Originally Posted by
Paul Barnard
The few pics I saw seemed to show a low speed road with lots of markings that should have suggested low speed. Maybe my memory isn't serving me well, and it was a 70 MPH road. And since we are nitpicking, the truck didn't need to stop. It needed to slow to below the riders pace.
I have zero tolerance for the "hard to see" and "didn't see them" excuse. It doesn't fly with me, and that is what I should have communicated here.
I was under the understanding that it was a 55 mph road, and I don't consider that low speed. I don't know whether there were signs indicating slow down for the closed lane. This is not a nitpick. The braking distance at 55 mph for a semi is 170 feet and takes about 4 1/2 seconds, and there's a whole hell of a lot of difference between 55 mph and the likely speed she was pedaling at. If she entered the lane say 25 feet in front of him, there's not much he can do without swerving into the closed lane full of bicyclists or driving off the road. That 25 feet of distance is going to close very fast even with the brakes on a half second after he sees her (and that reaction time might be unrealistic).
I have no tolerance for zero tolerance arguments, they always end up leading to absurd conclusions in many individual cases. In this case, she very well likely could have been seen making the move, but it may have been far too late for the semi driver to take any effective action.
I have no idea if the truck driver is at fault here, but neither do you based on the incomplete facts as we have them.
And yes, I am deliberately being ironic when n I say I have no tolerance for zero tolerance arguments. I've just seen too many stupid ones for me not to be sarcastic when I see one. My favorite one was a proposal for a zero tolerance rule for touching another person in a middle school. Under that logic, if someone is behind another person going up the stairs and the person in front starts falling backwards, the rule would require that the person behind just step out of the way of the fall instead of catching the faller. Your rule seems to be if the driver could possibly see the cyclist, the driver is at fault even if the driver could not have taken effective evasive action. It's a strict liability rule (in the technical sense) for driving, in other words, the driver doesn't actually have to be proven to have done anything wrong in order to be held liable. If that's what you're arguing for, fine, but admit it.