“There is no bike lane out there but there are bicycle debris all over the traffic lanes.”
Do you actually think that the bike riders equipment, gear and pieces of the bike, are going to stay in one place when hit by a truck doing 70MPH.
Have you every heard of physics or even played a game of pool?
Yes. Do you actually think every bit of debris created by an impact does not drop straight down? Trust me here, it does. This is one of the ways investigators determine the point of impact especially if the scene lacks pre-impact or post impact tire scuff marks.
Yeah. I agree with you. The corrected story is that the riders were ahead of the safety car — which is what you would expect. Now if the truck overtakes rapidly the driver *might* have swerved onto the shoulder in an attempt to avoid the car and so ‘collected’ the riders there. I imagine — like you said — that it was like a scoop shot on a billiards table. That would tend to push the riders & bikes INTO the traffic lanes and away from the shoulder where they were impacted. This is all conjecture but any highway patrol trooper would be able to quickly discern the likely point of impact along with the angle at which the riders were struck.
I’m not a frequent rider but there’s usually a lot of gravel, dust & debris the further into the shoulder you get. Enough to cause you to slide and possibly go down. The tendency is to ride just outside the shoulder marker line, very close to the traffic lane.