Biker Down

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MESA, Ariz. — A 13-year-old Mesa girl was hospital after she was hit Monday morning while riding her bicycle.

Mesa police said it happened in the area of Gilbert Road and Southern Avenue.

Mesa Fire Department spokesman Forrest Smith said the girl was in a crosswalk when she was hit at a relatively high rate of speed.

Witnesses said the car had a green light and other cars had stopped for her, but the car that hit her didn’t see her, Smith said.

The girl suffered head, arm and leg injuries and is listed in critical condition.

With schools reopening Monday, police are asking drivers to please slowdown and be aware of children near school zones.

www.kpho.com.

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About big jonny

The man, the legend. The guy who started it all back in the Year of Our Lord Beer, 2000, with a couple of pages worth of idiotic ranting hardcoded on some random porn site that would host anything you uploaded, a book called HTML for Dummies (which was completely appropriate), a bad attitude (which hasn’t much changed), and a Dell desktop running Win95 with 64 mgs of ram and a six gig hard drive. Those were the days. Then he went to law school. Go figure. Flagstaff, Arizona, USA

39 Replies to “Biker Down”

  1. There is one consistent thought that goes through my head every time I’m on my bike and a car goes roaring past, “SLOW THE FUCK DOWN!!!”

  2. People need to slow down, pace the vehicles, and STOP ZOOMING. It is the practice of zoooooming – thinking that the pavement is your personal acceleration course. T-shirts? Bumper stickers? Neither work. We need enforcement. These events are PREVENTABLE. STOP ZOOMING. Pace. It saves gas, gets through green lights, and saves and lives.

  3. CSR you are chirping a little girl that got hit by a car? weak sauce dude.

    the tragedy is that the kid got hit. the legacy is that I am guessing a whole neighborhood of kids are going to get pulled off their bikes, inching closer to become nintendo athletes.

  4. Barry Says “….weak sauce dude.”

    No weak sauce here. Just momma taught me.

    Look out for your self.

    Cross at the green…..not in between. That was gospel growing up.

    Nintendo ?? I’m 46 years old. Pong was the thing back then.

    Your point is ??

  5. How about a SMIDGE of empathy CSR? That’s somebody’s kid and kids make mistakes just like you did writing #1.

  6. Hey Jonny, in your juristravels have you ever found any stats regarding car/bicyclist collisions from other countries?
    I’m curious where we stand; better than China, worse than Denmark?

    Inquiring minds want to know.

    Be strong little girl from Mesa…I’m sending you my P.M.A. right now

    Kilgore

  7. “Cross at the Green. Not in between”

    Great little bromide. And, what a compassionate first comment. How swell CSR, how swell! It sure makes me feel good, how about the rest of the studio audience, you feel the love too?

    Lets all give a shout out to CSR for setting the tone on this little local piece of pain. That will teach the girl a lesson – for sure. You tell her CSR, you tell her good!

    How about walking into that ICU and proclaiming, “Hey, its the girl’s fault. Why are all of you upset? The little dipshit deserved it by going into the crosswalk on green? Sheesh, don’t you teach your child better Mrs. Kid-in-the-ICU?”

    Yeah, something tells me that there ain’t quite enough cojones in CSR to step from behind the keyboard and pull off that little Blog-to-Reality trick. Studio audience – your vote?

    Thoughts & prayers out to the girl, and the driver of the vehicle who hit her. Neither started the day expecting to change lives forever, neither likely had any malice or intent, and neither deserved this in any way (CSR – in the non-fantasy world the rest of us live in, normal humans do make mistakes – yes, I know you are perfect, but some of us just can only try to be as good as you). Tragic accident, and hope the girl survives, and her family recovers.

    Next time y’all throw a leg over the cycle – give a little good vibe to all the people recovering from a 4-wheeled impact. Tomorrow, give an extra couple for the Mesa girl.

  8. Well, the way I figure it, relating to CSR’s post is that either:
    1) He/she has seen so much tragedy that they’re completely inured to it…a nihilistic vacuum of hope, utterly incapable of empathy. Or….

    2) They’ve never held a loved one’s hand as that person took their last breath at far too young an age. Anyone who’s ever done that will be different forever.
    Either way, I feel bad for CSR…feelings and thoughts are not mutually exclusive entities.

