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#11
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Dickens:"The law is a ass."
On 09/02/2018 10:07 AM, jbeattie wrote:
On Thursday, February 8, 2018 at 4:30:39 PM UTC-8, Frank Krygowski wrote: On Thursday, February 8, 2018 at 6:58:04 PM UTC-5, wrote: "The police and prosecutors do not want to ruin someone's life just for killing a cyclist, so they accept "I didn't see" him or her as a valid defense (instead of the admission of negligence that it really is. " Most of us drive too. It is damned easy not to see a cyclist. If you really believe that applies to a cyclist in ordinary daylight, or a legally lit cyclist at night, you should turn in your driver's license. It's your job as a driver to see cyclists, plus pedestrians (including kids who my react unpredictably), plus motorcycles, plus other cars, plus trash cans that blow into the road, plus trees by the side of the road, plus any number of other things that may be near you or in front of you. Other than a persecution complex, there is no reason to conclude "just a cyclist" as some kind of motive, when the easier explanation is that mere negligence is a just a civil case and there is simply insufficient evidence to prove a crime. Negligence is not just a civil case. There are laws against it. Well, unless your drunk or criminally negligent, it is a civil case. Otherwise, every car v. car accident would be criminally prosecuted. The evil dark side of treating bicycles as vehicles is that getting hit by a car is legally no different from getting hit in a car by another car. You ask who had the right of way and go from there. But I have yet to see a ghost car by the side of the road. http://www.oregonlive.com/living/ind...nd_a_bitt.html It's easy to see cyclists on a long, flat, empty road. It's not as easy in cluttered urban environment with lots of distractions, e.g. pedestrians, cars, traffic signals. This is not an excuse -- just a reality. There are places where I know conflicts are common, and I exercise case. And regrettably, bike facilities more often than not put cyclists in harms way -- and will do so until motorists learn that bike lanes are (wait for it) lanes. Separate facilities can hide cyclists altogether at intersections or pit bikes against bikes or pedestrians. For some f****** unknown reason, they just put a Tesla dealership straddling a separated bike path on my way home, and now that is the killing fields. You're basically riding through a car dealership with cars using the bike path as a road (because there is no road, just a bike path). And don't get me going about the buses. I've already ordered my flame-thrower from Elon Musk, which I intent to use on the buses and his Tesla dealership. The question I think is what constitutes criminal negligence. Texting while driving should as it's illegal - at least here in Quebec. Also I think there should be a different standard for professional presumably trained truck drivers. |
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#12
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Dickens:"The law is a ass."
jbeattie writes:
On Thursday, February 8, 2018 at 4:30:39 PM UTC-8, Frank Krygowski wrote: On Thursday, February 8, 2018 at 6:58:04 PM UTC-5, wrote: "The police and prosecutors do not want to ruin someone's life just for killing a cyclist, so they accept "I didn't see" him or her as a valid defense (instead of the admission of negligence that it really is. " Most of us drive too. It is damned easy not to see a cyclist. If you really believe that applies to a cyclist in ordinary daylight, or a legally lit cyclist at night, you should turn in your driver's license. It's your job as a driver to see cyclists, plus pedestrians (including kids who my react unpredictably), plus motorcycles, plus other cars, plus trash cans that blow into the road, plus trees by the side of the road, plus any number of other things that may be near you or in front of you. Other than a persecution complex, there is no reason to conclude "just a cyclist" as some kind of motive, when the easier explanation is that mere negligence is a just a civil case and there is simply insufficient evidence to prove a crime. Negligence is not just a civil case. There are laws against it. Well, unless your drunk or criminally negligent, it is a civil case. Otherwise, every car v. car accident would be criminally prosecuted. The evil dark side of treating bicycles as vehicles is that getting hit by a car is legally no different from getting hit in a car by another car. You ask who had the right of way and go from there. But I have yet to see a ghost car by the side of the road. http://www.oregonlive.com/living/ind...nd_a_bitt.html I see quite a few roadside crosses here. I'm sure most of those they memorialize were either car drivers or passengers. Maybe they don't do that in Oregon. -- |
#13
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Dickens:"The law is a ass."
On 2/9/2018 10:31 AM, Radey Shouman wrote:
jbeattie writes: But I have yet to see a ghost car by the side of the road. http://www.oregonlive.com/living/ind...nd_a_bitt.html I see quite a few roadside crosses here. I'm sure most of those they memorialize were either car drivers or passengers. Maybe they don't do that in Oregon. I come across a few roadside crosses or other similar memorials, but they are probably fewer than one every 200 miles. Given that there are over 35,000 motorists killed each year (vs. about 800 bicyclists) it seems like white painted junk cars should be stacked up everywhere! Cars are dangerous! -- - Frank Krygowski |
#14
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Dickens:"The law is a ass."
