[robertpaulsen]

"At 60 mph, a car travels 88 feet in a second -- 1,056 feet in 12 seconds."

And at 20 mph, a car travels 30 feet in a second -- 120 feet in 4 seconds.

Two things we don't know: a)how fast he was going and b) how long he took his eyes off the road. (Plus time of day, type of road, flat or hilly, 2-lane or 4-lane -- all factors in determining negligence.)

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

You're absolutely correct -- none of us here have enough information to act as jurors.

However, we do know that the car was traveling fast enough to kill a cyclist, and that the driver was not paying due attention at the time.

I mentioned peripheral vision in # 27 (L98Fiero also raised it). That is what saves most of us when we don't pay enough attention to the road. The fact that it didn't in this case tells me that the driver was focusing on the mirror; using short-range vision -- which probably made his long-range peripheral vision ineffective. He should have pulled off the road.