Well, let's put it this way. Stark went to Parkland, not UIUC. Parkland is a fine school, but as a community college, it's admissions standards are more ... relaxed than U of I's. So hypothetically speaking, someone who lived in Champaign County, but didn't have the grades or test scores to get into U of I might end up somewhere like Parkland. The Myspace stuff also made her look like a 60-watt bulb.

What really pisses me off about Julia Rietz's logic is that she said there was no expectation of a cyclist on the side of the road.

WTF? A public road, and you don't have the expectation that a cyclist (a legal VEHICLE) might be there?

I still think she's an idiot.

What if a car had a flat tire and was pulled off on the side of the road and she ran into it and killed the person chaing the tire? Would Rietz still say that there was no expectation that a car should be on the side of the road?

As you said, she is an idiot

Rietz may have also been misquoted - I asked her about that, and she said that she had never said that cyclists didn't have the right to be on the road. So I'm not sure exactly what happened.

You don't have to testify against yourself. There's some sort of law about that.

i have to say that at 19 people say - and feel - a lot of things they live to be ashamed of or appalled by later. i did find her blog impressively self-absorbed, but in one sense i think she's right, although probably not in the sense that she meant to be. it doesn't make much sense to put her on an anti-pedestal as some kind of isolated hate-figure, because she's not the only person out there who drives dangerously. millions do every day; they're just luckier than they deserve to be in the sense that most of them don't find themselves in her position.

it's impossible to guess who she thought she was addressing herself to with that blog entry. probably it wasn't cyclists; somehow (probably unfairly) i get the impression she doesn't know anyone who doesn't live in a car. so it's more likely to have been other drivers who don't respect cyclists or other road users any more than she did, but haven't been called to account for it.

just thinking it's a shame she can't turn the whole thing into something a bit more useful, that could at least try to shake some of the smugness in other dangerous drivers by pointing out that yea verily, it could "happen to" them. the sad thing is that having a scapegoat like her might make a some of them even more dangerous and less reflective, because many of them are sure to measure themselves against her and tell themselves their driving is fine because they haven't killed anyone.

She wasn't quoted as "cyclists didn't have the right to be on the road", but she WAS quoted saying something to the effect that Stark didn't have an EXPECTATION of a cyclist being on the road, and that was why it wasn't reckless.

What kind of road was this? I got the idea from the original article that it was a highway. I can see how someone would not expect a bicyle on a highway.

No, it's a state route.
Illinois 130.

Not a highway.

That was the standard for recklessness.

EDIT: Actually, I'm not quite being accurate. That's the standard for "wanton and willful conduct," which is the element of recklessness that Julia Rietz says she was having trouble proving.

But I *did* look it up. Get it?

EDIT: And another clarification: The case I used for "wanton and willfull conduct" was derived from research into the common law, rather than statutory, definitions of recklessness.

It's still the law in Illinois.

Yes, in the United States of America, this is called "The Fifth Ammendment". You are not required to provide information that would incriminate yourself.

She's not dumb as in "slow." She's dumb as in, an idiot. DWI, Drive While an Idiot, should be a crime.

Yes, you're right. I guess I was thinking in a more general sense of being held accountable. I guess in an actual trial, the prosecutor would have to call expert witnesses to get testimony about ring-tone download time, speed estimated from skid marks, etc. It's a shame none of that evidence will be heard.

Thinking more about this, how did we know that Jennifer Stark was downloading a ringtone? There were no passengers, correct? I assume she made some statement to the police. Doh. She might have benefited from "right to remain silent" in that regard. Or did the police go to the trouble to subpoena computer records for ringtone downloads, or her personal phone records??? More evidence that will never be heard in court.

Stark basically told the police that she'd been downloading ringtones when the accident occurred.

It is only because she was not smart enough to say "He came out of nowhere. I couldn't avoid him."
That's the pat answer when someone hits a cyclist.

I am not outraged, because my years of cynicism have trained me to expect nothing less. Typical of the youth to actually break down emotionally over people treating her bad. (Prepare for the outrageous statement)
I'm a police officer and I've seen so many morons, I'm convinced we need to defeat rampant stupidity with the death penalty. Thanks to modern science and procreation, the only solution to the over-crowding of the earth is to employ our own natural selection. A small segment of the population whether willful or not has demonstrated that their mere existence threatens that of others. To eliminate the possibility of further "chance" encounters that may potentially take a life, let's just end theirs.
Problem solved.
I, of course, understand that this is not possible. Doesn't stop me from thinking hwo wonderful it'd be though.
Capital punishment for terminal stupidity.

The chief obstacle to the progress of the human race is the human race -- Don Marquis

That or "he swerved in front of me." That's a get out of jail free card.