grizzly59

https://www.5newsonline.com/article/...7-7e8d5f95fad1

indyfabz

rumrunn6

gruesome. they haven't released the "nearby surveillance footage"? don't want to see the actual impact but curious about the circumstances. that dog sh*t's mug shot is pretty telling

rydabent

I hope they throw the book at him. He dont need to see the light of day for about 30 years.

DiabloScott

"A pedestrian on a bicycle" does that mean they were walking? or does the paper call all bicyclists pedestrians?
And is this a mug shot from a previous arrest last month?



Also - obviously some kind of criminal mastermind.

mr_bill

They have reached next of kin of Christopher West, 57, of Fort Smith.

FWIW, police often use the term "pedacyclist" in their reports, which is a human on a device with pedals, with one, two, or three wheels.

Reporters often mistranslate that term to "pedestrian on a bicycle."

(This thread will not go well.)

-mr. bill

Riveting

What Advocacy or Safety are we supposed to glean from this?

Hopefully transporting the person you just killed (and not to a hospital) will add many more years to his sentence. Assuming he wasn't DUI, and that it wasn't intentional, he probably would've gotten off if he had just waited for the police and said "the sun was in my eyes" (EDIT: I now see it was at 8pm), or "he came out of nowhere".

Daniel4

I was noticing this same trend. If a driver hits a pedestrian or a cyclist, he has a good chance of being released without charges if he just stayed.


In another thread, it was pointed out to me that the driver was arrested and charged for the run in hit-and-run. The hit was only incidental and he was not charged for the fatality.

livedarklions

It's almost like the charges are dependent on the facts that actually can be proven, and that the elements that need to be proven for criminally convicting someone for hitting a person are completely different than proving they fled the scene.

genec

"He swerved."

Paul Barnard

Seriously, what is it with low set ears and crooks? If that jerks ears were any lower, they'd be attached to his neck.

Paul Barnard

That's a 35 MPH zone. I can't imagine any body part being severed at that speed in an accident that would launch a body into the bed of the truck. I have a hunch his speed was much greater than that.

burnthesheep

This is the tough part with why I feel a lot of motor vehicle crime in the US gets next to no penalty and then also people just don't care and drive like they don't care.

Tough to prove enough to raise the bar to a level to get convictions that would actually deter bad drivers. I feel they need to get rid of the whole "well I didn't see them, sun, some other BS" as it seems unless you're slap drunk or on audio video doing it on purpose they can't go after you.

Here in NC the Lori Cove case made it further.......not sure how laws differ: felony hit/run and 15-19 years sentence....I think here the priors and dui played into what they could charge.
https://abc11.com/cyclists-hit-cary-...ident/2661518/

genec

I think the thing that bothers me the most about the litany of excuses that are so often thrown out is that all of them actually call for caution, yet the typical response is to charge on.

So yeah... Throw the book at folks that "confess" that they could not see, yet continued with abandon.

rybin

I agree, but it seems like all the laws on the roads ultimately favor drivers over anyone else and it sucks

CliffordK

It is not uncommon for weeks or months to pass before murder or manslaughter charges are filed.

If the cyclist did, in fact, appear out of nowhere (ran a stop sign on a side street), then it is possible no charges will be filed.

But, there could well be extenuating circumstances that would lead to severe charges. For example, if the driver was intoxicated, charges might be upgraded.

That may well be a reason to flee the scene. If the driver has alcohol in the system, then 24+ hours later, and it would be difficult to determine the level of intoxication at the time of the accident (unless they have evidence from a bar). Other drugs have a longer washout period. Still, it may be difficult to ascertain for sure when the drugs were taken and levels at the time of the accident.

In this case, the guy would have been in a bit of a bind. What do you do if you wake up from your bender and find a body in the back of your pickup? Try to take it back and dump it at the scene of the accident? Call the police and try to convince them that it wasn't hit and run because you have the corpse in the pickup? Or simply dispose of the body?

They may have to try to figure out the speed of the accident based on traffic cams, security cams, and accident reconstruction.

