Posted on 04/13/2018 9:05:51 AM PDT by bgill
When JoJo McKibben was the victim of a hit-and-run on April 3 as she biked to work, she wasn't all that surprised. She was hit while biking by a drunk driver last summer and has come to expect that cars won't realize she's riding on two wheels. McKibben's boyfriend Brendan Sharpe said he has also been seriously injured by cars while he's biked in Austin, once in 2009 and again in 2015... Katie Delleoz, the executive director of Bike Austin, said she personally has nearly been struck at the same intersection McKibben was hit at last week
(Excerpt) Read more at kxan.com ...
I sure will and that isn’t the case in the majority of the cases. The most dangerous driver on the road today is the texting driver. But, that doesn’t mitigate the total disregard that non motorized riders have for the rules of the road. Have been all over this great land of ours and the one thing common is the attitude of many bicyclists. Have them register their bikes and show insurance then we are on a level playing field.
“...since you feel it is their responsibility.”
You can mock it all you want, but individual responsibility is the cornerstone of conservatism.
Conservatives prefer to take responsibility for their own lives - their financial welfare, their security, their education and their health.
Liberals look to the state to protect them and the state gets it wrong every time. Right of way laws are no exception. Giving pedestrians or bikers right of way makes them less safe - not more safe!
You think I’m a heartless person because I believe pedestrians and bikers should be blamed when they get struck? The opposite is true! It’s because I care for their safety and taking responsibility for their own safety makes them safer.
The minute you give pedestrians and bikers right of way and hold car drivers to blame for accidents, that’s when you have pedestrians walking out in front of cars without looking. Same with bikers.
Pedestrians were safer in the old days when getting hit was their own fault - we learned to look both ways and not cross if there was a car coming. The car had right of way, and we were safer as a result.
This is another example of liberals pushing for the government to regulate our safety and welfare - and screwing it up.
Thank GOD this nonsense has not infected marine right of way laws. The big ships still have right of way and the small ships have to stay out of their way. Why? Because it’s safer! It’s not a matter of fairness or inconvenience, it’s a matter of safety.
The liberals think it’s a matter of fairness and equality - they think pedestrians and bikers ought to have the right to go first, and the cars should have to brake for them out of fairness or equal rights. But in exchange for that equality - sense of importance - preferential treatment - that fairness - that right of way, they just traded away their own safety.
That’s what liberals do, that’s what the government does - they make dumb decisions using “group think” instead of taking advantage of natural laws, like free enterprise, supply and demand, trial and error, self preservation, animal instinct, common sense.
Believe me, I care about pedestrian and biker safety as much as you do - that’s why they should not ever have right-of-way. And yes, not having right-of-way means if they get struck by a car it’s their own fault.
If that sounds harsh it’s only because you haven’t thought it through all the way.
Some of the latest studies say that a texting driver is six times more likely to be involved in a crash than an impaired driver. It’s all about divided attention.
“Cell phones and texting made it WAY too dangerous.”
I can’t even imagine texting while riding my bike!
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It’s hard enough while driving!!
“The problem is that when people think like this they just get in the habit of rolling through stop signs without even bothering to really look.”
There was a tragic crash in Canada last week where 16 people died, most of them kids on the Humboldt Broncos hockey team (16 to 21 year old, Junior Team) The remaining 8 were all injured - one paralyzed from his chest down. (A town of 6,000 - where the hockey team is their pride and joy).
Late at night, where two “highways” intersect, a double-trailer tractor carrying a heavy load T-boned them. They haven’t released any other information - but it wouldn’t be difficult to believe that truck just blew past the stop sign on that usually lonely road. (Those big rigs also have a lot of gears to work through as they have to come back up to speed from their stop.) Perhaps it was a four-way stop, and the Charter Bus also failed to stop??
5”-8” and down to 19F here in tropical Minnesota. 20 degrees below normal, I keep wondering when Al Gore is going to show up.
The problem is that when people think like this they just get in the habit of rolling through stop signs without even bothering to really look.
That’s with my car. With my bike it’s even more important, for obvious reasons.
In my personal opinion, the thing about impaired drivers is that unless they are so inebriated that they are close to passing out, their main danger is if something out of the ordinary happens, they may not be able to respond. Or they miss the occasional stop sign.
I’ve watched two texting drivers right before my eyes in front of me, drive right off the road. One simply kept going straight when the road had a slight bend. The other just veered off a perfectly straight road. The latter was lucky in that it was a very gradual slope and he got about ten feet off the road and was able to pull back on. The former went off and wiped out his front right suspension on a culvert.
A person that is not texting and has a blood alcohol level of .1 is a lot less likely to do that.
i.e. I agree.
Good one!
I’ve been hit twice by bicycles. My car, actually. Both times my car was stopped.
One time there was very little damage done by a bicyclist coming down the wrong way on a one way street. The other time, the guy hit my car, careened down the street and damaged the entire side of a brand new BMW.
I work with an idiot bike rider . He explains that you don’t keep to the right while riding because that is where glass and other flat causing debris collects.
"...I work with an idiot who doesn’t wish to ride in broken glass and debris..."
Stay as far left as you like, far enough to be a hood ornament if you wish. Better than a flat
Key Phrase. Things change.
"...things change..."
"...far enough to be a hood ornament..."
Know the difference between a right and a privilege?
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