    Tempus fugit, carpe diem

    KT

  9. …i’m not gonna call anybody out but part of growing up, part of being a child is having the opportunity to make mistakes from which you can learn & hopefully they’re never so severe as to seriously harm you…

    …but it does happen obviously…

    …i’d suggest part of the fault lies with the parents who taught or allowed her to learn to ride but didn’t reinforce the importance of paying attention in order to survive the dangers involved…

    …part of the fault lies with the driver for a number of reasons…traveling “at a relatively high rate of speed”, not paying attention especially when speeding & not having enough of a sense of anticipation to “read” a situation where others are stopping where they wouldn’t normally…

    …& yes, i have absolute empathy for any cyclist or pedestrian who ends up in the horrific situation of being hit by a motor vehicle no matter who’s at fault but in this case, i think the young lady cyclist has a responsibility to understand the importance of paying attention if she’s going to be entrusted with a bike…

    …& in 3 more years, she can be entrusted w/ a motor vehicle wherein there’s a high rate of probability that she’ll both use a cell phone & speed on occasion…

    …do i need to say “think about it” ???…

  10. Well, I guess by CSR’s logic, all the poor Americans getting pulverized in Iraq had it coming to them. I mean you join the army to get shot at. Or, the 3000+ who were crushed or blown out windows at Mach0.75 had it coming to them because they climbed a big aeroplane magnet on 9/11. Shoot Hass, anytime you enter an area near a road, it is your fault for not enjoying the 1-ton, toxic gas spewing, metal beast.
    Jesus says, “Do unto others, as you wish to be done to.” So, can I drive my HooDoo over your spindly legs?

  11. This is horrible – prayers to the little one and her family. This is one of every parent’s worst fears for their kids.

    Hold your groms close and teach them the right way to ride a bike. The schools aren’t teaching this and generally don’t encourage riding to school anymore. Take this responsibility very seriously and teach them right.

    Teach your kids not to ride on the sidewalk, not to ride through crosswalks, to stop for signs and red lights, to signal their turns, to be visible and predictable. My daughter is 6 and I take her out to ride every night after dinner for an hour or so. We ride on the road. I won’t let her ride alone until I am convinced she rides as safely as I do.

    It isn’t the same world out there as when we learned to ride bikes, and it isn’t nearly as forgiving. What with SUV’s, cell phones, nav systems, venti latte and such. I’m not excusing anyone but make sure you teach your kids to ride safely and ride with them as much as possible.

    Peace

  12. What he said^^^^. And you know what the hell of it really is? No matter how good a mom or dad you are, no matter how hard you try to protect ’em, sometimes shit still happens. Thougts and prayers are on the way.

  13. i cannot believe some of the jackass mother fucking comments coming from this post. jesus christ. a KID was hit.

  14. …ya, so let’s all stand around & wring our hands, go “whoa is me” & pretend that that will do any good…

    …there is plenty of empathy here & at least SOME of the discussion deals with how this situation might have been made different, kid or no kid…

    …contribute something more than alarm if you’re so concerned…

    …just sayin’…

  15. Maybe when gas hits $6/gal, these situations will ease.

    I hear it all the time— fat-ass idiots entombed in three-ton coffins proclaiming that their “upper middle class,” white neighborhoods are too dangerous for their children to ride to school. They idle in long lines to drop their kids off at schools half a mile from home. How is it possible not to see how fucked up that is??

  16. Aight, I may be rhetorical, but this is not the wrong venue. Betcha a dollar the driver that ran down that little girl was distracted and hauling ass on a familiar, probably daily route. Flashed through that intersection hundreds of times. And I further bet that his/her life is WAY more fucked up today than it was yesterday— a relatively small tragedy, but still a tragedy.

    Break the cycle. Drive slow. Pay attention.

  17. From a parent’s point of view, this is my worst nightmare but I agree with most of the view points expressed.

    Absolutely agree that you do your best but ultimately they make their own decisions.

    Judi, want to explain the attack on BGW ?

  18. @hurben, nope.

    back to the issue at hand – a kid was hit by a car while on her bike. my friend sue won’t let her boy ride alone either – she owns the salon where i get my massages. so we have a trade going on. i ride with her boy once a week so he can out of the house and ride, and she gives me free massages, haircuts, eyebrow wax, whatever. it’s a good trade. and her boy gets to ride. next week im taking him to the bmx track. it’s kind of fucked that he’s 12 and can’t ride alone, but the cars have put the fear of GOD into sue so she’s scared to death something like this will happen to her boy.

  19. Judi…I hear you, and it is such a sad state many communities are heading in. I have more than a few customers that won’t let their kids ride around the neighborhood or to school for fear of getting hit by a car or abduction. Are people more paranoid, or have the bucolic days of yesteryear gone by?

    I don’t know, but without my carefree youth spent tearing up my ‘hood on my bike, I shudder to think how I’d have turned out. (I’m barely worth a shit as it is).

  20. @K.T. I think it’s all of it. I think we are more aware of the dangers that always existed because of the TV/24hr news world we live in. Maybe it is more dangerous, but people are certainly more paranoid. There is also a collective nostalgia for an age that never existed. I think the result is real fear of the world, but the causes are complicated.

    Everyone who has kids or is thinking about having kids should read ‘Last Child in the Woods’ by Richard Louv. Kids need to fall down, eat dirt, and have unstructured play and learning time.

