What price for killing a cyclist?

[Jgrooms]

Win? Find a motorist that's been jailed unless drunk &/or leaving the scene. And even then?

The 'defense' is well known. I just didn't see him. Done. Fault implied upon the rogue cyclist, you know they never stop, case closed.

And nothing, short of a mass shift to people using bikes for trans, is going to change it. Well maybe Oregon's 10k plus fines will help.

Mitigation is all we got. Choose routes carefully based on time and flow. Wear high vis. Use a mirror. And ride w hi powered lights all the time. Leave your sensibilities about 'blinkies' at home & live to ride another day.

Whew...

[shovelhd]

Originally Posted by Saint Vitus

If I may, I think we can extrapolate that out for almost all of society's ills. Disconnection, bias, hatred etc have found a new outlet, that of the 'Comments' section of any site. Sad state of affairs to be sure, but a good percent of it is down to the beloved troll.

Yeah, there's that. Then there are the people who really feel that way. I attended a few town meetings where extending the rail trail came up. It's already here, this was an expansion. It was the same kind of reaction. Criminal element. No patrols. Trespassing. Let's face the facts. We are nothing but a nuisance to 90% of the non-cycling America. It's going to take significant change to make things even a little bit better.

[Jgrooms]

And Iowa is one of the better places to ride. Write that story in say Tx & see the comments.

Shovelhd is an optimist at 90% me thinks.

[shovelhd]

Yeah, maybe. I live in what is generally accepted as a cycling friendly area.

[cfox]

There needs to be different guidelines depending on the type of vehicles involved*. In other words, it's a lot harder for a car driver to kill another car driver than it is to kill a pedestrian or a cyclist. Car/car collisions resulting in deaths are more likely to result from obvious reckless driving. A car/bike collision only takes a slight swerve to the right to result in a death. I think that's the underlying reason you don't see a lot of car/bike accidents ending with jail time.



*maybe there are? I don't know.

[Elefantino]

Originally Posted by Saint Vitus

If I may, I think we can extrapolate that out for almost all of society's ills. Disconnection, bias, hatred etc have found a new outlet, that of the 'Comments' section of any site. Sad state of affairs to be sure, but a good percent of it is down to the beloved troll.

That's for sure. It's why I advocated, unsuccessfully, to have the comments turned off on individual stories at my former newspaper. We have open forums for those who need to troll/vent, including forums on our newspaper sites. But having them on individual stories drives over-passion and hatred. Both of which, thanks to new media and cable news, we have too much of right now.

[redir]

The fact of the matter is that the roads are dangerous and we all take a risk every day using them whether by bike, car or on foot. We all accept a reasonable risk when using them. As human animals we are outside what evolution has portended us when we get behind the wheel of a car or the bars of a bike. The fastest human ever recorded is Usain Bolt who ran 27MPH which is insane! But the average human running speed is about 15MPH and in both cases that is only for a short amount of time.

So what we have out there on the roads are people going faster than their sensory inputs were designed for and this sets up an environment where accidents can happen and they do because as humans we are fallible. BUt we have to make a choice. IS the risk worth it? Overwhelmingly yes it is.

So just because you have yet to be involved in an accident that was not your fault you certainly can be at any time. What the laws need to do is find out if indeed it is purely accidental or if it was criminal such as checking text messages, drinking or drugs, driving without your glasses and so on.

If this guy housed cyclist during the ride across Iowa event then that is pretty good evidence that he's not the cyclist hater type and tried to just blow by these guys real close or something like that.

He's a fallible human being who made a terrible mistake that no amount of money will fix nor will any amount of his suffering fix it either. If you throw him in jail what do you fix?

It's tragic, it happens all too much but don't think for a second that you can never be the one behind the wheel who makes such a tragic mistake.

I would however consider not being insured to be criminal in this case unless i am misunderstanding what he was charged for. Does he have insurance and just didn't have a card to proove it or is he uninsured, big difference.

