This Is What It Takes for a Driver to Be Charged for Hitting a Cyclist
By Rocky Thompson on April 8th, 2009
An SUV driver climbed down from his driver’s seat last week to knock a cyclist to the ground and bite off his ear. It happened in Newcastle, so maybe that’s just how issues are solved there and it isn’t that big of a deal. The 31-year-old cyclist reportedly yelled at the driver to slow down, which I guess he did, though probably not quite in the way the biker imagined. I can’t wait to read the headline one day: Biker Guns Down Motorist. The driver who bit off the cyclist’s ear was charged with battery and put in jail.
Thanks Bryant
I’m a cyclist. I’ve been hit and seriously injured once and nearly hit more times than I can count. So I empathize with the cyclist in this story. But you would have to be a total idiot to yell at someone in a car to slow down. Bikes are going to lose that battle EVERYTIME. The car is faster and weighs more. If you find the wrong person at the wrong time (which this cyclist did) you could end up really hurt or worse, under a car.
Don’t be so freaking self righteous. Cars own the road; we get what’s left over. It’s going to be a long time before that changes, and yelling at each other isn’t going to help.
I’m glad to see a cyclist realizing that the road is for cars. Dont get me wrong i dont condone in any way shape or form what happened here, or hitting cyclists at all. We need to learn to share but it really gets me when cyclists are riding on the white line when they have 5 feet of shoulder, or riding 2 and 3 abreast on the shoulder, acting like they own the road and getting indignant when a car is closer than 3 feet to them. i see it everyday, and guess what on a two lane road often times we cant move over without hitting another car or getting in a head on. I’m all for sharing the road, but cyclists need to realize they are not the only ones on the road, as do cars.
Jail cures all. In Japan, if you hit a bike, you either go to jail or give the rider your house…or both. It’s a very serious crime. Guess what…not many bicyclists are hit.
I would say it is pretty damn hard to bite off someones ear if they were wearing a bike helmet. One more reason to rock a brain bucket!
One time I met this arrogant roadie at a party, so they all must be that way. After all, he was on a bike.
So a speeding driver gets annoyed that someone reminded him of the laws that apply to everyone on the road and attacks the reminder, and it turns into a confessional about how self-righteous bikers are. Who broke the law? Not once, but twice, the time second violently.
Don’t get me wrong– I don’t condone bikers blocking the road or doing anything else illegal. But if one does do something that annoys you, it doesn’t make it OK to beat the crap out of them because you’re in a hurry. If as a biker I went around pulling drivers out of their cars and beating them whenever they did something illegal, I would only make it to work before noon a few times a week.
If you don’t want to be bothered or can’t handle dealing with other people, idiotic or otherwise, keep your pathetic ass at home.
I watched a rumble almost go down beteen a ulock wielding biker (in my group) and a motorist. Both were complete asshats about the situation and the only thing that stopped them was the cop standing on the sidewalk that the biker stormed right past on his way to the motorist for the throwdown. People in cars yell at other cars just as much as bikers yell at cars, you just can’t here it (all that glass and metal etc.)
Darko–I would suggest you try driving your car on the shoulder for a while and see how much fun that is betwen the uneaven pavement, the garbage, broken glass, chunks of car and other road hazards. On roads without a minimum speed you have to share not just the shoulder, but the road. No matter how annoying a biker is, I’ve never seen a motorist inconvenienced for longer than say 30 seconds. Is that really worth making a federal case? or in this case flying off the handle and landing in jail???
By the way, I commute by car and only ride recreationally, so if I was going to be biased, it’d be towards 4 tires over 2.