@kcflyer
Here is a link to a bike ride in Lees Summit in memorial of a hit and run victim this Saturday.
I may go for the 10 miler depending on when my son’s swim meet starts.
I think I’m going to do the 30. I put a message out on my groups Facebook page to see if several of us might be able to.
. A lot of us in the cycling community are MAD about this. The woman who did it admitted that she was texting a friend and when she looked up, she hit the cyclist. That’s bad enough…but the WORST sentence she will face is 7 years. Oh yeah…she was also taking Percocet. IMHO, if someone is killed because someone HAD to get their damned texts handled should face a minimum of 15 years, and she likely would have if she hit another car and killed someone. But bicyclists are second class citizens. I got hit and injured and they didn’t even send the police…and after they did, they guy didn’t get a ticket for failure to yield, although about 4 drivers saw it and stopped to tell them. Had I been in my car and he dented my fender, he would have been ticketed.
There is also a lot of people talking about how the money to fix this is being wasted and not used to correct the problem. I don’t know the specifics of that, but I have heard talk.
There is no fix to this problem. Our phones have become more important than life itself. They can pass every law they want about texting and driving and it won’t do a damned thing. Indeed…it’s already illegal to text and drive, so a lot of folks are getting the very trendy, ultra dark tinted FRONT windows in their cars so that you can’t see them texting. I thought tinting the front windows was illegal, but I see a LOT of them around. And that’s another thing about tinted window…When I’m on my bike and I see a car stopped at an intersection…we try to make eye contact so we can tell that you see us. Even with perfectly clear windows, people who are “being safe” by only texting at a stop sign or light, then finish, quickly look right and left for CARS and pull out. At least we can see that…I’ll slow WAY down passing a car like that with tinted windows.
I had said that there is enough technology that phones can detect motion and they should disable texting if it detects motion. But we can’t do that because it would be unfair to passengers or to people on public transit or trains. SO WHAT! For years businesses were able to run even if the entire corporate exec staff were not in their office. Companies grew and thrived with a little pink “while you were out” note. But today, a text like “Whassup” demands our immediate attention, lest marriages fail and businesses shut down. None of us are so important that taking another persons life so you can read and write texts is acceptable, but boy do people bitch if you even HINT about stopping it. And the really shitty part is, after this gal serves her 7 years (which I doubt she will get) she will be right back to checking texts while driving within a week of being released.
Years ago I read an article about Florida cops pulling cars for too strong tinting. I think they’ve given up on that because the last time I was in FL I noticed so many cars with very dark tinting. Even here in North Eastern NC I see the same.
I guess looking for eye contact to other drivers isn’t a thing anymore.
I can’t remember which State in the South has the most lax laws, but I recall one state all you have to have is a strip of clear along the sight line of your front window. The rest can be super dark tint.