Biker Down

Police examine the scene where a pickup truck struck a group of cyclists on May 14, 2010, in Rougemont, Quebec, south of Montreal.
Police examine the scene where a pickup truck struck a group of cyclists on May 14, 2010, in Rougemont, Quebec, south of Montreal.

Six cyclists were entangled in a scene of carnage on a Quebec highway Friday as scraps of twisted metal were scattered along a wide stretch of pavement Friday.

Three were declared dead. All were injured.

. . .

Among those administering first aid, police said, was the motorist involved in the accident. They said they would be interrogating the pickup driver later, but had already concluded he hadn’t been drinking.

“Alcohol is not a factor,” said provincial police Sgt. Claude Denis.
Read the rest: theglobeandmail.com/news/national/quebec/three-quebec-cyclists-die-in-accident-involving-pickup.

My condolences to their friends and family.

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

13 Replies to “Biker Down”

  1. This is a subject that gets me red in the face.
    I adopted my oldest son. His birth father was struck and killed by a car while on a ride.
    I have been driving a car/truck for 25 years and if you’re paying attention, you can see a tarantula crossing the goddamn road!

    HOW THE *FUCK* DO YOU HIT A WHOLE GROUP OF CYCLISTS AT ONCE WITHOUT TRYING?!!

    Totally asleep? Legally blind? Maybe they WERE trying???

    I just don’t get it…….

  2. That’s a pretty wide road, certainly by UK standards, and although it looks like a bend, visibility’s gotta be pretty good, how do you manage to hit something as big, brightly coloured, and moving without being asleep at the wheel? Unless he was trying out one of those virtual reality headsets whilst driving. Thank everything for SUSTRANS over here, and living next the canal, which means I have precisely 300 yds of road to cover to get from home to work, on very, very minor roads (so small in fact I know the four people that live on them, so traffic’s not an issue)I am blessed, and every time I ride to work or home from work without having seen a car, I’m thankful. I just have to watch out for the drunks throwing empty bottles and cold fish suppers at me, hardly a challenge as they can’t throw for s**t……

  3. condolences to the families…odd accident, curious to read details after investigation.

    sidenote: did anyone else get the weird toggle switch appear on-screen when clicking the link?

  4. I can’t help but go back to the justice thing bj. What the fuck is going to happen to this guy? He murdered three people! For a second, I’d like to imagine that the Canadians are intelligent enough to actually hold somebody accountable and punish them accordingly. That would be justice. Sweet, sweet justice.

  5. The club was a triathlon club in Saint Lambert (a suburb on the south shore of Montreal). The group was riding out to a weekend training session.

    http://triathlonsl.com

    Latest news is the driver had just finished the graveyard shift, and had the truck on cruise control.

  6. My heart goes out to all those families.

    I pray for your loved ones.

    This shit should not happen, but it does.

  7. A sad day when that can happen on the open road too so many people. When are the roads going to get safer?

  8. Not defending, but nothing in the article sheds light on why this happened. There was something unusual, the motorist not only didn’t run away, but helped render first aid. That’s a good thing compared to most of the biker down posts we see. Be interesting to know what the findings are.

  9. Glad to hear the driver stopped to administer aid

    We did a local 5 person team “Raudax” this weekend in Western Quebec. Mix of pave and terribly paved old highways. I’d say 4 out of 5 drivers slowed considerably and gave us the entire lane when passing. Clearly people were aware of these incidents and shaken up by it.

  10. The driver had to stop, or rather his vehicle was stopped by the wreck. Hitting six people at over 60 MPH (well 3 over 60, the truck was broken and losing speed rapidly by the 4th rider) will seriously fuck up a vehicle. The first truck that hit me was totaled and I managed to walk away from the wreck, with some serious bruises. I’m pretty sure the second truck that hit me 30 years later was also totaled, but it was still running when it left the scene unlike the first one, and I was unable to walk away unlike the first time. Had it hit another rider I’m sure it would have been unable to run also. Hitting a human being does a lot of damage to a vehicle when the vehicle is going fast enough.