that before. I've never felt personally responsible for it happening to someone else, either. It was so sad! There was nothing he could do to break his fall.

I considered stopping to see if he was OK, but I was afraid. Maybe he would feel ridiculous if a girl who really couldn't do anything to help him anyways and whose fault it was that he fell over stopped to make an even bigger deal about his embarrassing fall.

Should I have stopped? Yeah, it was probably the courteous thing to do. Instead I exclaimed, "Oh no! I'm so sorry!" and stood up in my saddle to pedal quickly away (to gain more speed for the ensuing incline...)

Why do I do the things I do? I sincerely hope that someday my rational thoughts will compute fast enough to govern my split-second decisions. Someday.