Polaris OBark

Link to the article in SF Comical

BikeLite

paywall article...rip cyclist

Daniel4

No mention of any operator behind the car. Was it another self-driving car?

JoeyBike

Sad

georges1

Thoughts and prayers go to his family and friends.

Polaris OBark

must be

and then, toward the end, we have

mschwett 

according to eyewitness accounts on ******, the driver was drunk:

i ride this road several times a week, typically once or twice per ride. sometimes with my kids on the weekend. i would have never thought it particularly dangerous, with good site lines, a relatively low speed differential, good paving, and a bike lane.

so tragic. a ghost bike was placed yesterday. there's a vigil tonight. 7pm on arguello.

Gyro

Couldn't a self-driving car be comparable to a drunk driver at times?

retswerb

That was my thought as well from scoping it out on Google Maps. Somewhere around here, correct? Arguello Blvd - Google Maps

Of the various hazards on my mind when I'm riding, opposite direction traffic is pretty low when there are no driveways or intersections around. Regards and condolences to all the family and friends.

mschwett 

yep. just south of the curve as i understand. haven’t ridden past the ghost bike yet.

Daniel4

It would be good to recall the entire population of drivers from that jurisdiction just as self-driving vehicles get recalled.

Iride01 

I'm amazed that so many are stating this was a self driving car just on assumption and omission of any details in the article to tell us.

mschwett 

it’s stupid and incredibly disrespectful. he was killed by a human male driver, who according to eyewitness reports was intoxicated.

I-Like-To-Bike

You must not dip your toe too often into the pool of A&S statements. Imaginative if not biased assumptions, based on little or no detail (or rational thinking) as well delusional stereotyping of the allegedly numerous enemies of allegedly saintly bicycling folks is the de rigeur of many A&S posters.

3alarmer 

.
...it has made the news in some other places with no paywall: https://nypost.com/2023/04/07/us-cyc...san-francisco/
Certainly every cyclist fatality I read about nearby gives me pause. I guess shouting about it does no good. Enjoy life every minute, because this could happen to any of us.

3alarmer 

...I was surprised by this statistic. I was involved with the ghost bike guys here for a while, and it seemed like Sacramento was getting multiple cyclist fatalities annually in those years.
I can remember one unfortunate year, when two cyclists were killed at the Sac State intersection on H street, in quick succession. Maybe we are improving here ?

Or maybe not.

mschwett 

obviously, one is too many but the city has made great strides - and generally low vehicular speeds make a huge, huge difference.

Arthur Peabody

• Here's the NYT's article: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/08/u...francisco.html (right-click, save, read local copy)
  Quote:

  'The driver of the car, who was not publicly identified, was also transported to the hospital, with injuries that were not life-threatening. It was not immediately clear whether the driver was facing charges.
  Quote:

  'The police said they were working with federal prosecutors "as the investigation progresses."
  The accident shocked the San Francisco cycling community, not just because of the loss of life but also because it happened in an area where bicycle safety activists have repeatedly called for improvements.
  The heavily used cycling route connecting Golden Gate Park and the Presidio, a nearly 1,500-acre park at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge, has been a safety concern for cyclists for years. https://sf.streetsblog.org/2019/06/0...tect-cyclists/
  The narrow and curvy stretch where Mr. Boyes was killed has painted bike lanes but no buffered space or bollards.
  Quote:

  '"This stretch of Arguello Boulevard has two unprotected, paint-only bike lanes, which allows drivers to drive recklessly at unsafe speeds and may have contributed to Ethan's death," Luke Bornheimer, a sustainable transportation advocate, said in a statement. "There is simple infrastructure that is proven to increase safety for all people -- including drivers -- and make people feel safer riding bikes."
  Twitter

Daniel4

It is disrepectful to any victim of a collision for any news article or story not to acknowledge the crash was due to another human being but by simply as identifying it as an accident by an inanimate object.

mschwett 

yes, agreed. this is part of what’s frustrating about the coverage of these things, e.g. “cyclist struck by car.” may as well say that someone was “punctured by a flying bullet” when they’re shot.

Daniel4

"It was not immediately clear whether the driver was facing charges."

Probably because the victim was NOT in a motor vehicle.

As I have noticed many times before:It seems to me that the only way that a driverwho is responsible for a collision to get charged and convicted is if he's

1) DUI;

2) hit-and-run;

3) drivingwithout a licence or with a suspendedlicence;

4) wanted or alreadyknownby the police; or

5) the victim was in a car.

livedarklions

It's disrespectful to any victim to use their death as an occasion for nitpicking the wording of headline.


This is a ridiculous objection and it only applies to the headline. You can only put so much information in a headline, and the cyclist was indeed struck by the car, not by the driver. If it was the driver who hit him, he likely would be alive today. The article made it clear that there was an unidentified driver, and nowhere implied in the slightest that the car was driving itself. The phrase "struck by driver" is factually incorrect or at least ambiguous. It could mean that he was hit by a golf club, but it sure sounds like he was hit by a person. If I have to choose between being struck by a car and being struck by a person, I'm going with the person every time.

The bullet comparison is just bizarre--there's lots of situations where people are struck by bullets and it is unknown where the shots even came from. And I believe "shot" in this sense is literally a synonym for "hit by a bullet".

livedarklions

Oddly, I keep posting counter-examples when you post this again and again, yet you never seem to note them. Please show us your empirical proof for this somewhat random list. #5 is especially stupid. Your proof is "it seems to me"?!

And how is it you don't list "multiple victims"? "Extremely high speed"?

livedarklions

I believe the area where he was struck is actually a national park, hence the federal involvement.

mschwett 

i understand your point, perhaps mine was not well worded. more generally i am responding to the tendency to refer to incidents in which cyclists are killed or seriously injured by cars and their drivers are completely accidental with no fault or negligence ascribed to the driver, or with little or no mention of the fact that the vehicle which struck someone was pointed at that someone by a human driver.

other than the one initial fox headline, coverage of this incredibly sad event seems pretty fair given the information that is publicly available (which does not include the intoxication of the driver)