[metrotuned]

In the SF Bay Area, the most common motor vehicle-bicycle accident is the motor vehicle overtaking the bicycle and taking a RIGHT TURN directly into the path of the cyclist. You have to learn to defend yourself and look over your shoulder, take the lane, or worst case, take that RIGHT TURN with the motorist while elbowing and/or punching the motor vehicle panels/windows to alert the driver.

[Black Dog]

Originally Posted by onekgguy

What glare? The sun was at their backs on a straight road with no hills. Like the surviving cyclist said, there couldn't have been more ideal conditions out there.

As one commenter wondered...would the same fine have been levied had the driver hit another vehicle and caused a death?

Kevin g

Ask this question: would the fine be the same if it was a pedestrian or a child? Or perhaps if it was a police officer on a bike (on duty bike patrol or off duty).

[carpediemracing]

Totally legal (that's my teammate in the picture):

Truck speed about 35-40 mph, our speed 21 mph.

A rider got killed locally when a white pick up truck hit him while he was riding on one of the widest shoulders you can find around here, maybe 6' wide. Someone commented that the driver must have been distracted to have been so far out of the lane.

Yet today I saw a white pick up basically as far over on the shoulder as possible, for an extended period of time. He was looking down at the center part of the truck, either a phone or notepad or something. He corrected every now and then.

I don't know what would have happened if there was a rider on the road.

[Black Dog]

Distracted Driving is now far worse than drunk driving and has become the leading cause of driving fatalities in most jurisdictions in North America. But, it is all done behind the wheel and, as such, gets a pass from any sort of personal accountability. What a shi**y culture we have cultivated around the car.

[Jgrooms]

Originally Posted by carpediemracing

Totally legal (that's my teammate in the picture):



Truck speed about 35-40 mph, our speed 21 mph.



A rider got killed locally when a white pick up truck hit him while he was riding on one of the widest shoulders you can find around here, maybe 6' wide. Someone commented that the driver must have been distracted to have been so far out of the lane.



Yet today I saw a white pick up basically as far over on the shoulder as possible, for an extended period of time. He was looking down at the center part of the truck, either a phone or notepad or something. He corrected every now and then.



I don't know what would have happened if there was a rider on the road.

How'd you capture this? All things going wrong here. Note how an overworked sprinkler is not only watering the road, over time it has damaged the road surface. Its a corner and there is oncoming, which the driver could not have seen when pass was initiated.

[gone]

Originally Posted by Black Dog

What a shi**y culture we have cultivated around the car.

But wait! It gets worse!

Car manufacturers are falling all over themselves to put "smart" infotainment systems in cars/trucks and companies like Apple are falling all over themselves to give it to them. Extracted from this report:

The research uncovered that hands- and eyes-free use of Apple’s Siri generated a relatively high category 4 level of mental distraction.

Mental distraction is rated from 0 (completely alert and focused) to 5 (probably asleep at the wheel) so a category 4 abstraction is pretty darned bad - even worse than reading/composing a text message while driving.

Self-driving cars can't get here soon enough.

[Look585]

Originally Posted by Black Dog

Distracted Driving is now far worse than drunk driving and has become the leading cause of driving fatalities in most jurisdictions in North America.

I'd love to get a source for this ^^^.

Distracted Driving is epidemic in the SF Bay Area. It used to be largely confined to young people, but it now spans age, race, gender, and socioeconomics. These days I find myself far more at ease on dirt or concrete (velodrome).

[THE ARS]

Originally Posted by carpediemracing

Totally legal (that's my teammate in the picture):

Truck speed about 35-40 mph, our speed 21 mph.

Your teammate has plenty of room to the right which is where slower traffic needs to be.

Or he can be a martyr and give his life to advance The Cyclist Rights Movement.

I've been hit by a car, and I highly recommend staying out of the way. But good luck with the revolution, I look forward to the day we can all ride around like the Pope, enclosed in a bubble and surrounded by a motorcade.