My heart goes out to the family. Having had my husband involved in a collision a few days ago, and come off lightly with a couple of days in hospital (already posted earlier on this forum), my heart hits to the same low when I read something like this - the same feeling I had when I saw the answer machine flicker and knew it was a message to tell me he had been hit.
The subtle wording of newspapers annoys me: "a cyclist has been killed/hit by a car/truck/motorbike", never "a cyclist has been killed/hit by a motorist/van driver/motorcyclist"... The wording effectively distances the driver of the vehicle from the accident. The vehicle was involved, but not the driver, therefore the vehicle takes the blame (mentally)not the driver... Therefore it is OK to continue driving; the cyclist takes the blame because he/she is identified. The bicycle sits on the back seat, forgotten.
I am also annoyed when a cyclist is killed or severely injured but the sentencing amounts to a slap on the wrist. A vehicle is a lethal weapon. If it hits someone, that person is likely to die. If a bicycle hits someone, it is unlikely that person will die. Why is it, then, that when a cyclist is injured/killed and it was the driver's fault, that the car is not removed from him/her? Drivers need to have a licence to prove they are competent to handle a car, just as the owner of a gun has to have a licence to own a gun. Interestingly, if a gun is mishandled, the licence is revoked, but strangely enough if a vehicle driver is the cause of the collision, the licence is rarely revoked! How mad is that?! It seems that our dependency on cars transcends all logic: "ah, but Gov, I need my car for work..." "OK then", not "well, you should have thought of that before...".
