Driver admits killing Marine cyclist

wrote:
wrote:
http://www.nbcsandiego.com/traffic/5032871/detail.html

THAT SHOULD TEACH HIM TO STAY IN THE ****EN BIKE LANE. HEHE

I'm starting to wish that you would get run over. Have a nice day
twit.

Tom

Curtis L. Russell wrote:


This is the next thing to the helmet wars, but if they are that close,
how does a stripe make them move further away? If there is room for a
lane, then it tends not to be an issue -


i like big wide roads and big shoulders too. but if someone wants to
improve a road by widening it and painting a bike lane, i'm happy with
them and i'm not going to complain that they ruined it with the paint.
if they just want to paint a bike lane on a street that's already wide
enough for it, that's fine with me too, at least they're showing that
they're aware that cyclists exist. i don't feel like my rights are being
violated or i'm being banned from any street because of a bike lane. the
post i was replying to commented on how bike lanes were getting cyclists
"out of the road", and i was saying in my case, they actually promote my
desire to ride in the road. i don't like riding on the sidewalk, but i'm
not willing to die over my right to ride in the street when it just
doesn't seem safe.

h

The time I was hit from behind (by a drunk driver), I was in a bike
lane.

Bikes are but a speck in the landscape at times. With certain lighting
conditions and certain color contrast issues, we have to come to grips
with the fact that someday, we might just get squished. Sometimes
people just do not see us. I'm not saying that it's right...But
fighting this is like trying to fight murder.

wrote:

The time I was hit from behind (by a drunk driver)

you've written that you've been posting here for years, but i have no
idea who you are. i figure i must know you though, and it bothers me
that someone i know was hit by a drunk driver and i never knew about it
sounds like you're ok and recovered now (?)
heather

Neil Brooks wrote:
............

Recent e-mail from the group's Executive Director:
-------------------------------------------------------------

As some of you know, ....


I cycle this road daily and am glad to hear of the SDCBC efforts. I
was cycling to work on the other side of the road the morning this
happened.

What was not addressed in the meeting notes is the need to enforce the
50 MPH speed limit. It would help a lot. The speed limit just a mile
back is 65. As a result many motorists are entering the 163 on ramp at
70 or more. A bicyclist has to cross *two* 163 entrance ramp lanes at
that point. There is a big difference between a car approaching at 50
and at 70 or 75.

Speaking only from my own personal experience.
Tom

Heather,

I do not recognize your name, but since I left San Diego for college
back in 1990, I have not been much of a racing figure in SD. I live in
AZ now.

I was hit from behind in 1987 while training on northbound Torrey Pines
Road in San Diego, just north of UCSD. I was 19 and a member of SDBC
at the time. Cat 3 rider. I had just left UCSD and was on TPR heading
towards Del Mar. A car was merging from Genessee onto nb Torrey Pines
as I was moving over into the bike lane. When I'd looked back for
traffic, he was like 100-200 yards back. Little did I know he was
going like 75-80 MPH. I even yelled "car back" to my ride mates as we
got over, even considering making no mention of it at all. They made
it, and I didn't. When I suddenly began accelerating, I figured Tony
Olsen must have quietly snuck up on me and given me a turbo push as a
joke. The first hit "bounced" me forward at about 50MPH. I somehow
kept it upright. The second hit made me wobble as the rear wheel was
disintegrating. I flew over the bars, hit the pavement and skidded to
a stop, and came to rest staring at the right front tire's tread
pattern. I was very lucky. No helmet either. The ER doc at Scripps
had been on our club ride the day before, and remembered me. My only
actual injury was a scraped knee and palms. Mavic's G-40 rims may have
saved my life. A lesser wheel might have crushed sooner, and I'd be
dead. The "bounce" probably gave the driver time to slow down
somewhat.

The driver of the car was released with an unsafe driving ticket. As
I sought repayment for my bike, he admitted to me that he was drunk and
that drinking was decimating his life. We settled privately.


While I do not doubt you could figure out who I am with a few
keystrokes and an nslookup...I now prefer to keep my postings
anonymous. Back when "googling" started to become popular, some of my
coworkers one day dug-up some ancient posts. I think I called Tom
Kunich a "pig ****er" or something of that sort. I then figured future
employers of mine would also be googling me down the road, so I dove
into anonymity about 7-8 years ago. As deja news and then google have
screwed around with their usenet front end, I've adopted different
"personas" ("kaiser" being a past name). I'll keep this one as long as
possible. No big if people on rbr figure out who I am. I leave clues
all the time. I just don't want to lose a job over doping arguments.

