By adamg on Fri., 10/30/2015 - 5:53 pm
Cambridge Police report they are looking for the driver of a pick-up they say swerved towards a bicyclist on Webster Street shortly after 7 a.m. on Sept. 29:
Just before the hit and run, the operator of the pickup yelled, honked his horn and then made contact with the bicyclist's handle bar, causing him to fall.
The bicyclist, Geren Stone of Somerville, is a doctor at Mass. General. He required surgery for injuries to his left arm, police say.
tone writes of the aftermath of the collision and what it says about the state of roads in the Boston area today.
Anybody with leads on the identity of the pick-up driver can call Cambridge Police at 617-349-3364.
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Comments
Half of bike accidents are solo falls
By Markk02474
Sat, 10/31/2015 - 12:15am
It doesn't take much for a cyclist to go down and get hurt. Rock, rut, bump, flat tire, tram rail, brushed handlebar, whatever. The bike fatality in Arlington happened when a cyclist racing around a corner had her pedal hit the curb, launching her into a tree. No motor vehicles were involved as in roughly half of cyclists ending up in hospital emergency rooms (*).
* There has been a recent shift in demographics. Previously, more young people were riding bikes and getting hurt on trails and roads. Now, with the large population bubble of baby boomers getting older, more prone to injury, and more likely to only ride on the street, the number of solo off-road bike crashes has been declining.
Broken Record
By Cantabrigian
Sat, 10/31/2015 - 12:25am
Mark, none of that is relevant to the conversation we're having. The rest of us are trying to discuss issues that impact our community and you're here just blabbering on off topic. Please, please, just try to stay on topic.
Edit: Plus, you're completely wrong. Making up 'facts' doesn't help your case. 2% of traffic fatalities are bicyclists. Only 16% of serious/fatal accidents are solo.
Apples and oranges
By Markk02474
Sun, 11/01/2015 - 9:38pm
I was citing stats for ER visits and you are quoting some other stats about serious/fatal injuries. ER visits are the only reliable data source because so many solo bike and pedestrian-bike injuries on the street go unreported.
Off your meds again?
By SwirlyGrrl
Sun, 11/01/2015 - 9:46pm
Or just returned from your halloween killing spree in the Bronx and feeling reinvigorated?
Look again
By kisumxes
Fri, 10/30/2015 - 10:49pm
We see a truck being driven into a bicycle and then leaving the scene.
The doctor was not sideswiped as you're trying the claim; the person driving the truck actively maneuvered said truck into the section of the road occupied by the doctor riding a bicycle. Seeing how the truck came up behind the bicycle it is reasonable to imply the driver knew the bike was there. Therefore the person driving the truck (most likely intentionally) caused a collision and made matters worse by failing to stop.
In less words: a person directed the mass and force of several thousand pounds of metal at another human being and caused serious injuries.
...
By boo_urns
Fri, 10/30/2015 - 10:54pm
You realize that he doesn't need to come in hot on his 6 to "run him down", right?
And does it matter? (Short and long answers, and everything in between: No.) Even if he thought he cleared the biker to come back cleanly over into the lane, he fled the scene.
Stop making excuses for this guy and for bad driving. You're not doing yourself any favors.
This is why I said "lol" to you being impartial, above. It's quite clear you're going to come out on the side of the driver, no matter what.
One of these days
By SwirlyGrrl
Fri, 10/30/2015 - 11:03pm
When you mow down a pedestrian or cyclist with your incompetent driving and self-aggrandizingly erroneous opinions about how driving makes you special, we will know that the victim of your flagging abilities, impaired vision, and egregious ignorance will collect everything that you own as compensation.
That's because the internet does not forget. You have just provided that future victim's lawyers with amazing amounts of fodder for your demise in court. Going on the internet and repeatedly spewing ignorant bile that is in direct opposition to the laws of the commonwealth can and will come back to bite you in the arse.
Listen to yourself
By Roman
Fri, 10/30/2015 - 11:44pm
Driving doesn't make anyone special. Driving is what people do in order to get to work and live their lives without sweating or freezing for every mile traveled. Driving also makes people more dangerous because they've got two tons of metal and Sir Isaac Newton preventing it from stopping or turning on a dime, which is why we have streets for cars, sidewalks for people, and licensing procedures and hands-on tests before we let anyone operate motor vehicles.
