Interesting link. Good update.
Curious as to why all the people on the "memorial" ride are not wearing helmets.

Today, I witnessed the aftermath of a cyclist that hopped off a curb and right into the path of a group of roadies. The roadies passed me as I was having my own issues with the rear hub of my atb earlier in their ride. So I'm walking mine on the sidewalk, well about 1/2 mile down the road, 2 police squad cars and a fire truck of paramedics go screaming by with sirens blaring. Another 1/3 to 1/2 mile later, I walk up to the accident site. Looked to be about a dozen roadies to the side of the road and the paramedics tending to 3 roadies. I stopped and talked with one of the guys that was fortunate to be in one piece and unscathed by the accident. He tells me a woman on a decobike jumped off the curb to cross the road when car traffic wasn't going. One thing though she didn't bother to check for, other cyclists. Anyway, she t-boned a roadie on a carbon frame bike with her aluminum frame comfort style rental, that carbon bike frame was cracked. She took that guy out and he flew off his bike and smacked pavement hard, road rash, dislocated shoulder, needed stitches too from cuts and abrasions. He left a puddle of blood in the street. After that the rest of the roadies started to run into and over each over. Apparently the woman was uninjured and got back on the bike and left the scene, just rode off. So the rest of them are either standing or sitting on the sidewalk or grassy area next to the dock area. Basically this is Collins Ave southbound around 53rd Street in Miami, FL. The other two roadies were being treated for cuts and abrasions too.

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=5301+C...h&z=17&iwloc=A

Great picture btw, the Jeremy J pic, look at the retart in the Jeep or even the vehicle ahead of that one, there is no room for anyone next to the curb. The red sports car isn't even centered in the lane.

http://www.crazywebsite.com/Website-...ng-Place-1.jpg

I don't think we should ban texting on cell phones while driving; I think we should determine the root cause and make legislation about that. What is it about talking on a cell phone that impairs driving so much? There are other activities that do the exact same thing, aren't there? For example, diddling with the radio ... impossible to prove, probably nobody noticed, and you only do it rarely (most peoples' radio sits on a station). My car has steering wheel radio buttons, so I've got all kinds of muscle memory to play with it with no problem; but I can't develop more than a vague reflex to find the disc button (it's on the console, not on the wheel), and it severely impairs my driving for the 4 or 5 seconds I'm trying to switch CDs.

Of course, there is a danger of writing a law that's too broad, too. Operating hand held devices should be legal while the car is stopped, out of gear (neutral, park), with the parking brake on. This is my standard mode of operation at a traffic signal, and I text and read my e-mail in my car while waiting for a light. I can't operate the phone and gear stick at the same time, though; the phone drops in the cup holder (WHY DO CARS HAVE THESE?!), and I drop the parking brake and shift into gear to go.

If the car is moving, I need to be driving the car; if it's stopped and needs to be moving, I am an annoyance and an impedance to traffic, and also it's your fault if you hit my car because you should be paying attention. It's not inherently dangerous for me to be stopped and texting; it's inherently dangerous for me to be moving and operating the radio, my GPS, my cell phone, a bottle of coke, or anything else that'll detract from my driving.

And this is completely wrong. A cell phone is a physical object that requires management. I've driven while talking on my cell phone; I find the phone to be an annoyance to my driving. One thing I noticed, since I overprioritize my driving (unlike most people, for some stupid reason), is that the phone will drift away from my face. It's very hard to coordinate my talking on my cell phone while I'm busy driving a damn car; I have to devote a lot of concentration to the physical act of keeping the cell phone at a comfortable position close to my face where I can hear, be heard, and not have to squash it uncomfortably against my cheek. This can be challenging even when the only thing I'm doing is talking on a cell phone, since the phone gets hot and is generally uncomfortable to hold near my face.

Couple that with the large amount of concentration it takes to drive and the large amount of processing it takes to hold a conversation and you'll see the problem I have. I have delayed responses; I have to play back whatever's said opportunistically, and respond with tens of seconds of delay, or ask for things to be repeated, because I'm too damn busy driving. And I can't even keep the phone close to my face right... I'm worse at driving, talking, and holding the damn thing--yeah, I put a lot of focus on my driving, and I still notice the occasional (and yet all too frequent) regression.

I stopped bothering long ago.

When I drive my car, I either sing along with music (while learning the songs, and working out the guitar fingerings!) or learn to speak various languages. If I'm talking hands-free, those other auditory tasks are eliminated. Neither impairs my driving (I'm actually disturbingly dangerous on the road without radio; I black out, my mind finds something internal to deal with and I casually ignore road hazards like pedestrians). More importantly, I'm free to turn my head and shift my eyes to track everything around me, as I don't have to manage my head position plus the position of my hands in relation to my head to keep a tiny plastic brick properly positioned.