Curtis L. Russell wrote:

OTOH, the average rider in DC ranks among the worst of any I've seen
anywhere.

I dunno, us Seattle drivers suck pretty badly too. Washingtonians
generally blame this on all the Californians who've moved up here. I
disagree. I was stationed in CA for 7 years. CA drivers also suck, but
it's a fast, precise type of suckiness as opposed to the "Where the hell
am I? What do you know, I seem to be behind the wheel of a car"
suckiness of Washingtonians.

Suckiness is infinite in it's variety.

Hi Neil:
I was on that ride too -- and it IS a nasty stretch. Traffic at
speed merges from the right. We've got worse in San Diego, though. For
example, there's the Grand Avenue/Mission Bay Drive merge -- a cyclist
was killed there about five hours before the Mission Bay Visitor's
Center element of the ride for Captain Klokow departed. Then there's
Barnett/Pacific Coast Highway -- TWO lanes join from the right, at
expressway speed, and there's a concrete wall in the line of sight so
the only way those motorists could see a cyclist, even if they were
looking, would be X=ray vision.
But any improvement, anywhere, would be nice.

Robert Leone

h squared wrote:
Curtis L. Russell wrote:


This is the next thing to the helmet wars, but if they are that close,
how does a stripe make them move further away? If there is room for a
lane, then it tends not to be an issue -



i like big wide roads and big shoulders too. but if someone wants to
improve a road by widening it and painting a bike lane, i'm happy with
them and i'm not going to complain that they ruined it with the paint.
if they just want to paint a bike lane on a street that's already wide
enough for it, that's fine with me too, at least they're showing that
they're aware that cyclists exist.


Huh? Did blacks in South Africa exist because they were shoved in
Bantustans?

i don't feel like my rights are being
violated or i'm being banned from any street because of a bike lane.

But of course they are. You just don't "feel" they are.

the
post i was replying to commented on how bike lanes were getting cyclists
"out of the road", and i was saying in my case, they actually promote my
desire to ride in the road. i don't like riding on the sidewalk, but i'm
not willing to die over my right to ride in the street when it just
doesn't seem safe.

h

If you think a magic stripe makes is "seem" safe, or even actually
improves your safety, I think you are being deluded. May I suggest a
thorough examination of:
http://www.humantransport.org/bicycledriving/index.html

Regards,
Wayne

Wayne Pein wrote:
h squared wrote:

i like big wide roads and big shoulders too. but if someone wants to
improve a road by widening it and painting a bike lane, i'm happy with
them and i'm not going to complain that they ruined it with the paint.
if they just want to paint a bike lane on a street that's already wide
enough for it, that's fine with me too, at least they're showing that
they're aware that cyclists exist.

Huh? Did blacks in South Africa exist because they were shoved in
Bantustans?

Dumbass,

Comparing bike lanes to Bantustans suggests that you
are getting a little bit overheated. The amount of
moral reprehensibility in apartheid vs. treatment of
cyclists isn't very comparable.

i don't feel like my rights are being
violated or i'm being banned from any street because of a bike lane.

But of course they are. You just don't "feel" they are.

You seized on the part you can argue with and
ignored the part where Heather said "if someone wants to
improve a road by widening it and painting a bike lane."
Anti-bike lane rhetoric often misses the "improving and
widening" part. You might be right that painting bike
lane stripes promotes the idea in the general population
that bicyclists should be confined inside the stripes.

But lots of people make the association of bike lanes
and wide roads (since you can't paint a bike lane on
a substandard width road), vs narrow roads which have
no bike lanes. Some of which suck to ride on, even if
you are aggressive and take the lane.

Going around calling those people deluded on Usenet may
help make a rhetorical point, but don't confuse it with
effective cycling advocacy. There, I did it, I got sucked
into this ****ing bike lane argument again. It really
belongs in the rec.bicycles.soc enclave (I didn't say
Bantustan).

If you think a magic stripe makes is "seem" safe, or even actually
improves your safety, I think you are being deluded. May I suggest a
thorough examination of:
http://www.humantransport.org/bicycledriving/index.html