invalid.user

Has anyone heard about the recent judgment that a Markham (Toronto suburb) judge passed for a woman who ran over and killed a cyclist last summer, then proceeded to drive off, lie about it to her parents, and the police until confronted at the autobody shop where her car was being fixed? Well, her sentence is essentially a curfew for a year; she can't leave home between 21:00-06:00, and can't drive for 3 years.

The deceased was a husband with 3 children. I feel absolutely disgusted thinking about what his family is going through. The judge is a serious psychopath who actually said during the ruling that some may find his judgment too harsh. Oh, and to make matters worse, it is likely that this spoiled rotten person was driving under the influence, as she posted on a photo on Instagram the night prior to the accident with the caption "photo as blurry as my night was". The sad part is the crown was only pushing for 6-8 months of jail time, which she managed to evade by getting a doctor's note saying she has asthma and need to be isolated due to COVID. What a joke. She left that man to die on the side of the road without second thought. Actually, she confirmed looking back and thinking he must've been dead. I feel so bad for the victim's family. What do you even do after something like that? Well, I know what I'd do if it was my father, but I'd probably get banned for saying it here, so I'll leave it at that.

Here's a link to the Toronto sub****** where this was being discussed (the thread was locked unfortunately): red dit .com/r/toronto/comments/lxp74a/woman_who_killed_markham_fatherof3_with_vehicle/ (remove the spaces)

Iride01 

It makes one wonder were we've gotten to in society. We've had several hit and runs here of pedestrians, a cyclist and even other motor vehicles where the other person drives off. Not a new phenomena, but seems to be happening with greater frequency.

I guess it comes back to thinking "me" is more important than anything or anyone else. Really sad.

invalid.user

Agreed. I'll probably get a lot of flak for this, but I almost never bike on streets without protected bike lanes in the suburbs. I'll take my chances on the sidewalk; they're almost always empty anyways. At least then it's at my discretion, and I can be more careful when it comes to intersections/entrances. That story is just sad. I hope his family is doing ok, although I'm sure they're not.

indyfabz

There’s a forum for that:

https://www.bikeforums.net/advocacy-safety/

70sSanO

From what I read it was driving in the direction of the setting sun and glare caused her not to see. Still should be manslaughter, or whatever the equivalent in Canada. The cyclist was on the side of the road and not in the lane.

John

Iride01 

My two most severe bike accidents were on the paved MUP's. One put me in the hospital. The other was at the end of my driveway. I can't think of any I had that were away from my home on the public roads for motor vehicles which I ride often. Though I don't ride any and every public road willy nilly. I use some discretion for which roads I deem safe for me.

cbrstar

"Forrestall then went to work and carried on with the lies, telling her insurance company and the police about the fake incident." As a former Insurance Broker I hope she will be charged with Insurance Fraud by her provider. If not it's time to stop paying premiums when companies whine that the costs are too high. She might not be in jail, but I hope the Wife of the man sues her straight into the ground.

invalid.user

Where did you read that, out of curiosity? I was looking for an answer as well, but honestly, the fact that she has had 3 speeding tickets within 2 years of the accident, she posted that Instagram photo with the caption about being drunk, and her fleeing the scene lead me to believe that this was the result of distracted or under the influence driving rather than the sun shining in her eyes. Also, this was posted on the Markham subred dit and a lot of cyclists were saying that the side of the road is wide and you'd almost have to try to hit a cyclist there, which further supports my conclusion.

That's fair, but I don't think statistics would back up your assertion that biking on the side of the road is safer than on a MUP.

Iride01 

I'd bet statistics would for non-fatal accidents. And I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't a significant difference in fatal. At least if you could figure out a fair way to count them. .

70sSanO

I just Googled “toronto cyclist killed curfew sentence” and found the article from the Toronto Sun. I would link but sometimes doesn’t work from my phone.

And I was wrong on the time it was in the morning, not the evening.

Per the article...
“The sun was in her eyes and the road curved when she struck Safet Tairoski from behind.”

John

trailangel

Some always says .. if you want to kill somebody, buy them a bike....... then run over them.

tomato coupe

Clearly this was a tragic event and she deserves to be punished for her role in it, but there's no reason to make up stuff to bolster your outrage. There is no indication she was driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

invalid.user

What part is made up? She posted a photo on Instagram hours before the accident with the caption “photo as blurry as my night was”. Besides that, she decided to drive away after seeing the guy dying on the side of the road, according to her own testimony.

