
Man charged in Durham hit-and-run that killed Seth Vidal - revnja
http://www.wral.com/man-charged-in-durham-hit-and-run-that-killed-bicyclist/12644209/
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fvrghl
I'm glad that he had the courage to turn himself in.

~~~
rdtsc
I want to think it is courage but I suspect it could be a phone call to friend
or family from a police investigator or the description of a car on a public
news or social channel, or seeing a neighbor notice the dent in the car. At
that point he might have realized his only 2 options: get arrested or turn
himself in.

~~~
jessaustin
Yeah I'm a bit cynical about that too. Since he already has a revoked license
(what a surprise: a bad driver, driving badly), he also already has an
attorney. I suspect that's who decided he would be turning himself in.

~~~
cheald
Wow, there's an impressive chain of leaps to conclusions. You can have your
license suspended for failing to answer a summons for a
revenu^H^H^H^H^H^Hspeeding ticket. At no point is a lawyer necessarily
involved.

~~~
jessaustin
Yeah that's possible. For everyone I know who has had his license _revoked_ ,
the actual reason has been DWI. (I neither know nor particularly care what the
relative averages are between DWI and "innocently" not paying speeding
tickets. If you ask me DWI is every bit as much an overstated sin as speeding,
only it's been inflated by the outrage industry rather than the police.)
Involving a lawyer in those cases can be the difference between a 6-month
suspension and a 5-year revocation. _Not_ hiring an attorney would be an even
more questionable decision than the original DWI.

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Zigurd
The NTSB wants to make forward collision avoidance systems in cars standard. I
wonder if it would be possible to spoof radar and/or IR return signals so as
to trip the autonomous braking in a car that gets too close to a bike?

~~~
melling
Perhaps something as simple as having a little video camera on bikes would
discourage drivers from getting too close. If lots of cyclists had them
drivers might start to move over a little more. Just knowing that you might be
recorded could be enough incentive to a avoid cyclists.

~~~
derekp7
I thought about having a small flag on a really sharp antenna-style post
sticking on the left side of the bike. About a foot or two, laying parallel to
the ground should do. That would encourage drivers to give a bit more room, as
they are probably more afraid of getting their car scratched up then they are
of hitting someone.

~~~
joonix
That still does nothing about the distracted driver. They aren't going to see
the flag if they're looking down at their phone laughing and writing a text.

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beggi
This is utterly tragic. I lived near Hillandale rd in Durham and drove there
almost every day. Not sure if it had any part in this accident, but the road
is really poorly lit like most roads there.

When I moved it actually struck me how poorly lit the roads in Durham were,
compared to where we come from in Europe. I'm guessing it's a mixture of being
much more expensive (wider roads and much longer) and the city organizers not
giving pedestrian/cyclists much thought (sidewalks seem to be scattered
randomly around the town).

~~~
ethomson
This stretch of Hillandale is really lousy, as it narrows from a multilane
interchange to a two-lane road in about a block. But it should be fairly well
lit (at least around the interchange) and I imagine that Seth was as visible
as possible.

But mediocre roads in Durham are the norm, unfortunately. My least favorite
was always University heading South/Southwest through Forest Hills. In a
hundred feet, your bike lane disappears and you are suddenly on a narrow two-
lane with little shoulder, in a right-hand curve with an uphill elevation.
There's precious little visibility in either direction thanks to the trees and
curves, and the oncoming traffic (northbound) traffic has an awkward
intersection that tends to cause people to creep into the middle of the lane.
(I may be misremembering the exact details, but that intersection has really
stuck with me.)

The drivers in the Triangle are also pretty awful. I've never been yelled more
or had more things thrown at me. The cup of ice landing on you is not so bad
(it can even be a little refreshing on a hot day) but the handful of change is
pretty frightening.

Durham is a great town in many ways, but its bicycling infrastructure is not
one of them. Such a shame that it claimed another life.

------
interject
Is cycling that dangerous in the US compared to Europe?

~~~
meepmorp
Many (most?) US cities lack provisions for bicycles like dedicated lanes,
etc., though I don't know about Durham specifically. The situation is worse
outside major cities, too.

Another thing I've noticed is that many US drivers don't know how to, or are
uncomfortable dealing with, driving near cyclists. Sometimes they're just
careless and hostile toward cyclists - in one instance, I saw a driver attempt
to drive a person on bike off the road with his car in an apparent fit of
rage.

~~~
derekp7
Where I live, there are some bicycle-friendly roads, but if you need to
commute by bicycle you are probably going to get some road segments with
absolutely no paved shoulder. So the smart thing to do then is to have a
mirror, and if a car is coming up behind you and another one is oncoming (two-
lane road), your best bet is to hit the gravel.

Also, there are some stretches of road where bicycle clubs seem to frequent.
What they do is get a large pack of people, and end up blocking traffic on a
5-mile stretch (they purposely take up the whole lane, probably safer that way
I guess, and when there is a bottleneck instead of moving right they take up
both lanes). This ends up instilling a large amount of hostility in drivers,
so when they see a loan bicycle they tend to be very aggressive (I've had
water balloons, even beer bottles thrown at me before, even though I was far
right of the white line).

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edwardunknown
yum update reflective-clothing

sorry, couldn't resist.

~~~
ghshephard
Incredibly inappropriate. You do understand that a member of the community
died, right?

~~~
jbm
I think HN has long passed the point where the passing of a community member
has any effect on trolls. It's Eternal September.

[http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/01/15/commenting-
communit...](http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/01/15/commenting-community-
deterioration-and-hacker-news/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3468102](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3468102)

This was a pretty good example of something similar that happened an year
back, and I'm sure there are more examples (I just never bothered to pay
attention to them).