  21. I don’t recall the article saying the car was traveling at an illegal rate of speed or “zooming”, whatever the hell that is. It said “relatively high rate of speed”…35mph (for example) is a high rate of speed relative to 0mph when steel and flesh are involved. Don’t ever give up your right-of-way. Don’t wave people out into traffic or through intersections, you become liable. The people who stopped for the kid and watched her cross a green light without saying or doing anything…they are at fault! A lot of people on here pass judgement on others because they choose to drive cars. I ride, I commute on occasion, I don’t give a fuck what other people do.

  22. As a man who has been knocked pretty good & a father of two little girls, this is my greatest nightmare. One moment of inattention and someone very dear to you can be gone from your life forever. Not a risk some of us are will to take. Good on ya, Judi. Take that kid out twice some week. He’ll be stoked.

  23. el jefe, that age DID exist. I remember lazy summer days spent riding my cruiser, and later my Schwinn 3 speed, anywhere and everywhere. I remember playing til the streetlights came on. I remember the bunch of us going to the woods, with axes and machetes yet, to build tree houses and forts. I remember going out with my .22 and a pocketful of shells. No adults and no worries.

    Yes, el jefe, those days did exist. I know because I was there.

  24. In some ways it did. Parent’s attitudes have certainly changed. I was lucky I grew up on a ranch and survived crashing my bike in the days before helmets. Playing around my dad’s well drilling equipment (talk about a not safe for kids environment…) I ran around in the woods, too. But, it’s dishonest pretend to ourselves that there weren’t bad things that happened too. Kids got hit on bikes. Kids got beat by their parents. Kids got abducted. We had serial killers. I grew up a few miles away from one of the Zodiac Killer’s haunts. We just hear about it instantly now, and it’s easy to forget that the bad has always been there.

  25. When was the “when” of which you speak of, el jefe? And where? I graduated from high school in 1969 in Western Maryland.

  26. Jeeze, boy, I got callouses older than you. And yeah, you missed some amazing shit. But that’s cool too. This day is what you make it, and it don’t matter for shit when you was born. Fuck, I’d ride/drink/fly/whatever with ya.

  27. …hell…as a small kid i lived in several dirt road, boardwalk community miles from the nearest big town…

    …a 1/4 mile walk along a winding path through the woods & there was a small sawmill, empty on the weekends, unlocked & absolutely exposed to young exploring minds…blades as big as we were & big ol’ switches to turn those blades on…but you knew better…

    …stacks of lumber that got climbed on that coulda crushed young kids if you didn’t develop the smarts…

    …another 1/4 mile further & were big ol’ open storage sheds for electric mining engines used to haul carts throughout the surrounding depleted gold mines…

    …areas where mine shafts weren’t completely blocked off, especially when exploration is part of your new world…

    …no supervision & the opportunity to throw rocks & break a few windows, older kids who wanted to show off how cool it was to have bb guns, “wanna try ???…okay, just a couple a shots ‘cuz my dad won’t buy me any more bb’s ’til next week” & even the odd .22 to understand the danger of guns for a 5 or 6 year old…guns weren’t bad, most every kid’s dad did some hunting but they could be real dangerous if you didn’t learn…

    …i learned to ride somebody’s “too big” bike on the dirt ‘cuz that’s all there was…training wheels ???…not likely…“here, kid, i’ll push ya”…we had kids who laughed at ya & wouldn’t give you the opportunity to do other ‘big kid’ stuff if you couldn’t handle the basics…

    …helmets ???…that was what dad’s wore during the war & how come the germans always had the cool looking ones ???…

    …fall down ???…hell ya & suck it up or you were gonna hear “cry baby” the next time something new to try came along…

    …i’ve never read ‘Last Child in the Woods’ but i’ll bet i was one of them…“Kids need to fall down, eat dirt, and have unstructured play and learning time.”…i couldn’t agree more & having some scars on my knees & elbows meant growing up & being less scarred on the inside ‘cuz i knew life was full of opportunities for danger & hurt…

    …growing up was just that…“growing up” & i consider myself lucky doing it how i did…it was a precious thing…

    …& much to the chagrin of a few, i made it…

  28. Oh yeah, and if you ever make it out this way there’s this abandoned quarry…

  29. …hell ya, joe…

    …i enjoyed writing that because it was like watching scenes of an uncluttered & free time in my life…

    …sure, as a kid there’s pitfalls n’ foibles to deal with but i thank the “great spirit” that i had the opportunity to explore life around me the way i did…

    …of course, living out where we did, my mom used a big silver police whistle to call us home…you heard that for miles, it seemed & by god, you responded or your “opportunities” would suddenly diminish…

    …took me years to not ‘pavlov’ when i heard a whistle…