I don’t usually re-post stories that are flying around the Internet, but two recent stories deserve attention for the level of indifference and callousness they show toward people on bikes.
The first story comes from Tucson Arizona. The snip below is from a story posted on CNN.com yesterday:
“A judge sentenced a woman to nearly the maximum prison term for negligent homicide after hearing a recorded jail conversation in which she made light of the bicyclist she killed…
During the conversation, the man told Arrington that an acquaintance believed she should get a medal and a parade because she had “taken out” a “tree hugger, a bicyclist, a Frenchman and a gay guy all in one shot.”
Arrington laughed. When the man said he knew it was a terrible thing to say, she responded, “No, it’s not.””
[You can listen to the audio of the phone call here.]
I didn’t even plan to post that one until someone sent me another shocking bit of news. This time, from Spain. As reported in a U.K. newspaper:
“A Spanish driver who fatally collided with a cyclist is suing the dead youth’s family 20,000 Euros for the damage the impact of his body did to his luxury car, a Spanish newspaper reported…
“I’m also a victim in all of this, you can’t fix the lad’s problems, but you can fix mine,” Delgado told the newspaper…
“This was the final straw, a kick in the teeth,” the youth’s mother Rosa Trinidad told El Pais.”
Wow.
In the words of the reader who sent me one of the stories, “We work so hard to make cycling safer, what can you say?”