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Damn if this one didn’t just about ruin my morning.
An 11-year-old girl on a bicycle ride with her family was hit and killed by a teenage driver Tuesday night, according to the Mesa Police Department.
The girl was behind her sister and father on the 3200 block of East Brown Road around 6:30 p.m, said Det. Steve Berry of Mesa police. The family tried to cross the street as two vehicles approached them. The vehicle nearest to the family slowed as the bikers crossed the street, Berry said.
The 16-year-old driving the second vehicle, a Dodge truck, was unaware of the bikers, Berry said, and attempted to pass the slowing vehicle. The teenager hit the girl, according to police.
Police said the teenager was not at fault and is not being charged.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2010/10/27/20101027mesa-child-killed-bike-abrk1027.html.
I have a hard time seeing how the driver of the second car is not at fault in this instance. Was the family at an intersection? Were they in a crosswalk? Who had the right of way?
I cannot fathom how you are not responsible for taking reasonable precautions regarding avoiding impact with any object on the roadway in front of you when you pass a slow moving vehicle. If you initiate the passing manover, you take the risk. You cannot assume the vehicle is front of you is slowing for no reason and just gun it, consequences be damned. It is reasonably foreseeable that danger may exist; there may be something in the roadway, such as a box, dog, cat, another vehicle, a fallen tree limb.
In this instance it was an eleven year old girl.
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this makes me feel like throwing up. seriously. fuck. FUCK!
Uhmmmm.
How the fuck is this not a chargeable offense ?
He passed the slowing car in front of him and slammed in to the kid.
Fry him.
This country is fucked up.
Tragic. Very tragic.
For analysis purposes… Assuming this is Mesa, AZ. Check Google maps. It’s a 4-lane road. The car should have never stopped to let them cross. The teenage driver, presumably passing on the left, and the kids, were probably blinded by the stopped car. Bicyclists fare best when they act as motor vehicles. Crossing perpendicular to traffic mid-block or in a crosswalk on green with a stopped car is unsafe. Period.
We don’t know all of the details. But again, very sorry for the victim and survivors.
We need to train kids to ride safely through Safe Routes to Schools programs and other outlets
@kbean.
You suck.
Here I had me a good ol’ fashioned “pissed off” thing going on about this matter and then you had to come along and throw common sense at me.
Damn you. Damn you to Hell.
Now what am I going to be pissed at ?
Where’s littlejar when you really need him.
…truly sad & amazingly tragic…
…“You cannot assume the vehicle is front of you is slowing for no reason. It is foreseeable that danger may exist. There may be something in the roadway, such as a box, dog, cat, another vehicle, a fallen tree limb.”…
…unfortunately to a newly licensed 16 year old kid, the only thing a car slowing in front of him represents is an impediment to his freedom behind the wheel…“what the fuck…i gotta pass this guy”…
…“We need to train kids to ride safely through Safe Routes to Schools programs and other outlets”…
…both quoted statements are absolutely true but driver awareness programs are so minimal when applying for licenses in this country, that this is the unfortunate result, one more time…
…hard to imagine things changing under the currents policies…take a look around about the time your local high school parking lots empty…those aren’t bad kids you see but most of ’em are lousy, distracted drivers whose priority is socializing with friends…
…anyway, my heart goes out to the family…
fucking christ almighty. we need to TRAIN PEOPLE IN CARS that a car slowing in front of them is not an invitation to hit the gas and pass without a single fucking regard for what caused the slow down in the first place. why is the onus always on the bicyclist to avoid the fucking car and not the other way around! fuckity fuck fuck fuck this bullshit.
okay i feel better. no i don’t.
Sorry I ruined your hate-fest. Now go get drunk and ride your bike, in the order of your choosing. I prefer the latter (whatever that means.)
Makes me sick hearing about this same shit day after day. Didn’t she break the law by passing? Will she even be forced to go to driver’s ed??
This is why I stay off the road. They’ll give any idiot a license. No one was ever hit by a rock or a tree.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2010/10/26/cyclists-rougemont-killed.html
The last post from Tina reminds of the time I was hit by a firefighter’s girlfriend right in front of the fire station. The cop who responded could barely contain his disgust with me as if I had no right to be riding on the street especially since I was wearin’ that faggot ass lycra bike clothing.
I knew Arizona is a right to work state. For cyclists it appears to be a
right to die state.
@kbean.
All cool. Twas just a joke.
I realize now this isn’t the best post for that and I apologies to all.
fry him like that guy in The Green Mile.
If the 11 year old was the trailing rider then why didn’t the driver see the other riders and think to slow down. IT’s just crazy to let this stuff go unpunished. Who would know that this could happen?