Accident reconstruction may also help determine the direction the cyclist was riding. Headlights and Taillights?

All things that may take time and impact whether murder/manslaughter charges will be filed.

mr_bill

This thread is of course not going well.

James Ray Jones has been charged with leaving the scene AND manslaughter.

But please, stop speculating, without evidence, on how Christopher West may be culpable in his own killing.

-mr. bill

livedarklions

Agreed, but that will no doubt be roundly ignored as people want to display their Dunning-Kruger/fundamental attribution error fallacies over the corpse of a fellow cyclist all to reassure themselves that this could never happen to them.

These news story threads really are uniformly awful. They produce tons of heat and absolutely no light.

Honestly, I think the forum would be a lot better if these threads were just banned at this point.

Daniel4

Can this thread be saved? It's always the same handful of people posting the same remarks.

livedarklions

He says, posting the exact same remark he posts in pretty much all threads.

No, these threads ARE people posting the same thing over and over, and these threads kill the forum. This thread is no different and should not be "saved".

Daniel4

That's right. I'm one of those people you complain about in your original thread. And you are, too.

But I take it that you don't like references to your original thread.

For a person who wants this thread closed, you're keeping it alive.

livedarklions

Look, this "you're keeping it alive" tactic is blatant trolling on your part, and I'm not engaging with it further. I find the picking apart of stories to find some reason the victim was at fault to be morally objectionable, and will continue to state that in these threads as they appear. If you complain about me doing so, I am likely to respond to that. Tough noogies.

My "original thread" as you put it was primarily about why this exact type of thread was so effective at killing the forum. So "can this thread be saved" as some sort of "gotcha" counter at me makes no sense if you think you're referring to that thread. I've gotten rather tired of pointing that out to you, but find it very funny that you complain about repetition in the very same post you repeat that same lame whatever it's supposed to be again and again and again.

Daniel4

You're the one who wanted this this thread banned and you keep responding to me.

So I have some suggestions that should bring some peace:
1) wave your magic wand and make road fatalities disappear so that the A&S section will no longer have a reason to exist; or
2) ask the moderator to ban the threads you don't like; or
3) become a moderator so you can do your own censoring; or
4) just use the ignore feature that's available to everybody so the rest of the members who do want to contribute to these discussions can.

But I have a feeling you're going to reject all these suggestions and continue to whine about threads or posts you don't like.

UniChris

While I haven't seen anything yet on the exact location in the mentioned area between 14th-16th it would be worth noting that the general area https://www.google.com/maps/search/g.../data=!3m1!1e3 is clearly a bad place for anything but driving. Walking might work if the traffic lights are being honored.

Cycling hits that bad dilemma between taking the right lane (which in a sane environment really should work, though on street reality can often be otherwise) vs. riding the sidewalk and being in the wrong place at every intersection.

Plus there's a middle school, and the disconnected remains of 15th street which once used to go through, but now ends with bollards before sidewalk yet continues with a mid-block ramp down to the curb - only legitimate purpose I can see for that remaining is that it's a potential infrequent maintenance access that needs to stay pedestrian and wheelchair penetrable as an emergency evacuation route.

Plus after dark, infrequent streetlights, and a Friday of all things.

livedarklions

Or you could just resign yourself to the fact that if people post stuff other people dislike, the people who dislike it are free to post why they don't like it.

I reject #1 as having any validity because I think one of the things that's happening here on a regular basis is this forum being used to bash dead cyclists, and that's getting teed up by people like yourself posting these news stories with the best of intentions. TBH, from reading your "advice" in a few threads, I don't think you're actually knowledgeable on the subject of cycling safety, so I see no reason to take your judgment on how posts relate to safety issues seriously. I think the general tone and content of these threads is actually harmful to the interests of cyclists, I am going to continue saying that.

As far as 2 and 3 go, yeah and you could do the same things.

And as for 4, no, I actually think these threads are harmful discourse and saying so is my contribution to the discussion. I don't care if you like it. You can use the ignore function just as much as I can. Quit being such a hypocrite on this.