Advocacy & Safety - Be Safe and Careful in 2011 & Beyond

Reading and seeing the picture really hit me hard today:

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/broward/sunrise/fl-flamingo-road-fatal-20110104,0,1071676.story

Without knowing the circumstances, it's hard to tell what went wrong, I'm thinking elderly driver and not seeing the cyclist on a pre-dawn ride ?

Looking at the amount of damage to the car, one might expect excessive speed might be a contributing factor

more:
http://www.justnews.com/news/26363329/detail.html

Three questions I have... what is the age of the driver... was there a cell phone around... did the bike have lighting?

Three questions I have... what is the age of the driver... was there a cell phone around... did the bike have lighting?

The bike collided with a white Ford car at about 7 a.m.

Reading and seeing the picture really hit me hard today:

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/broward/sunrise/fl-flamingo-road-fatal-20110104,0,1071676.story

Without knowing the circumstances, it's hard to tell what went wrong, I'm thinking elderly driver and not seeing the cyclist on a pre-dawn ride ?

This is SO typical.

"A man riding his bicycle was killed early Tuesday morning after colliding with a car, police said."

From looking at the car it would appear MUCH more likely that the car had collided with the cyclist, IMHO.

This is SO typical.

"A man riding his bicycle was killed early Tuesday morning after colliding with a car, police said."

From looking at the car it would appear MUCH more likely that the car had collided with the cyclist, IMHO.

/sarcasm on

Oh no, looking at the picture it is so obvious that the cyclist jumped onto the top of the car in some strange mad effort. /sarcasm off

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/media/photo/2011-01/58580256.JPG

Going one further... there doesn't seem to be an intersection involved... but then I made that opinion based only on the photo.

This appears to be an "overtaking" type collision... of course the cyclist may have "swerved."

Going one further... there doesn't seem to be an intersection involved... but then I made that opinion based only on the photo.

This appears to be an "overtaking" type collision... of course the cyclist may have "swerved."

It would definitely appear that way, and it would also appear that the speed involved was quite high, judging from the damage to the car. Looking at it on Google Streetview, it seems to be a wide multilane highway with no shoulders or bike lanes (and probably high average vehicle speeds). The cyclist was probably taking the lane and was hit from behind. Pretty inexcusable given that the motorist had 3 lanes to choose from...I wonder if alcohol, visibility, or inattention were factors. At least they didn't flee the scene like we see too often.

At least they didn't flee the scene like we see too often.
I was struck by the emphasis placed on this in both news stories particularly since the accompanying photo clearly shows the car at the scene. Is hit-and-run now so commonplace that it is especially newsworthy when the driver doesn't do that?

I was struck by the emphasis placed on this in both news stories particularly since the accompanying photo clearly shows the car at the scene. Is hit-and-run now so commonplace that it is especially newsworthy when the driver doesn't do that?

Sadly, yes, it's quite common (and not just for car-bike accidents). I know a lot of people who have been victims of hit-and-run drivers.

This article was posted here a little while back and it says that in Portland alone, police take ~6,000 complaints a year of hit-and-run. A lot of drivers just don't care if they think they can weasel out of responsibility for their actions.
http://www.portlandtribune.com/news/story.php?story_id=127732848290931100