Way beyond sunset yes?
Is there some kind of Bat Signal dealie we can use to summon Spike Bike? I fear it has come to that.
Seriously.
That’s terrible.
Especially the part about ..no charges will be filed..
When is the last time charges WERE filed? I literally don’t think I’ve read a single article from Cyclist Down or otherwise where charges were actually filed.
We’ve had at least three cyclists killed here in Oklahoma in the last year and there have been no charges to my knowledge. Unfortunately, one was a hit and run and the driver has never been caught. Sigh…
Fomenter – we need a school of not driving. It would teach people to build, maintain, and ride bicycles in urban and suburban environments.
You’ll never sell the bicycle to the rural, on the whole. It would also mean that drivers would understand the needs of the cyclist…. such as to not be killed.
We need a school of not driving and 16 year olds will be required to take it in High School, and driver’s ed will no longer be required. The school should be funded by the government… and they would have a program such as this in place did they give a shit… which they do not.
And… the reason why the bicyclist must ALWAYS avoid the car is a twisted, perverse juxtaposition of the rule of the jungle onto the movement of vehicles. The natural version is the sparrow stays out of the way of the crow. You stay alive not by following all the rules but by being vigilant and always choosing the safest line with only a thin and common sense regard to legalities.
I tell new cyclists to NEVER stop at crosswalks and to only ride on sidewalks when they are forced to by traffic situations. Also, don’t wait behind all the cars at the light. Get in front and get out of the intersection right BEFORE it turns green.
What I meant to say, in case it is misinterpreted, that cyclists should never ride along the crosswalks and pretend they are pedestrian. It is far more dangerous to walk or ride across large intersections using crosswalks than it is to follow traffic and ride through as a vehicle.
A bicycle is an inertia generating machine, meaning that you cannot jump out of the way of danger as you can walking unencumbered, you must be part of a stream of movement or organized slowing/stopping as regulated by the traffic light. You should start moving when the other side turns red and the intersection is clear so that you are out of the way of all the cars when they start gunning it at the green light.
The school of not driving would save lives…. too many to count.
I ride on the road, with traffic and obey the rules as practical. TBS if YOU feel it is dangerous use the sidewalk, respect the pedestrians and be very cautious at all crossings mid block. Walk or stop before entering a crosswalk.
Riding in traffic is part following the rules and part ignorance of the possible result of driver (fill in the blank). At controlled intersections I like to follow the ‘plug’ through, not race off with it. I choose my left turns so I can get through the intesection w/o having a huge number of cars right behind me if I can. If I go with a left turn signal, I have a good gap before the green light behind me and vehicles are spread out more. That also helps me avoided the right turns into the corner store just as cars cross the intersection. I try to ride big on the road, put my sielf where I can be seen. So far so good, but there have been close calls of all types. Be ever vigilant and visable.
So, if you do something ‘dangerous’, but not illegal, do you deserve to die for it?
It’s a tough call who deserves to die… it appears as though we leave it to our primae facie god, petroleum. It decides who gets wiped out by ‘accidents’ and who gets to go by cancer. Petroleum enables everything bad that we do on a grand scale. Petroleum made all modern weaponry and mining possible. Petroleum will run out! They say. Then what?
Cancer barely existed before we filled the Earth’s biosphere with our petroleum products. Now they are saying that HALF of my generation will get it. There is a dear cost to the petroleum crusade.
Jellyjar, what was the life expectancy before petroleum? What is it now?
There’s a tiny 1/20 Carat diamond in the 5 pound dogshit package. You found it.
That’s Jellyjar for ya-Always lookin’ on the bright side…
not at fault? bullshit! open your friggin´eyes when you´re behind the wheel! was probably too busy poppin´a zit in the mirror, or, which pisses me off most back in the good ´ol u.s. and a., busy chatting away on his cell….what a choad.
As a father of an 11 year-old girl, this is TOO CLOSE to home … D’Wife & I ALWAYS make sure that when we ride, as a family, D’Kid is between us; if only one of us is along, we ride behind her … in this situation and those circumstances, Dad would’ve likely been taken out … and STILL no charges pressed
…i’d honestly love to hear from a court judge, maybe one who cycles, why indeed these cases are either not prosecuted or the judgment is in favor of the perpetrator 99% of the time…
…why does circumstantial evidence not play into these situations when bicycles are involved ???…
This is tragic. That said, stay out of crosswalks and off sidewalks. I don’t know the numbers, but the vast majority of bicycle accidents occur in crosswalks and on sidewalks. Ride like you are a car. Again, stay out of crosswalks and off sidewalks. One more time. Stay out of crosswalks.