I bet it was scary for the Driver too.
Posted on 05/09/2015 10:25:24 PM PDT by nickcarraway
A bicyclist said he was just riding on the road in San Francisco when a driver tried to run him down--and more than once.
Now, he wants the person behind the wheel to face justice.
The bicyclist said it was a scary ordeal for him. He said a driver tried to knock him off his bike and seemed to keep coming for him Thursday night.
According to the cyclist Anthony Ryan, a witness apparently was able to shoot some video. Ryan said he was on Phelan just North of Ocean Avenue making a left turn when a car came up behind and hit the horn. He said the driver pulled up and tried to open the door in order to knock him off the bike.
Ryan said he tried to get away by crossing the street, but the driver followed. He believes he intended to ram him. He said he tried to get a picture of the license plate, but the driver took off toward San Francisco City College.
And when he stopped at a light, things escalated even more.
"He actually put his car in reverse and tried to run into me again, and I kind of dodged him, but at that point he was behind me," Ryan said. "And I was basically riding for my life with this person behind me looking for cover between some parked cars, so I basically intentionally crashed my bike between two parked cars and leaped off my bike."
Ryan said the driver tried to side swipe him and took off. He said a number of people stopped to see if he was OK. He was leaving San Francisco State where he teaches a class. City College police responded, saying a report was filed. The car is a white two-door Honda, police said.
Ryan said he suffered bruises and scrapes.
You are considering only fatalities or uniform traffic report statistics.
Almost none of which include bicycle accidents unless the victim is transported by public EMT’s.
Nope.
So where are your statistics?
All fatalities are reported, so that seems like a reasonably good place to start for comparisons.
The only commonality in many discussions of this issue is that everybody agrees that there are no really solid statistics.
From the standpoint of how physically vulnerable you are, bicycles and motorcycles are essentially identical. Neither protects you at all. The difference of course being that a motorcycle allows you to go many times faster and is therefore inherently more hazardous.
But if you have solid stats, I’d be very interested to see them.
Where do you suggest they ride?
It’s illegal in most municipalities to ride on the sidewalk.
“All fatalities are reported, so that seems like a reasonably good place to start for comparisons.”
Its not. The injuries bicyclists suffer are entirely different than motorcyclists, owning to the fact that speeds are not comparable.
Read up on it yourself. Bicycling is the most dangerous form of cardio and the most dangerous widely used transportation.
You are the one who made the assertion that my statistics are inaccurate. Prove it.
Of course I have no obligation to prove anything to you. Whether you accept this truth is up to you.
I will say that you seem to want not to belive this fact, so I will help you along a little.
Outdoor cycling results in 3.5 injuries per 1000 hours of duration. Or, about 1 injury per 300 hours.
http://www.sportsinjurybulletin.com/archive/0123-common-sports-injuries.htm
Citing The American Journal of Sports Medicine, vol. 21 (3), pp. 461-467, 1993).
Since most cycling injuries are unreported, the number is estimated to be four times that of the reported injuries. Cars and motorcycles are required to report all injuries. Cyclists are not.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3242536/
My original point was the irony that liberals push cycling when they won’t let one buy a circular saw without reading a warning that it should not be used underwater. Is your view different than this, or would you just like to think that you are engaging in a safe activity when you are cycling?
A few years back, I was legally crossing a street as a pedestrian, and a guy on a cycle came flying up between two lines of cars waiting at a red light, he blew through the light and came within inches of hitting me. He would have hit me if I hadn’t seen him at the last instant and jumped back.
I consider that attempted murder.
Sorry, but I have no sympathy for irresponsible a*****s like that.
When in Minnesota, I had a few stickers on my vehicle which “inspired” some to political expression in the form of road rage. One sticker that provoked an extreme reaction was the Terrorist Hunting Permit sticker.
You seem to misunderstand my position. I’m not saying that cycling isn’t considerably more dangerous than driving, per mile. In fact I agreed with that. I also agree that we don’t have good statistics.
I was just trying to get some quantification on how much more dangerous cycling is.
BTW, your first link is for sports injuries, with most related to the sport, muscle pulls and such. Outdoor cycling is somewhere in the middle of that pack, with cycling injuries at 3.5 per 1000 hours. Since stationary cycling is at 2/1000, presumably this means that cycling as a means of transport produces an additional 1.5 per 1000 hours.
Assuming an average speed of 10 mph, this equates to 1.5 injuries per 10,000 miles. Since it takes most cyclists a really, really long time to cover 10,000 miles, that’s not a common problem.
Actually, I really don’t think this extrapolation is accurate. Cycling is very obviously much more dangerous than driving per mile.
One major reason is that a high percentage of cyclists are children. If children drove half of the cars on the road, driving would be a LOT more dangerous. Another is that many cyclists ride like morons. A third is that a cyclist is totally unprotected by his vehicle, like a motorcyclist but not like a car.
We could also point out that cycling as a form of transportation has health benefits as well as risks. Someone like me who averages 500 miles/month is a good deal less likely to suffer some of the more common health problems of this country than if he just opted to drive that 6000 miles/year. IOW, driving as a form of transport rather than using one’s muscles to move from place to place has hidden health risks.
IOW, all I’m saying is that the issue is a good deal more complicated than driving good, cycling bad.
Living in liberal Minnesota, I have been run off the road while riding on a shoulder at least 5 feet wide, and getting the “mommy tone” “bicycles belong on the sidewalk”. I tell them if this were Texas, they would have some acute lead poisoning (235 grains).
I was rear-ended by a gal talking on her cell phone - I have no sympathy for those like her who end up getting hurt or killed either; that doesn't mean I will actively try to run them off the road or run them down on sight. But, then again, I try to use my brain instead of my emotions when dealing with the ups and downs of life.
Besides, we all know that it is the person seeking retribution that ends up locked away - similar to football players who retaliate - recency seems to dictate who the law goes after more than primacy...
Where did I ever say I would run someone down on sight, or would advocate doing so?
But when morons willfully and maliciously do moronic stuff, (and that includes drivers as well as cyclists), I fully understand why these ugly situations develop.
And that particularly applies when one or the other party operates on a sense of entitlement or moral superiority which was, or course, the point of my original post.
And most everywhere.
Bicyclists are the most obnoxious, entitled, self-centered people on the road, nothing but packs of spandex-wearing, butt in the air, road-hogging, lane-grabbers that clog roads and dare anyone to pass them.
This all depends on the outfit the bike rider was wearing : )
I am only going to link to the image. Beware... typical San Francisco rider.
https://c2.staticflickr.com/2/1296/4702389024_0f20df01fd_b.jpg
Far, far away!
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