So much for bicycle lanes
LAKE WORTH BEACH, Fla. (CBS12) — "A bicyclist succumbed to his injuries on Tuesday after he was struck by a car while in the bicycle lane on Halloween.Deputies with the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office (PBSO) say the bicyclist, 61-year-old Louis Simon, was traveling westbound on Lucerne Avenue in the northern bicycle lane when an SUV accelerated into the path of the bicyclist from a stop sign.
The bike impacted the passenger side of the SUV, and Simon was ejected from the bike, hitting his head on the pavement, per PBSO. He was treated by Palm Beach County Fire Rescue and rushed to St. Mary's Medical Center, where he later succumbed to his injuries."
10 comments:
what's a 61 year old man doing riding a bike? go to the park or a movie or the library. half the drivers in south florida are over 70 and should be 6 feet under let alone behind the wheel. take their licenses away. they're a danger to everyone.
@5:35...LOL...you sound like someone only your mother could love.
Something I dread, every time I see a bicycle. The roads in Lake Worth, and other places, are starting to look more like Calcutta, or maybe Bangkok. We have bicycles, golf carts, huge buses, SUV's motorcycles, motor scooters, scooters, without motors, skateboards, roller skates, people crossing with dogs, babies, and everyone trying to compete for space. This tragedy is long overdue. My sympathy for the deceased, does nothing to solve the problem. I can't think of much of a solution either. You can't have bicycles on the sidewalk; pedestrians will be endangered. I frequently take 1st S. and turn up Lake, or I take 3rd N. to go to Publix. The city is not going to do anything, so, sometimes you have to think for yourself.
sadly, I think this will happen more often. There are too many bikes on the road, on the sidewalk, going the right way, the wrong way. There are scooters doing the exact same thing. If you sit and watch Dixie hwy, lake ave, or Lucerne ave you will see the mess of what is happening.
The solution is mandatory time in Jail for a motorist that hits a cyclist or a pedestrian, EXCEPT if it can be demonstrated that the cyclist or pedestrian was unlawfully moving into the path of the vehicle and that this caused the crash. Presently the legal system in Florida, and specifically in Palm Beach County, effectively treat cyclists and having no more value than pets, and typically a severe injury or fatality is no more than a minor traffic infraction, if that. This is a massive failing of our governance, and of course, it is ignored because none of the key prosecutors or lawmakers are active cyclists. Related to this, when you see non-cyclists attempting to make rules and special lanes for cyclists, without the knowledge about what actually makes cyclists safe --given what they are doing, this is always a huge waste of money and is often dangerous.....Case in point....Morons involved in the Delray Beach parking and lane for cyclists along the beach near Atlantic, place a nice bike lane right next to where the thousands of cars park at the East side of the road. What happens is that blissfully unaware motorists will open the door of their car, and a cyclist going 15 to 20 mph IN THEIR BIKE LANE will have the door open right into them, severely injuring them. You CAN-NOT have a bike lane adjacent to parked cars with doors opening directly into the lane. The solution for myself and all elite level cyclists ( those of us that ride 20 to 30 mph and with distances daily of 25 miles to 75 miles or more) is that when we get to the bike lane at Delray on A1A, we avoid the bike lane, and ride squarely in the middle of the lane for cars. Of course, we are typically riding at 18 to 24 mph in this area, and cars should be 20 to 25 mph, so there is little friction between the 2 behaviors. But the ignorance of our lawmakers is unforgivable.
You can't compare the two situations. Many if not most of the people riding bicycles don't even know there are rules, and others deliberately ignore any rules of the road. Of course, I agree with you that a person in a car who deliberately hits a person on a bicycle, out of frustration, or just wanting to get ahead in the line, should be prosecuted and sentenced accordingly. At any rate, it will happen again, no matter what regulations are put into place, because that's just the way the world works.
The way you can tell Dan is not "elite level" is the way he describes "elite level." Your performance level is not determined by distance alone but by your competition stats, your body's capacity to perform at a higher level than the ordinary cyclist and what kinds of competitions you are entering.
The fact that you log long miles on A1A, Dan, is great for a man your size. But it in no way defines you as an "elite" in the cycling world.
Palm Beach counties a mess anyway with bikers all over the place they don't follow a lot of the rules themselves or they're going the opposite direction or riding two or three together taking up extra space they do so many horrible things and then riding bikes all over the sidewalk for people are walking it's very chaotic in Palm Beach county has to be the worst for bikers it's very unsafe so many times we've seen so many accidents and it's sad to hear about this but a lot of drivers too are very impatient and careless and Reckless and they don't understand why the person in front of them is going a little bit slower because they can't see and then they end up doing things like this God bless the person who is murdered or killed by this reckless driver and people have the right to ride their bikes at any age so I don't know why people are questioning their age they have the right to ride a bike! But people do have to be careful and bikers are really bad too there's a blame for a lot of the problems on the roads today I've seen a lot of cars are Reckless too! An e-bikes out of the worst they're causing a lot of problems all the e-bikes on sidewalks and everything that's one of the worst things that we're seeing right now across the state and across the country e-bikes what a mess! And all these drunk drivers that lose their licenses and then they're driving an e-bike and they're driving so fast with the bikes in the wrong direction and do so many crazy things it really is so unsafe right now to drive when you're driving a car today because you got to watch out for all these bikes left and right just completely lawlessness!
There are real cyclists, riding $10,000 bikes, with an optimal understanding of the rules of the road, and they WILL drive their bikes like they were a car....they will be on the road, driving with traffic, and they will obey traffic signs and lights. 99%. Any population has at least a couple of miscreants in it, so not 100% :-) ....And, what is mostly being discussed here, are commuter type bicyclists with no riding skills, riding crappy bikes, not knowing the rules of the road, and with the more retarded among them actually thinking they are safer riding AGAINST TRAFFIC, which of course is horrifyingly stupid. And if this was not bad enough, take the most ignorant and irresponsible of this lot, and put them on a electric bike or a scooter, and get them upwards of 25 mph when they don't have the skills for riding at 4mph...and you have Lake Worth, right now!!! Point is, we can't call this "Cyclists...it is 3 distinct groups. Real cyclists are not your problem.
I Understand there was a troll on this post that was upset that I might suggest I was an elite level cyclist.... Here is my response: .........When I raced, it was Cat 3 road, and Cat 2 Track. I agree that miles/duration do not define elite...and I did not say it did. I was making a general explanation for the general population that does not know a cyclist from a commuter on a $100 bike. Today I am not competing, but I could easily compete in Florida at the top of my age category..... However, I am not enjoying road so much anymore, and prefer mountain biking...JD, Halpatiokee, West Delray, and Santos in Ocala are the places I ride most. As to elite in Mountain biking--- I am not an elite mountain bike racer, but I am a competitive rider - much faster than MOST mountain bikers ( on the trails mentioned) that are 50 years old or older 🙂 At the Dupont Wilderness area mountain in North Carolina, the hour long climb there has me breathing like a freight train and feeling the opposite of Elite 🙂. Going down though..On Ridgeline....going down I am damn fast 🙂
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