canklecat

Mostly terse police blotter posts on social media -- usually lacking names or specifics -- and word of mouth among the cycling community. Sometimes locals will chime in and identify the victims after rumors run the grapevine.

When I was a newspaper reporter in the 1980s, mostly covering the police/fire beat, my first stop early every morning was checking the incident reports at the police and fire stations. If anything looked interesting enough I'd dig a little deeper and see if it developed into a story. Otherwise we just published summaries of the police blotter.

Our local media rarely do that anymore. One of the major daily papers I worked for in the '80s had the largest circulation in Texas at that time. Now it's more like a weekly shopper's gazzette. Some of the reporters can barely write, and there's no evidence of a copy editor or fact checker.

That leaves the TV news. They report deaths and serious injuries only if it emotionally manipulates their viewer demographic. That excludes homeless and street people stuck and killed while walking or riding bikes. We know it happens only because of the police blotters and word of mouth. But if it's a kid who fits the audience demographics, it'll get priority. If it's a dedicated local cyclist who's had success in competition, it'll get a little attention, mostly to give viewers a chance to indulge their schadenfreude and snipe about "cyclists" as a weird sort of minority that needs to go away.

Most incidents are shrugged off as "accidents":
"I was blinded by the sun!" (Drive slower if you can't see.)
"They came out of nowhere!" (The cyclist/pedestrian was right in front of you at the intersection/crosswalk.)
"I never some them coming!" (Get your nose out of your phone.)

The hypothetical "deer came out of nowhere!" example may not be an accident either. Was it at dawn or dusk on a two-lane farm to market road, which should have a speed limit no higher than 50 mph, and slower at night, while the driver was doing 70 mph? Not really an accident, is it? More like negligence, driving too fast for conditions.

Sure, critters can surprise us. I've lived in, driven and ridden bikes on rural roads for decades. That includes tens of thousands of miles of cross country driving on the job, often in rural areas with herds of deer and antelope at roadside. I've never hit a critter or been hit by one. Close calls, sure. But I drive appropriate to the conditions.

Break down most "accidents" and you'll usually find human error as a component. That was my job for years as a federal OSHA safety inspector. It reinforced my assertion that there are very few unforeseeable, unpredictable and unavoidable "accidents."