| Re: Bad bicycle reporting on Channel 5 in Kansas City
>> Assuming the driver believed he was passing the leftmost rider with
>> sufficient room, why should we assume he would have been any more
>>competent at passing "singled-up" riders?
>Allow me to put your question in a cycling context. If you can't keep
>your tires on a two inch wide strip of roadway, why should we assume
>you'd be more competent to keep your tires on a two foot wide strip?
>That the cyclist positioned himself badly doesn't relieve the driver of
>his duty to not pass unless he can do so safely but to assume that the
>cyclist's position on the roadway didn't contribute in any way to the
>crash seems counterintuitive at best to me.
I realize that we're rapidly reaching (or have reached!) the "beating a dead
horse" phase of this discussion, but indulge me in allowing me to respond.
The problem is that the driver wasn't given the figurative "two-inch wide
strip of roadway" to use to pass the riders, he had access to a full lane,
which in my mind is analogous to "a two foot wide strip" in bicycle-speak.
Your analogy is similar to the old "the riders forced him to make a bad
decision" line of thought, which I don't buy either.
Chris Neary
diabloridr@comcast.net
"We will teach our twisted speech to the young believers"
-- The Clash
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