If you are involved in a fatal hit and run after a night of heavy drinking, everybody should just assume you were driving under the influence. Why should I, or anyone, give her the benefit of the doubt? How many nights of heavy drinking have you done where you wake up early the next morning, proceed to run someone over, and stay away from home for hours while you come up with a story about how your car was hit at a coffee shop before you went to your “babysitting job” (she was 25 at the time, and her parents are rich. She definitely wasn’t baby sitting lmao)? Her story reeks of leaving the scene to sober up. This just reinforces that if you hit someone while drunk, let them die while you go sober up. People involved in a fatal hit and run should face bigger penalties; there is a possibility that the father of 3 might still be alive if she had stopped and called an ambulance right away. Nasty, selfish, disgusting person.

veganbikes

I want to be disgusted but sadly my faith in human decency is long gone. We thrive on doing terrible things to others and sometimes celebrate it. When you build a culture as we have of in this case cars and driving being number one and bikes being toys and keep pushing that over and over you get stuff like this. We have a system where mostly innocent people are locked up for just having drugs but you murder someone on a bicycle while driving your car and you get a bare minimum slap on the wrist both because of factors of innate qualities of yourself.

Sure I would love to see her drug through the streets and beaten with Zéfal frame pumps but sadly that will never happen. If it did the people involved would get into major trouble and she would be a brave hero. Hopefully someone at least slashes all 4 tires on her car so she has a tougher time getting around. Maybe they could get away with throwing a huffy through her window.

tomato coupe

The part where you claim she was driving under the influence. There is no indication that this is true, or that the police or judge even suspected it was true.

cb400bill

Thread moved from General Cycling Discussion to Advocacy and Safety.

invalid.user

I've given my reasoning, but if you wish to ignore it, that's your prerogative. I'm not going to give someone the benefit of the doubt given the extreme contradicting evidence and the fact that their own actions are undoubtedly those of someone who had something to hide.

mstateglfr 

She did some life altering awful things. There is no need to speculate and guess its worse because what is known is bad enough and proven.

tomato coupe

Your "reasoning" is pure speculation, and there isn't any evidence to support it, much less "extreme contradicting evidence." There's nothing wrong with being outraged at what she did, and there's nothing wrong with disagreeing with the light sentence she received, but making up crap like this serves no useful purpose.

invalid.user

I've given you many indications of why that is likely true. We'll never know for sure one way or the other.

How exactly would they do that when she literally fled the scene? This is exactly why she did that. If she had stayed on scene and had nothing to hide, it would've been ruled an accident, and she wouldn't even need a lawyer.

- Extremely intoxicated and posting online about it hours before the murder

- Driving early in the morning after being extremely intoxicated the night before (most people sleep in after a long night of heavy drinking; you'd only be up early in the morning if you hadn't slept yet. I'm pretty sure most of us have had parties that end at like 6am or something)

- Flees the scene, leaving the man to die on the side of the road, and concocting an entire story of how her car was hit in a parking lot

- Lies to police and insurance about the circumstances of the damage to her vehicle

Yeah, I'm gonna go with she was driving under the influence.

She chose to flee the scene. Anyone who chooses to flee the scene of a fatal car accident should immediately be assumed to be driving under the influence and should have even harsher sentencing. The father of 3 might still be alive if she had called an ambulance right away. Instead, she chose to sober up. Keep twisting the story though. There is very little explicit evidence one way or the other as a result of her fleeing.

tomato coupe

No evidence, yet she's absolutely guilty of your speculative claims. Brilliant.

invalid.user

Isn't the point of fleeing the scene to destroy the evidence? She sure got you!

Thankfully most people are clever enough to read between the lines. Unfortunately, the people who make up the rules regarding hit and runs must have the same mindset as you. What do you propose next? No murder verdicts unless a body is produced, even if there is evidence that the perpetrator burned it? Great analytical skills

rydabent

As I have posted several times with city or county attorneys it is very hard to get justice in criminal court. I have personally seen this happen locally. One killer was the wife of a local judge, and the second killer was an 84 year old woman legally blind. The prosecutors refused to charge them.

Both families had to resort to civil court where they won huge settlements. I hope this family does the same.

Paul Barnard

There's my favorite excuse again. "The sun was in the sky." It was nearly 3 hours after sunrise. I don't know what the "accident reconstructionist" did, but I would have wanted a video that demonstrated the conditions. A month or so back I posted quite a few photos of me driving into the last 30 minutes of a setting sun. At no point in any of those photos would a cyclist on the roadway have been "hard to see." The posted speed limit on the parts of the subject road I looked at is 40. I am assuming that is KPH, so 25 MPH. That's not the kind of speed, think relative speed here too, that causes substantial damage to a car.

This one really disgusts me. I don't always think jail is the right place for people who make a simple mistake. This was way beyond a simple mistake.

https://globalnews.ca/news/7676500/a...fet-tairowksi/

Paul Barnard

This is close to where the accident occurred. Just found the snapshot interesting. Apparently they give the google car a wide birth that they don't afford cyclists.

https://www.google.com/maps/@43.8688...7i16384!8i8192

I am pretty sure the ghost bike rests against this tree off on the right side of the road.

https://www.google.com/maps/@43.8688...7i16384!8i8192