EDIT: one other interesting data point, I used to blind-text when driving an automatic in the city, before I got a full keyboard phone (and a stick shift). Since I could effectively drive with one hand, didn't have to manage the phone, and didn't have to look at it, I could blindly tap my thumb on the keys and key out complete text messages 100-150 characters long, accurately, on the 3x4 pad. It required minimal attention, likely because all spatial consideration was the relative position of my thumb to the keypad-- a planar geometry problem, rather than a 3D spatial geometry problem. I could reorient by touch, too, and did so constantly; there was no need to work with vague measurements balancing heat, hearing, logical feedback (speaking, did they hear me?), tactile touch, etc, against two disjoint objects (phone, face) in 3D space.

Full keyboards make it harder to text while driving. Probably a good thing. I have better prioritization than anyone else, it seems, as most people tend to abandon their driving to text--holding up the phone, staring at the text message with one eye while looking past at the road with the other?! This is sub-optimal for me, typing blind, and able to drop the phone and then resume when needed; and no text message is that god damn dire. I think we're all better off without it; people in cars should be driving.

Hit and run. Maximum penalty.

Nope, I don't see any sidewalks. It just reinforces what I'd said about them breathing in the exhaust fumes from their cars.

True, if you are paying attention (which far too many drivers do not) you probably should not need to "swerve..." But along with paying attention is also leaving yourself a safe following distance (which I rarely see done by many drivers today... and I find that my safe following distance is often taken up by folks in a hurry).

The next issue is near freeway speed shared roads. The problem is not the cyclist on that road, but the fact that the road is a 55 MPH road... those escalated speed limits are an accident waiting to happen. Speed limits get raised because the 85% rule allows for increasing speed limits on the basis that motorists "feel" safe driving at that speed... but motorists haven't gotten better, they are simply more isolated from the roads by the comfort features of modern automobiles, and thus tend to drive too fast for the actual conditions (and too close). Of course traffic engineers can point to decreased deaths by motorists... but that is due to things like air bags, not improved roadways or motorists.

Air bags are death machines. Seat belts in air bag cars are crippled, without a proper pendulum stop, because they "Work with the airbag." The statistics for lives "saved" by air bags assumes that if an air bag was involved, it saves lives--probably true, because the seat belt now only has a centrifugal locking mechanism and will slam your face into the steering wheel rather than locking up when you brake. I hit my steering wheel once under heavy braking ... that's when I learned, wow, my 2008 vehicle is different from a 1992 vehicle!

Increasing the speed of one-way highway traffic is not a road hazard to the traffic. To pedestrians and cyclists it is, which is why cyclists don't belong on high-speed highways. I could say go ahead and darwin yourself playing around on the shoulder next to 70mph traffic consisting of idiots traveling at 70mph; but when the harsh reality of bloody death comes upon ye, people will cry that freeways should carry 35mph traffic instead, rather than demanding that the civil engineers fix the city streets under the highway (now who here can maintain 50mph on your bike for 30 miles?) to be safe and expedient for cyclists.

All you get from an 85mph collision on the highway is two cars going roughly the same speed doing some body and frame damage.

State highways are built to move freight and vehicle traffic at high speeds. The urban sprawl has crippled this with the ridiculously large number of people that want/need to go 60 miles to work and back every day, combined with the ridiculously lazy civil engineering that fails to produce viable city streets for pedestrians, cars, and cyclists to travel both safely and in bulk at low speeds. You cannot balance a super highway at 80mph between cyclists and motor vehicles; you should be fully capable of making a working transit system at 25-45mph motor vehicle speed that accommodates cyclists safely and expediently while providing multiple dynamic routes for motorists to more effectively pass high loads of traffic.

I never understood why there was so much city and trans-city highway traffic at rush-hour anyway. Everyone on the west side of the city works on the east side; everyone east of the city works to the west; people live up north and work down in Columbia; and people that work up here live in freaking Columbia. Why not live near where you work? (I suspect home ownership prevents people from moving frequently)

Are you sure of this? The story you told suggests that 1) she would have been injured, 2) her bicycle damaged, and 3) not all the roadies were hurt and somebody would have stopped her (it's not likely she could have outrun them.)

In any event, that story also reminds us that pacelines are dangerous too. All it takes is one minor mishap to hurt a bunch of people.

I know it sounds unbelievable myself that she could not only take out a cyclist, but also get away, but that's exactly what I was told by one of the roadies that took the time to even talk to me. From the blood in the street where the roadie pointed out that it happened, she knocked that other guy clear into the other lane. He probably never had a chance, but some of the others saw it . Roadie said she darted off the sidewalk. I didn't ask her age or whether she just made a decent speed jump.

Edit: I didn't see it, so I'm taking the word of another, just saw the aftermath.

You did notice that he did a screen shot from Google Maps Street View didn't you?

Yes I did, but gave who I perceive as the OP credit for posting a pic demonstrating the fact there are vehicles on that road that are all over the road and that there is little or no room when people drive like that.

I am not speaking of highways... I am talking about 55MPH and 65 MPH surface streets... basic arterial roads. Roads that are the only connection between two locations for cyclists and peds... roads that once were 45 MPH or lower... that now for some "magic reason" are at much higher speed limits.