Well in spite of finding out the guy I wanted to torture to death with blunt impact trauma has already died life must go on (just not for him). I never will get to find out why he made a u-turn around a median to come back and kill me, what inspired that level of rage. I think that’s the thing that bothers me the most about this whole “resolution” thing, it doesn’t resolve anything. I want to know “Why?” so I can do something about it in the future. Of course if the answer to “Why?” is “Because I’m an asshole and don’t like bicycles on the road.” there isn’t much I can do about that except request some kind of screening during the driver’s license test that prevents people like that from ever getting a license, along with stricter laws against driving without a license, ideally the same penalties as carrying concealed without a CHL. Whatever, I’m just glad the asshole population on the roads in control of deadly weapons of mass destruction has been reduced by one.
Up first is a report from South NJ of a bike/car fandango. Bicycle rider injured after being hit by car in Absecon, police say I tried to look up the intersection on Street View, but couldn’t. I did use the high resolution satellite view but there were lots of overhanging trees that might have hidden stop signs, so who had right of way in this intersection is a bit problematical. Parsing the report there was no mention of the cyclist running a stop sign, which is something the MSM loves to tout even when it isn’t true, so on the information we have so far, I would say the cyclist had the right of way and the driver of the car “didn’t see him”. Intersection protocol for as much good as it would do.
Speaking of reducing the number of people in control of deadly weapons of mass destruction. UPDATED: Injured bicyclist wasn’t carrying identification The injured cyclist was hit nearly square and then the driver left the scene with heavy front end damage. This appears to be a hit-from-behind wreck during a period of restricted visibility due to weather. The cyclist was obviously not out for fun but to get someplace where he needed to be. All my Central California readers need to be vigilant for a vehicle with heavy front-end damage, most likely to the right front corner.
Up in the Great White North a pedestrian is killed in Vancouver BC. Pedestrian, 80, killed in collision with cyclist If the unconfirmed report that the cyclist was doing at or over 50 km/h is true that puts him at a speed that even in motor vehicles is 50% fatal to pedestrians, but one of the reasons I discount the story is the cyclist was unharmed in the impact, which is highly unlikely. Even at a lower speed of 30 km/h a cyclist hitting a pedestrian has a 50-50 chance of getting an injury requiring a trip to the ER. The pedestrian had just stepped into the bike lane according to one report, and was crossing in a marked crosswalk in another report. Both reports could be correct, crosswalks do extend into bike lanes. Bottom line on this wreck is not to hit the pedestrians. Let me re-phrase that: DO NOT HIT THE PEDESTRIANS!!!!! That would make us no better then car drivers, and who wants to sink that low 😉 ?
Even his fellow truck driver ask what the killer driver was doing even behind the wheel the day he killed. Muswell Hill trucker jailed for killing cyclist whilst hungover…….. The blogger tried to investigate why the driver still had a license after several cases that had removed his license for HGV driving, including three cases of drunk driving. I don’t know about the UK but after your second DUI in the US you lose a CDL for life. And the DUI doesn’t even have to be while driving a truck…
In Enn Zed a female cyclist from last weekend’s mass of wrecks is showing signs of improvement. Schoolgirl cyclist hit by truck stable I really hope she recovers fully and continues to be able to ride should she still desire to.
And finally an interesting story about what happens when helmet cam footage is used to determine fault in a wreck. Study blames drivers for bike crashes Interesting, that when unbiased people look at helmet cam video how much the blame shifts from the cyclist to the driver… In this study almost 9 out of 10 wrecks were because of some misdeed on the part of the driver of the deadly weapon used for transportation, not the cyclist. This jibes with a forensic study done a few years back in Canada where after reviewing the physical evidence of a wreck blame was assigned to the driver about 8 out of 10 times. “Conversely, drivers changing lanes and turning left without indicating or looking were the cause of more than 70 per cent of the incidents.” Interesting that lane changes were lumped into their equivalent of the right hook, but I see a lot of both that had I not been on high alert I would not be doing this particular blog post.
And that’s all the news that gives me fits this Tuesday. now go ride a bike.
Billed @$0.02, Opus
Witch on a Bicycle 
What’s the story of your near brush with death? You give an exhaustive — and harrowing — account of the aftermath in “About Opus,” but I don’t remember seeing anything about the minutes (seconds?) leading up to the crash. And how did you learn the identity of your would-be killer? There’s one hell of a tale here. It ought to be told.
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There’s not much to tell from before the wreck. Until I got hit Dallas and Richardson cops would shadow my commute route because as one cop put it “Son, you are an idiot magnet.” and they could get a month’s worth of tickets from people acting stupid around me on my after midnight commute home. Garland cops couldn’t have cared less. Just before I crossed into Garland someone in a white pickup shouted at me to “Get off the Fucking road!” and a few minutes later someone in a white pickup shouted the same thing doing about 65 MPH just before I got hit by him.
Just after the expiration of the statute of limitations (about this time of year 5 years ago) someone tried to bum some money off me at the transit station and said I must be loaded because I got hit by a city vehicle in my wreck. I forget that actual words but the gist of the conversation was that he had told the cop taking down statements that I had been hit by a City of Garland truck, but that information never made it into the final report, and also that he had seen the truck turn around to come back to hit me.
Recently someone claiming to be working for the city claims that there was a parks department truck that came back the morning after I was hit and the driver claimed a tree fell on it. No tree was ever produced to verify the statement but anyway, a few years after that the driver of the truck dies in a different wreck, and I get told about all of this in dribs and drabs over several weeks with the last part about him being dead just last week. I was never given a name, partially to keep my family from suing the estate and partially because my contact thought I might do something to the grave.
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The driver who hit you died in a wreck? Sounds like maybe the universe balanced the scales on your behalf.
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