by 
Chris Woodyard is not getting a Christmas card from my family this year.
[A] driver on the way to work struck a St. Mary’s County, Md., bicyclist earlier this month and killed him. . . The driver, a 20-year-old in her Honda Accord, told police she never saw the biker. But the accident might have been prevented if the 47-year-old bicyclist had been riding in the right, not in the dead center, of the lane, a major contributor to the accident.
See Two-wheel troublemaking: Have motorists let bicyclist ‘rights’ go too far?
If she did not see him in the middle of the lane, directly in front of her, does Mr. Woodyard suggests she would have seen him if he was “riding to the right”? Or, perhaps Mr. Woodyard is suggesting that even if she had still not seen him, if he had only been where he belongs, “riding to the right,” she would have harmlessly passed him by, albeit still completely oblivious to his presence in the roadway?
Blame the victim, right? Always a class move, Mr. Woodyard. Always a class move.
Unfortunately, Mr. Woodyard, it simply does not work that way. When the operator of a motor vehicle fails to see an object in the roadway, whether that object is a cyclist, another car, or a squirrel, it really does not matter where the object was located when motor vehicle hit it – be it the center or all of the way across to right hand side of the roadway. What does matter is that the object was not seen and then was struck by the motor vehicle. Do not lose sight of these simple facts.
And, I suggest, that if you cannot seem to notice a person on a bicycle directly in front of you, in the same lane, traveling in the same direction that you are, and you run square into the back of that cyclist with enough force that you kill him, you should not be operating an automobile on this nations roadways.
by 
Horse-driven carriages aren’t forced to the side of the road, nor are motorcycles or mopeds (which top out at 30mph in most cases). His prejudice in the article is especially confusing given the last sentence of his bio:
“I may have three cars, but find it’s more fun and better exercise to commute to work on a bike.”
In his defense, cyclists are harder to see than your average American.
…Jesus Jonny, you’re starting to talk just like a lawyer!! – although in this case you are of course correct….
peter says:
“In his defense, cyclists are harder to see than your average american”
Yeah, like your average american pedestrian? You can’t hit them legally either.
Wierd catch-22. Maybe jonny could comment. Would cyclists have more legal clout (or legitimacy) if they were liscenced vehicles such as mopeds and motorcycles?
Keep sayin’ it, Big Jonny, no matter what you sound like. If the driver had hit a pedestrian, she’d be strung up by her toes. Since when does putting a pedestrian on two wheels make it okay to run them down? And why does adding two more wheels somehow put it back into the realm of not okay?
Oh, wait, that doesn’t work, either. If she had hit a motorcyclist, that would have been bad, too.
How has it that so many people hate cyclists so much that it’s okay to chalk up killing them to “excusable neglect?”