Cyclists on this forum do tend to think they're special and deserving of deference from everyone else. They tend to hide behind the laws they've lobbied for without responding to the challenge of why those laws are good, they have a bad happing of playing the victim even when they aren't (not this case) and looking down their nose at anyone who doesn't live within biking distance of work.
I can take your post and use it to chew out anyone I like without changing too many words. That means it's not a sound argument for your position, it's loud angry emotion. And I like to think we live in a place where we think with our heads, not with our hearts.
People who dislike bikes on roads tend to....
By Daan
Sat, 10/31/2015 - 12:38pm
paint with broad brushes trying to imply that all cyclists consider themselves special and deserving of deference? Using one's head shows that broad brush claims about cyclists and anti-cyclists are generalizations and contribute only strife and animosity to a conversation.
A false broad brush stroke against one set of people, which defies logic and fact, couched in a pretense of logic and fact, not only empties the statement of possibly validity but implies a purposefull attempt to bend facts and truth to a predetermined conclusion.
As an aside that is modern Republican rhetoric at its best.
Listen to YOURself.
By Sally
Sun, 11/01/2015 - 6:33am
The cyclist isn't acting as if he's "special" or breaking any laws. This is not a 21-year-old bike messenger screaming through a red light or scofflaw daredevil on a fixie or any of the favorite scapegoats of the bike haters. This is a doctor riding to work on his bike, legally, on the right, at what looks like a reasonable rate of speed, being plowed into by a driver who is so impatient to get where he's going that he's swerving all over the road. Who's the one who thinks he's "special?"
If "deference" means "not running into me", like acknowledging that I exist in a physical place which you cannot simultaneously occupy, then yes, I want some damn deference. Is that really so crazy?
Corrections?
By Cantabrigian
Fri, 10/30/2015 - 10:55pm
Hey Adam,
Two points:
There's a Webster Ave in Cambridge, but no Webster Street.
[s]You dated the incident September 29. Did this happen Thursday or a month ago?[/s]
The news story says Sept. 29
By Sally
Sat, 10/31/2015 - 7:43am
And in the footage, the guy's injuries and scarring look mostly healed.
Should have gotten a better doctor
By Markk02474
Sat, 10/31/2015 - 1:25pm
Unless he wanted a huge, ugly scar to show off, especially for the cred he would get with the 3rd world and low income community work he does. Fancy plastic surgery level stitches would take away conversation fodder at fundraiser cocktail parties and with patients.
Ugly scar is a public health service, telling people that bicycling is dangerous.
Grow up
By SwirlyGrrl
Sat, 10/31/2015 - 1:39pm
Go away. Take a flying leap at a rolling rubber donut. Look in the mirror and die of fright. Or maybe fuck off and die already.
And stay off the roads tonight - people will be DARING to be out WALKING with CHILDREN and IN YOUR WAY.
You got it backwards, bro
By Rose
Sat, 10/31/2015 - 1:59pm
Riding bicycles is very safe, while it is frequently demonstrated that driving heavy machinery in dense urban areas is incredibly dangerous (well, cars are incredibly dangerous everywhere, ask that guy who was ejected onto the highway sign in CA yesterday, but we're talking about Cambridge), and gets worse when idiots do it carelessly, acting like they own the place. It's not bicycles that kill 33,000 people a year in this country and injure millions more.
Indeed , is this the Webster
By kvn
Sat, 10/31/2015 - 10:46am
Indeed , is this the Webster ave that goes from Union square Somerville , + / - , to Cambridge street Cambridge, + / _ ?
Somerville'ish
By Cantabrigian
Sat, 10/31/2015 - 7:25pm
Based on the video, it's gotta be the Webster Ave from Union Square. I didn't realize that the northern arm spends a few hundred feet Cambridge.
Mark Krackpot
By jeoffrey
Mon, 11/02/2015 - 8:13pm
Complains constantly about cyclists breaking the law. Sees video of a driver breaking several laws against a law-abiding cyclist … invents a new "laws" that the cyclist didn't follow. The only good cyclist in his book is one who gets off the street and bows down low whenever a lordly driver approaches.
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