Originally Posted by
rholland1951
No question, the second driver was incompetent, and may be one of those poor souls who doesn't really know where the corners of her car are; I have no doubt her insurance company will pick up the tab for damage to the first car. That being said... having watched the whole thing go down, there was nothing ambiguous about the chain of causation here: the cyclist got the whole sorry sequence rolling, and then rolled his sorry self away from the scene before papers were passed.
rod
Originally Posted by
drewguy
Not justifying the illegal cyclist crossing, but I don't think you can blame the cyclist for a car behind the one that properly stopped trying to make an illegal turn around the stopped car and hitting it in the process. That's poor - and dangerous if properly executed - driving.
I agree, you can't blame the cyclist for the Ford following or passing too closely and the driver not knowing the dimensions of the car. But legality aside, in the minds of both drivers the cyclist set off the chain of events, which may negatively affect the drivers' behavior towards cyclists in general in the future.