Police: Motorist punches out bicyclist who refuses to go through a red light
Capt. John Greland at C-6 reports that around 5:55 p.m. on Tuesday, a motorist took exception, by way of his fist, to a bicyclist obeying traffic rules at Dorchester Avenue and Columbia Road.
Greland says the motorist, apparently headed straight, beeped at the bicyclist in front of him. When the bicyclist refused to move and told him the light was red, the driver got out of his car and punched the bicyclist in the face, giving him a bloody mouth and knocking him to the ground - possibly into unconsciousness - Greland says.
EMTs took the bicyclist to the hospital; police will seek criminal complaints against the driver in South Boston District Court.
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Comments
Prospect Street is two-way.
Prospect Street is two-way.
So...
Some moron flipped a bird to another moron and ate a knuckle sandwich - 100+ posts. Thugs shoot up/slice up their neighborhood - *crickets*. Typical uhub.
Totally untrue
But what does a cowardly anonymous drive-by troll poster care...
Feel free to break the law, but don't ask me to
Nobody should be asked or encouraged to violate a traffic ordinance for somebody else's convenience.
2 sides to the story. Right.
The driver was interviewed on the news last night, defending his action. He told some half-baked story of the cyclist throwing his bike at him or making some move that was challenging him to a fight. He said that he works in a law firm and has tons of witnesses. Good luck with that. Going on TV and saying "...and then I punched him" is a brilliant legal move.
Was it Lincoln who said
.. "a man who defends himself in a court has a fool for a client."
or was it Yogi Berra?
A little more info
Some info here.
From boston.com:
First, slammed on the "breaks"?
Curious how this will turn out.....
Mass Ave and Beacon Most dangerous?
(the picture at the top of the article) By what measure? What about the interestion of Cambridge/River St and the Charles River Bike path? Or say Harvard and Brighton Ave? Melnea Cass Blvd and several of the cross streets?
And throwing the bike?
No cyclist is going to throw his own bike. That and the odd construction about slamming the breaks makes me think the driver is full of something.
Exactly! And If He Felt Threatened, Why Would He Leave His Car?
The reporting on WHDH was disgusting; they insinuated that the victim of the assault was somehow to blame! If the victim wasn't riding a bike, would they be so eager to interview the uninjured assailant, giving equal credence to his side of the story without asking any of the obvious questions?
Sadly, that's a feature of modern mass media
There must be two sides to each story in order to not appear biased. Just look at how reporting on climate change is done. There's always some charlatan quack given time to represent the "nothing's happening" viewpoint, when fewer than 3% of scientists remotely agree with that position.
Bike rider claims he was assaulted, let's quickly find a driver to offer an alternative view to the one supported by evidence!
Hokay
So he harassed a person on a 30lb vehicle from the comfort of his motorized crash-resistant metal cage, then felt so threatened by a person wielding a 30lb object that he felt compelled to exit the safety of his motorized, crash-resistant metal cage to physically attack that person.
Of course.
Right.
Lemme splain something, Rodriguez
If the guy in front of you puts on his brakes, and you hit him…
that is your fault. Not his. Yours. He wasn't braking too suddenly, you were following too close.
The definition of too close is so close you can't stop if he does. Don't blame the person in front of you for braking. There's no situation where it's his fault if you hit him. If you don't get that you shouldn't be driving.
You might now have a lawyer at your firm explain to you how stating publicly you were driving to endanger and then assaulted and battered someone affects your case.
Just remember it's not pronounced "nuh goo yen." It's pronounced "win." As in, you lose.
Nail in the coffin...
You angry drivers just keep proving my point. YOU are the problem. Not pedestrians. Not cyclists. YOU. You foam at the mouth if a bike doesn't come to a complete stop at a light or stop sign (even though you all roll right through them). Then, you throw a tantrum if a cyclist stops and waits for the green because now you're stuck behind a bike for literally half a city block. You kill cyclists and them lie about how you didn't realize you'd hit someone. Well, game on. You just escalated the war.
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