CB HI

You are guessing that I am guessing.

PS - google map image dates cannot be relied upon. Here, I can show you one by just playing with the angle and zoom that implies the gap was filled Sep 2009, which we know is not true.
https://goo.gl/maps/xiUR5

njkayaker

Your statement is unsupported. If you have support for it and don't let people see that, it's unsupported.

??? There's grass growing in the gap. It wasn't filled when that picture was taken.

You have no evidence indicating that the dates can't be relied on (it's possible but your guessing doesn't make it true).

CB HI

Feel free to keep your blinders on.

njkayaker

Yup, you are just guessing and have no support for the stuff you are saying.

Matariki

Since that crossing leads to and integrates with a MUP, having those perpendicular gaps is a bad design. The cyclist surely shares blame in her failure to be observant and avoid the gap, but I think her suit has some merit. She'll have to prove actual damages, though, and I expect her inflated figure will be drastically reduced.

I encounter all kinds of similar road hazards every day and feel that I have to really pay attention. Most of the fixed hazards have already been mapped in my head, but there are many temporary hazards, like tree branches, bricks, etc, that just show up. I kinda think that I would assume ownership for any incident caused by them simply because the lapse in awareness was mine. Perhaps I would change my mind if I had a lot of thinking time after being laid up by a crash, though.

CB HI

She got a concussion. $10,000 is a very low number for a concussion. Wait and see what the NFL players get.

david58

At what point do we accept responsibility? Was she riding so fast she couldn't react? Filtering thru peds? Not paying attention? $10K is almost nothing - cheap "go away" money. If she wins, she got away with blaming someone else for her inattentiveness.

Don't you dial in and get careful on a railroad crossing?

dietz31684

I'm going to sue the county for the stick in the road that went in my spokes. County maintenance really should have been out at 5:30 am cleaning up after the wind from the night before...why should I have steered around it?

She doesn't deserve a dime and hopefully learned a lesson.

Booger1

I'm guessing the railroad made the $700 offer so she could get some designer glasses.......to go along with her $8000 bike.....

Matariki

Article said that she was claiming only 100 or so for medical. Most of the suit was for bike related expenses, which seemed way high. I agree with you that her injuries probably were more costly than presented in the article, but that's what it said. We all know that the media always gets the story right!

Matariki

I agree wholeheartedly with you here, but I'm kinda cursed with the ability to argue both sides of an issue. I think that anyone designing or developing specs for a design involving a road feature should really think about anticipating and evaluating potential for design-related hazards. My gosh, this crossing integrates with a MUP. Wouldn't it be reasonable to expect bike traffic. I expect architects and engineers to think proactively and not just plan to fix things after beta testing by the public.

I cross a number of rail tracks on my daily commute and definitely pay attention. She should have done, too, but had the design were not screwed up, the probability that she would have crashed would be way lower. Think of it this way: when people do dumb things, they deserve negative reinforcement. The cyclist did a dumb thing and was duly reinforced. The crossing designer was also dumb and so should be slapped around as well.

sauerwald

One of the very few crashes that I have had was on a railroad track - the location was at the intersection of Forest/Allen/Stevens avenues in Portland, ME - there was a pothole next to the track itself, and it was raining, so as I rode through the intersection, it looked like a puddle - my front wheel dropped into the pothole, I went over the handlebars and suffered various scrapes and bruises. Bike as relatively undamaged.
I reported the crash to the DOT, and they had the pothole filled within a week. I am not the type to sue.

CB HI

Do we not teach that cyclist should cross railroad track perpendicularly. Did she not do that and thus run into a wheel trap that should never have been allowed to remain.

Yes she shares responsibility, just as the railroad shares responsibility for the hazard.

CB HI

Yup, you are just guessing on the date of the google photo as I have proven and you have no support for the stuff you are saying.

OneGoodLeg

I really don't see that tricky of a crossing. I cross two sets of tracks every morning on my commute that are in fair worse disrepair, have done so in all weather conditions, and haven't even come close to falling.

Did anyone read her injuries? Some of those injuries sound conjoured Right shoulder - left wrist - left knee - lower back. This is a bike crash, not a game of twister. If she hit all of those spots and suffered a concussion while wearing a helmet, my money is on that she is a pathelete who was going way too fast on the mup, took the corner too fast, slid on the rail, into the crack/wheel grabber and got catapulted.

I've had one concussion in 30+ years of biking and I got rocked pretty hard on that crash.

