I’m so tired of hearing about these people in the prime of their lives and health getting snuffed out but fucking morons. Today I just learned about another one, even though it happened several years ago. Every time I start to get motivated by someone who has really done the cycling thing well I hear some horror story about how they died before 40. I understand. I almost died myself several times. Still, it’s so hard to hear about it and how it gets handled by the police. Always the same story. Never any investigation. Always assumed to be the cyclist fault for being on the roads at all. I am fucking sick of it.
This is where messenger lawlessness comes from. They realize they are taking their lives into their own hands and no one actually cares about them at all, so their response is to say “well, I don’t give a fuck about you either” and do whatever the fuck they want. I get the appeal.
Still, Mike was killed doing something I have decided to never do, long distance ultra-endurance riding on paved streets with speed limits greater than 20 miles per hour. Just this year a 62 year old bicycle touring icon was smashed into the pavement by a tired trucker.
Another left human parts all over the grill of a street racer in California:
And another competitive cyclist was killed in that same city this year:
In all of these cases the people doing the killing are never held accountable and the police just drop it. They never give a shit, their cops. Secretly most of them probably chuckle a bit about how fucking stupid these cyclists actually are, as they are getting into their horrible vehicles to go home. Cops are mostly completely assholes in this regard. I’ve only very rarely ever even met a cop who gave a shit about any human who rides a bike on public streets at all.
Getting people to care is like getting the world to stop destroying all the fish in the sea with mercury. It will never happen. Just have to accept it and deal with it. Don’t eat fish anymore and don’t bike on anything but a suburban neighborhood street or off-road dirt trail at all. Occasional small exceptions (to either) are okay.