Frank Krygowski writes:
On 2/9/2018 10:31 AM, Radey Shouman wrote: jbeattie writes: But I have yet to see a ghost car by the side of the road. http://www.oregonlive.com/living/ind...nd_a_bitt.html I see quite a few roadside crosses here. I'm sure most of those they memorialize were either car drivers or passengers. Maybe they don't do that in Oregon. I come across a few roadside crosses or other similar memorials, but they are probably fewer than one every 200 miles. Given that there are over 35,000 motorists killed each year (vs. about 800 bicyclists) it seems like white painted junk cars should be stacked up everywhere! Cars are dangerous! Google claims the US has 4.12 million miles of road, so that would be 118 miles per fatality. That sounds well within the precision of your 200 mile estimate, particularly since some crash sites have multiple fatalities, and most are not marked. I've also assumed a lifetime of a year. I guess it's a matter of local mores: Ghost bikes rarely last a week here, but roadside crosses may persist for years. Who knows? They might even remind the occasional driver to pay attention. -- |
#15
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Dickens:"The law is a ass."
On Friday, February 9, 2018 at 10:55:16 AM UTC-8, Radey Shouman wrote:
Frank Krygowski writes: On 2/9/2018 10:31 AM, Radey Shouman wrote: jbeattie writes: But I have yet to see a ghost car by the side of the road. http://www.oregonlive.com/living/ind...nd_a_bitt.html I see quite a few roadside crosses here. I'm sure most of those they memorialize were either car drivers or passengers. Maybe they don't do that in Oregon. I come across a few roadside crosses or other similar memorials, but they are probably fewer than one every 200 miles. Given that there are over 35,000 motorists killed each year (vs. about 800 bicyclists) it seems like white painted junk cars should be stacked up everywhere! Cars are dangerous! Google claims the US has 4.12 million miles of road, so that would be 118 miles per fatality. That sounds well within the precision of your 200 mile estimate, particularly since some crash sites have multiple fatalities, and most are not marked. I've also assumed a lifetime of a year. I guess it's a matter of local mores: Ghost bikes rarely last a week here, but roadside crosses may persist for years. Who knows? They might even remind the occasional driver to pay attention. A lot of that road is pretty empty. You could play football on some of the highways in Eastern Oregon. http://i.imgur.com/44YsRI2.jpg (going west from Nevada). Take an extra water bottle. Anyway, we don't get much in the way of memorials around here for the dead drivers. Bicyclists and motorists die with some regularity on my flat commute route. https://bikeportland.org/2013/05/16/...bur-blvd-86837 Angela Burke got a vigil. https://bikeportland.org/2010/12/20/...bur-blvd-44832 Someone has died there every year for at least the last six years. I've been riding it for 30 years -- before bike lanes, and alas, I must suffer through my dreary existence, still alive. I admit, though, with increased traffic and the buses, it can be pretty unpleasant. -- Jay Beattie. |
#16
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Dickens:"The law is a ass."
On Fri, 9 Feb 2018 10:22:25 -0500, Duane
wrote: On 09/02/2018 10:07 AM, jbeattie wrote: On Thursday, February 8, 2018 at 4:30:39 PM UTC-8, Frank Krygowski wrote: On Thursday, February 8, 2018 at 6:58:04 PM UTC-5, wrote: "The police and prosecutors do not want to ruin someone's life just for killing a cyclist, so they accept "I didn't see" him or her as a valid defense (instead of the admission of negligence that it really is. " Most of us drive too. It is damned easy not to see a cyclist. If you really believe that applies to a cyclist in ordinary daylight, or a legally lit cyclist at night, you should turn in your driver's license. It's your job as a driver to see cyclists, plus pedestrians (including kids who my react unpredictably), plus motorcycles, plus other cars, plus trash cans that blow into the road, plus trees by the side of the road, plus any number of other things that may be near you or in front of you. Other than a persecution complex, there is no reason to conclude "just a cyclist" as some kind of motive, when the easier explanation is that mere negligence is a just a civil case and there is simply insufficient evidence to prove a crime. Negligence is not just a civil case. There are laws against it. Well, unless your drunk or criminally negligent, it is a civil case. Otherwise, every car v. car accident would be criminally prosecuted. The evil dark side of treating bicycles as vehicles is that getting hit by a car is legally no different from getting hit in a car by another car. You ask who had the right of way and go from there. But I have yet to see a ghost car by the side of the road. http://www.oregonlive.com/living/ind...nd_a_bitt.html It's easy to see cyclists on a long, flat, empty road. It's not as easy in cluttered urban environment with lots of distractions, e.g. pedestrians, cars, traffic signals. This is not an excuse -- just a reality. There are places where I know conflicts are common, and I exercise case. And regrettably, bike facilities more often than not put cyclists in harms way -- and will do so until motorists learn that bike lanes are (wait for it) lanes. Separate facilities can hide cyclists altogether at intersections or pit bikes against bikes or pedestrians. For some f****** unknown reason, they just put a Tesla dealership straddling a separated bike path on my way home, and now that is the killing fields. You're basically riding through a car dealership with cars using the bike path as a road (because there is no road, just a bike path). And don't get me going about the buses. I've already ordered my flame-thrower from Elon Musk, which I intent to use on the buses and his Tesla dealership. The question I think is what constitutes criminal negligence. Texting while driving should as it's illegal - at least here in Quebec. Also I think there should be a different standard for professional presumably trained truck drivers. That implies that non truck drivers are not as competent. The question then becomes, "do we want to be on the road with all these incompetent drivers"? But the superior trained truck driver does have a further implication, doesn't it? What about the totally untrained bicyclist, who, in many cases isn't even aware of the traffic code? -- Cheers, John B. |
#17
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Dickens:"The law is a ass."