Also, in car accident related lawsuits, you only get re-imbursed common repair value, regardless of your expense paid out. That means, if her repairs were done at the most expensive shop in town, she's not getting that money back.

apollored

Of all the space on the railway track that she had to cross over she picked the cracked bit.

Not looking where she was riding, esp on somewhere as potentially dangerous as a railtrack?

Had no one pointed out the crack to the railroad company or had it not been inspected recently?

Even so, watch where she was going then maybe she wouldnt have been caught up.

Camilo

I think there's a big difference between random hazards that happen because cycling is done outside in "nature" (the stick) vs. observable, predictable, and repairable hazards or defects caused by actual design flaws. Yes the cyclist has responsibility, but "professionals" who design roads, railroad crossings and bike routes have responsibility to recognize defects and hazards. My bias is that they are responsible, if not totally, a good portion.

In case anyone wants to bring in street maintenance, grates, and potholes - I would put grates into the "designers have responsibility" and potholes into a very gray area. They are not designed into the road, and to a certain extent are "natural" hazards. There is no way any street department can completely rid their streets of hazards caused by nature or wear and tear because taxpayer funding is limited. To me, if I were sitting in judgement, I'd have to look at patterns, prior knowledge, etc.

I'm not saying whether she has a basis for a lawsuit or not - but my bias is that she does. I think that the common use of that area is cycling and that the hazard should have been recognized as such, and could have been corrected either through proper design or repair. Sure, she might have been careless or reckless (we don't know), and IF so, that could have caused her to crash in a situation where someone exercising due care could have avoided, but again, I see a hazard designed into the thing.

Like I explained in my wife's crash above - the railroad crossing was obviously defective - yes, I say defective, because the asphalt and steel rail were at such a height disparity that even an experience cyclist could have been caught unawares and crashed under what anyone would call normal safe riding. The defect was repaired soon afterwards and the crossing is much safer and probably totally safe for even inexperienced riders.

njkayaker

No, your claim that the dates are wrong is unsupported.

The google shots show that it was not filled before and filled after (a year later).

Anyway, given how infrequent the pictures are, you can't really tell when the gap was open and when it was filled.

There is grass growing in the gap in the "before" picture!!!

You have no idea whether this claim is false (as you are implying). If he doesn't have evidence to support it, the claim won't help his case at all anyway.

It's a random photo of the site in a newspaper (with no date associated with it). (It's a reasonable guess that it was taken by the newspaper staff later, around the time the article was written/published.) It isn't evidence presented in a trial (like you bizarrely think it is).

rydabent

Anyone can see from the picture that there was indeed a big gap in the riding direction that narrow bike wheels could get trapped in.

Further as to her being careless, she could very well have been looking both ways for trains.

-=(8)=-

The hilarious irony here is, some of the ones who insult the loudest about "blaming the cyclist" in other dopey threads,
are the ones . . . . you guessed it, blaming the cyclist

kenji666

She was asking for it.

eja_ bottecchia

Yep...plusI love reading posts from all the uber-alert, uber-prepared, uber-knowing riders here who are so perfect that they never had a single fall or accident where they were actually at fault. I am in total awe!

rdtindsm

+1 camilo

While it would be easy to overlook the hazard of the gap in the direction of travel, it was foreseeable. That the area would have been used by MUP riders susceptible to the hazard increased the responsibility of the designers for the safety of its intended use.

Without comments on the details of damages claimed, I don't think the claim is frivolous, and would not be inclined to forgo damages simply because $**t happens.

While McDonalds had successfully defended a number of scalding lawsuits, the suing lawyer was able to show that they were serving coffee at temperatures (190f) above industry norms and higher than the optimum temperature for enjoyment (160). They certainly knew that there was a problem. I don't know if it was part of the suit, but it has been suggested that part of the reason for the high temperatures was to minimize bottomless cups as customers waited for their drink to cool. The size of the award was less because of the severity of injuries than because of the arrogance that MickyD had shown in failing to protect their customers.

rdtindsm

A related issue was the successful suit by the family of a cyclist who was killed when he/she crashed on a road hazard in Iowa on RAGBRAI.

I don't know the details, but my recollection is that it was a longitudinal crack, and that, while it may have been a reasonably normal road hazard, the special circumstances of having the road used by 10,000 cyclists created a higher level of responsibility.

It did cause counties to consider banning touring events. I believe RAGBRAI has taken the responsibility for liability insurance on similar incidents as the solution.

CB HI

A few cyclist had fallen due to the crack earlier in the day. The county put a cop there to direct cyclist away from the hazard but at some point pulled the cop off. Then the cyclist crashed and died.