Originally Posted by
Zaneluke
Would you ride your bike on a 50MPH road at 5am? I trust my skills 150% as a biker. At 50MPH with or without lights and reflective gear you are almost invisable to a driver. Not blaming the biker at all. I would have hauled in the driver and impounded the SUV. Did a crash recunstruction of the scene.
this is untrue. I have volunteered on randonneuring events, and catching a typical randonneur even at 50 on a rolling, twisty rural road offers even a slightly distracted driver no surprises. The fact that the police didn't find the cyclist's shoe (reflective) makes me wonder if they could have figured out that the reflective belt she wore was also reflective. I would be really interested in knowing if other motorists passed this cyclist and what they had to say about her visibility.
At 5am, the traffic on those roads is nearly nonexistent. They are made for a crushing amount of traffic, but it isn't there that early in the morning on a Sunday. I'm guessing she didn't ride there after 9 am or so when the traffic really starts up.