On Thu, 8 Feb 2018 15:58:01 -0800 (PST), wrote:
Most of us drive too. It is damned easy not to see a cyclist. I remember a time when I'd have killed a wrong-way cyclist or crashed into another car avoiding him if I had not been in the habit of waiting until both eastbound lanes were clear before turning onto Western Avenue. I've never been startled by a cyclist who knew the rules of the road -- except by the mere fact that someone *did* know the rules of the road. -- Joy Beeson, U.S.A., mostly central Hoosier, some Northern Indiana, Upstate New York, Florida, and Hawaii joy beeson at comcast dot net http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/ The above message is a Usenet post. I don't recall having given anyone permission to use it on a Web site. |
#18
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Dickens:"The law is a ass."
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#19
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Dickens:"The law is a ass."
On Thu, 8 Feb 2018 20:12:26 -0500, Frank Krygowski
wrote: On 2/8/2018 6:13 PM, Tim McNamara wrote: How are most cyclists injured or killed in accidents? They are struck from behind by an overtaking motor vehicle. Sorry, that's not true. See https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/PED_BIKE...f/swless04.pdf snip 11. The most frequent parallel-path crashes were motorist turn/merge into bicyclist’s path (12.2 percent), motorist overtaking the bicyclist (8.6 percent), and bicyclist turn/merge into motorist’s path (7.3 percent). Do you know if the first type were exclusively drivers and cyclists traveling in opposite drections? Or does this include situations where the driver had passed the cyclist and then turned, cutting the cyclist off? I would include that scenario in my original statement as they were struck by a vehicle coming from behind. Not that it would be likely to move that into the majority. Perhaps my information is out of date, past research had indicated being struck by a vehicle traveling in the same direction caused more fatalities. The most frequent crossing path crashes were motorist failed to yield to bicyclist (21.7 percent), bicyclist failed to yield at an intersection (16.8 percent), and bicyclist failed to yield midblock (11.8 percent). In what scenario does a vehicle turning or entering the road in the middle of the block have the right of way? These six individual crash types accounted for almost 80 percent of all bicycle-motor vehicle crashes." What are the other 20+%? Bicycists hitting parked cars? Drivers hitting stationary bicyclists (we had one of those incidents here a few years ago when a semi driver turned right on a red, crushing the cyclist in the bike lane waiting at the corner under the trailer wheels). So motorist overtaking were just 8.6 percent of the total. And I'd bet that a majority of those were of two types: Totally Unlit cyclists at night, which legal lighting would prevent; and "I think I can squeeze by" events, which would have been averted by lane control by the cyclist. I strongly suspect that 8.6% is a gross underestimate and that the real number is at least double that. It doesn't pass the smell test. As for you putative reasons, I think that certainly a percentage is the unlit cyclist scenario (since I see a lot of that around here and those riders can be hard to see especially in the glare of oncoming headlights). But I think the greater cause is inattentive, negligent and incompetent driving. The lane control is a red herring, it is the driver's responsibility to gauge that correctly and their fault if they don't- not that that helps the dead cyclist or injured, of course. As my Mom used to say about driving, "you can be right and you can be dead right." snip LAB's been useless for decades. Their devotees around here have managed to get bike lanes created that are more dangerous than the situation had been on the same roads without them. |
#20
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Dickens:"The law is a ass."
On Fri, 9 Feb 2018 07:07:20 -0800 (PST), jbeattie
wrote: But I have yet to see a ghost car by the side of the road. No, people put up memorial crosses and the like where fatal accidents have happened. It's common enough that the Minnesota Department of Transportation has policies and guidelines about it. There are mostly informal policies about ghost bikes in the Twin Cities. |
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