As Orange County does (but mostly does not) celebrate Bike to Work Day today, here is a little present from Amy Novotney, Monitor on Psychology, on Sott.net:
On a Tuesday evening two years ago, avid cyclists Christy Kirkwood and
Debbie Brown were finishing a 13-mile bike ride in Orange County,
Calif., when a driver talking on a cell phone swerved into their bike
path, knocking Kirkwood off her bike and throwing her 227 feet. The
motorist–who had been travelling at 55 mph–continued a short
distance before stopping to see what had happened, says University of
Utah psychology professor David Strayer, PhD, who served as a
consultant on the case.
“The driver thought he'd hit a deer,” Strayer recalls.
Kirkwood died from her injuries. Unfortunately, such tragedies have become all too common.
Good thing there are no Bike to Work Day activities planned in OC.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.