Posted on 06/06/2008 8:12:24 AM PDT by george76
A car plowed into a bike race along a highway near the US-Mexico border, killing one and injuring 10 others.
Police investigator Jose Alfredo Rodriguez says the 28-year-old driver was apparently drunk ...
A photograph taken by a city official shows bicyclists and equipment being hurled high in to the air...
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
A picture is worth a thousand words......PING!!!!
Previously posted, with some comments and references to bowling:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2025117/posts
I haven’t heard any follow-up on this story as to what the driver may be getting charged with, or if the poor guys he ran over are recovering OK.
}:-)4
Holy *****..
Mega prayers for the folks on the bikes.
In links that include a sequence of photos the lead car in front of the peloton is shown veering out of the way as the drunk approaches. When I saw the pictures I wondered what I might have done if I were driving the escort car.
Surely I would have laid on the horn and hit the brakes so the riders behind me would see the lights and maybe have been spared.
I wonder, if I would have had the courage to stay there and let the drunk ram my car in order to protect the riders. Would you?
Thanks.
At least one is dead ?
No matter how much rhetoric and complaining cyclists expel about “sharing” the road it will never change the laws of physics as that photo displays.
Maybe all pelotons should have to lead escorts and they should be airbag equipped.
At least one biker ( with the green shirt on the left ) got out of the way.
Amazing how this drunk POS was magnetically attracted to these bicyclists. He fell asleep at the wheel (so the story goes) just as he neared these day glow bicycle boys
PATHETIC COMMENT!!!!!!!!!!!!
The drunk may have just tried to correct his car, as it looks like he is trying to head back to the middle ?
Monday Morning QB comment: What did the officer think would happen when he swerved out of the way of the drunk and exposed all those cyclists?
Sad siutuation but amazing only one was killed. I’m working on a safety presentation today to give to my daughter’s driver ed class.
Too many motorists don’t know how to act around cyclists so I’m doing my small part.
Oh wow, that’s the first time I’ve seen that picture with a police car in it. I thought the cropped version was the entire pic.
So this guy was so out of it, he managed to not only miss seeing the bikers, but a police car as well! Ugh. I hope the authorities down there throw the book at him.
}:-)4
Way back in 1957 my dad was driving to work at night. He saw a car coming toward him weaving all over the road. He pulled completely off the road and stopped, and the drunk still hit him, totalling our car and putting my dad in the hospital.
The drunk had no insurance.
You know, I joke about plowing over people in Grand Theft Auto. Now for me, I would never do that out of fear of going to jail for a long time as well as the inability to loose the cops within the first couple of minutes of actually doing this.
Evidently that was not the issue for this guy...
“Amazing how this drunk POS was magnetically attracted to these bicyclists. He fell asleep at the wheel (so the story goes) just as he neared these day glow bicycle boys”
The photo clearly shows a police car parked in the lane the driver would have been driving in. Looks to me the driver swerved to avoid the police car at the last second and plowed in the cyclists.
“Way back in 1957 my dad was driving to work at night. He saw a car coming toward him weaving all over the road. He pulled completely off the road and stopped, and the drunk still hit him, totalling our car and putting my dad in the hospital.”
Same scenario for my Grandfather and Grandmother early one morning in 1946 except the drunk killed my grandmother.
cyclists may be dead right.
Safety also is to watch out for drunks driving thousands of pounds of energy at hundreds of pounds.
The large picture explains alot.
The cop dodged the drunk.
Too bad that the bikers did not scatter.
I guess it’s hard to tell using just a photo, but I thought the police car was leading the cyclists and swerved to avoid the drunk, exposing the cyclists to a head on.
I can’t tell what this drunken POS was doing. I doubt he knows either. At least it took place in Mexico. So it is their mess
God, that’s horrible. That drunken a$$hole should be thrown in prison for life.
They will send him over the border to the USA. It will cost Mexico money to put him in jail.
Yep. The same thing happened to my Grandmother in ‘63.
Dang,almost had a scene like that on Old Mine Road a year or three back.
That’s one of the jobs of the lead car, to impact any obstructions, so the bikes don’t. Also to “persuade” the crowds to move back.
Still, it’s hard to fault a driver for swerving out of the way of a sure accident.
I’m told that it’s a good idea to turn your lights off, because drunks fixate on the lights and then tend to drive at them.
Pathetic is a little strong. It was more tasteless & insensitive.
Unfortunately, I have those “daytime running lights”, so even if I shut my lights off at night, there’s still light to be seen.
I live down the road from a bar, and have had a few close calls.
Nearly got one of the patrons as he stumbled down the road.
That too.
BUMP!
“I can’t tell what this drunken POS was doing. I doubt he knows either. At least it took place in Mexico. So it is their mess”
Actually, this took place in Brownsville, Texas. The article is written to hide that fact. There are other articles reporting where this really happened. Look at the street sign. That’s an American street sign, not a Mexican one.
“Strike!
PATHETIC COMMENT!!!!!!!!!!!!”
YES! The judge should put this driver and the maker of this comment on bicycles exclusively for six months. Let them see life from the other side.
BTW, I do know what its like from both sides, and IMO there's typically plenty of blame to go around.
Do you have any links showing it took place in Texas?
Well it was reminiscent of a bowling ball plowing into ten-pins
Seriously, all I could think of was the sound of a bowling ball striking pins.
That is kind of what the car was there to prevent from happening.
Was the driver in the escort car also wearing a clown outfit?
Drudge has got a wild video of an out of control office worker
Someone should post it if it hasnt been posted already
(I cant as Im not on my computer)
I think the police car wasn’t parked. It looks to me like it was moving, and swerved to avoid the oncoming car.
I doubt there was time to do much thinking at all. While it's an interesting question... "would you sacrifice your vehicle and maybe yourself to save the cyclists?"... I suppose most of us would like to think that we'd do the gallant thing.
In reality there probably isn't time to think through all the options or really think about anything. The instinctive jerk of the wheel to avoid an imminent crash is just ingrained in our reflexes, and would happen before you realized the consequences of it.
Sometimes, particularly for certain things that you have imagined in your mind's eye over and over, those instinctive reactions can be trained to do the "harder" thing. I'm thinking of the guy who falls on a grenade to save his comrades. I imagine that the guy who does that has probably wondered before --perhaps at length-- about just such an occasion and whether it might ever happen. When it finally does he instinctively does what he's seen himself doing already.
But in a new situation that you couldn't have imagined so closely, the instinct reverts to whatever you've done before in similar situations. Your hand jerks the wheel to dodge the obstacle. By the time you have time to process what might happen next it's already happened.
My .02
O.K.
Peace.
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