Cyclist Down

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Cyclist seriously injured when hit by SUV during group ride
A military surgeon from Fort Gordon served a tour of duty in Iraq, but on Monday he was fighting for his life after a recreational bicycle ride back home.

Matthew Burke, 37, of Augusta, was with a group of people riding on a rural South Carolina road just across the state line when a man in an SUV hit them from behind Friday evening.

“We don’t have any long-term prognosis,” his brother Paul said Monday.

Burke, an orthopedic surgeon who served in Iraq in 2009, is married and has a 7-month-old daughter, his brother said.

He suffered brain trauma and has been unconscious, said his brother, who spoke to the AJC by telephone from the waiting room of Medical College of Georgia. “It’s a very serious situation.”

www.ajc.com/news/cyclist-seriously-injured….

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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

10 Replies to “Cyclist Down”

  1. The general tone of the article angers the fuck out of me. The driver’s father wanted to know why cyclists “chose that road”. The “journalist” ngaged in hand-wringing over the “friction” between “cyclists out for exercise and drivers wnho just want to get where they’re going”.

    Help me out here-Is there any way that those two statements are NOT all kinds of fucked up?

  2. Yeah, the article ends with a quote from the obviously bias father of the driver who gives it the usual spin. The father’s attitude is perhaps understandable (as they are facing all kinds of litigation and since the injured cyclist seems to be a REAL PERSON as opposed to say, the rest of us), but the way it ends is a clear editorial decision. So why not write Ty and educate him about the “friction”?

  3. I was thinking more along the lines of a visit from our old pal Spike Bike.

  4. And somehow I know that those critical mass rides that block traffic are not helping out the cause for cycling safety one bit. Nothing’s going to prevent the irrational fucks from hating us or wishing us harm – and critical mass just adds fuel to that fire.

  5. Cars are deadly weapons. We will never be safe until they fear the consequences of their actions more than we do.

  6. …littlejar & joetheelectrician…both comments (#’s 4 & 5) are absolutely correct, in my book…although i’d suggest that rather than actually ‘hating’ us, most people find us to be an annoying hindrance…

    …although critical mass does go a long way towards bringing out the hate in some…

  7. bgw, I consider their level of antipathy toward us to be moot, considering they needn’t be all that “annoyed” in order to do grievous harm.

  8. …therein lies the dichotomy of such disparate user groups “sharing the road”

    …we will always be at the mercy of that huge disadvantage solely due to size & weight & while we will never lose sight of it, the only time it’s really recognized by the other side when they’re threatened by their own inability to pilot around us safely or indeed if they’re actually intentionally threatening us…

    …most intelligent non-cyclists would find it hard to believe that their fellow man would actually use a vehicle to threaten a cyclist but we, as cyclists know it happens regularly…

  9. “regularly” is right. I still say a Spike Bike or three in every town would be a Godsend.

  10. Matt Burke was hit five weeks ago today. The driver has still not been charged. The night he was hit I has stayed home to have dinner with my wife. We got the call moments after the collision. My wife had to break the news to Matt’s wife. At this moment it is not looking like Matt will survive.

    I have ridden and raced for thirty years, hosted the IMBA World Summit in May, will host the US Road Championships in 2011 and 2012, and honestly, am not sure if I can get on my bike again.

    Riding has always been my mental health break and social outlet. To look at my bikes right now causes nothing but heartbreak. I ask that you all watch your back. The jerk that hit Matt was probably trying to buzz the group, but will probably end up with a misdemeanor. Absolutely disgraceful.

    I would give up all of my bike stuff to have Matt wake up. Now it’s just a bunch of crap that makes me sad. Sorry to be such a downer, but this thing has really gotten to me.