greatscott

I watched that video a bunch of times, I'm not sadistic, but when I first saw the video this message thing kept popping up from some cycling activist thing showing all the blame on the driver including breaking laws. Problem was, according to the police, the driver did not break any laws, and that the Dr did not use the proper lane for cyclist going straight, and the laws in Boston were different than the laws in other cities. Anyway, from what I remember of the video is that the Dr was riding in the R lane next to the curb, going at a decent clip, the trucker passes her about 2 blocks before he has to make his turn, as he approaches the turn, about a 1/3 of a block from his turn, he turns on his R blinker, at that split moment he does that, it looked like the Dr was about a 1/2 block behind the truck, but she's moving at a good clip, somewhere near this area another cyclist was riding, he goes over to the bike lane, she obviously does not, as the driver slows down to begin preparing to make his turn, she catches up with him, still on the far R next to the curb, but now in a designated city bus stopping lane, he now begins to turn just as she is coming up alongside of the truck, the trucker then cuts the curve and jumps the sidewalk with the rear tandems, she has no place to go, she tried stopping but got ran over, she could not have turned R either without getting ran over, there was no time for her to jump the curb either. The trucker claims he didn't know he hit her, and that could be true because when he did hit her he was also jumping that curb, so he probably assumed that the slight jolt he felt was the curb, and part of that jolt was the curb.

From that video, and from what the police said concerning the laws in that city, she was in the wrong. The trucker should have been a bit more alert like I mentioned before, he knew he passed her, so he should not have made that turn until he saw her again and knew where she was at. Obviously this case went to the courts which is why the video is gone, the only wrong doing that the trucker did was not gone up to another level of precaution, but he didn't do anything illegal, so a jury could rule him to be 25% at fault? Evidently this case is still in the courts, because I could find any outcome on what happened, meaning an outcome has not happened so until it does everything is hush hush.

Of course the bike activists people are saying the state of Mass has only filed charges against 5 motorists involved with hitting cyclists out of 33 cyclists fatality accidents, all I know in this case was that they had several cameras that caught her riding for a long ways, plus the street camera at the intersection, so they have really good video documentation as to what happened, neither Boston, nor the state, can do anything to to prevent charges from being filed, if there are any charges deemed necessary to be brought against the trucker. The activists also scream about how the police got it wrong, no they did not get it wrong, they reviewed the videos and saw everything that happened, and the ground team did the investigation, along with eyewitness accounts, and found her to be at fault. Then the activists say she was riding in her lane carefully navigating traffic, no, the bike lane moved over to her left, there were arrows on the road telling cyclists to move over, and the bike lane was clearly marked as a bike lane, she was not in any sort of bike lane, she was first on the regular part of the street meant for cars because the bike lane shifted, then she move further into another R lane that reserved for city buses to pickup and drop off passengers; nor was she carefully navigating traffic, she was riding at a good clip, there was nothing in front of her to navigate, all that is said for drama affect.

I'm not an anti cyclist, or I hate cyclists and wish they all die, I don't roll coal at cyclists either; I've been riding bikes since I was 8 years old, and continued till this very day and I'm 68 years old; I've had friends die in bicycle accidents, so I've been there, the 3 friends that I had that died were ALL at fault! Not because the city cops didn't do their homework on the cases, but rather my friends did not obey the laws that are on the street for not only cars to follow but bicycles too. I use to ride on streets in Los Angeles, and a few other large cities, I learned what to do and what not to do, and thankfully I survived while learning, but you never ever come along the right side of a big truck, a bus, or even a car, you stay behind at a distance where you can stop if you have to, the Dr was simply too inexperienced to read the traffic and understand how big vehicles operate, and she failed to realize that the bike lane had shifted to the left, even though another cyclist did it that was very close to her, and died before she could learn those life saving lessons. A very very tragic and sad thing, but hopefully cyclists can learn from her mistakes.

Again, I have not been privy to seeing all the facts, only going by the videos that use to be on the internet, as well as the police report that use to be on the internet, and when I checked the laws she broke, those were indeed laws she broke that were particular to Boston, some activists were trying to say that the state laws supercede local laws, no they do not, the city makes laws to keep people safe in their particular city with their particular street/traffic patterns. So I could be wrong in my assessment of the accident if other evidence came up later, but everything that use to be posted about the accident at the time of the accident pointed the fault at the Dr.