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Bicyclist assaulted on Mass. Ave. in Harvard Square
By user554 on Thu, 03/24/2016 - 12:47pm
This morning I witnessed a person assaulted on Mass. Ave. in Harvard Square. It happened on Mass Ave. inbound near the intersection of Everett St arond 8:50 am. The driver got out of his car and punched the bicyclist hard in the face. The victim was covered in blood, and sent to the hospital. Police showed up and took multiple statements.
This was an act of road rage. The driver yelled at the bicyclist as the bike passed his car (which was parked). Not sure what happened before that, but another witness said they saw the driver try to drive the bicyclist into the curb.
I wanted to let the UHub community know in case anyone saw anything as well, or knows the victim. If you have any additional information, reach out to he Cambridge Police Department or comment below with thoughts. This type of behavior is not okay.
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Comments
i wonder
what the bicyclist did to deserve it
Existing?
Thats usually enough me to get buzzed or yelled at.
Bicycle / Car! Harvard Square! Blood! Police!
Get yer popcorn out folks. UHub this afternoon is going to make a Connor McGregor fight look like a TCM showing of Lilies Of The Field. It's On.
As opposed to the weekly cars hitting pedestrians posts
Crickets.
It has become almost daily so
It has become almost daily so far in 2016. Boston drivers seemingly can't go a week without hitting someone. They are the most dangerous thing about living in Boston and its not even close.
Daily versus weekly?
Which is it? Don't forget to include cars that hit cars.
While those incidents are serious
name me one instance in all those occasions that occurred locally where a driver went out of their way to intentionally hit a pedestrian.
Inattention and negligence are one thing. Delberate intent, which it appears we have in this case, is entirely different.
Cambridge Case
A few weeks ago there was the highly reported case of the guy from Medford purposefully striking a doctor riding to work in Cambridge and driving away. Luckily this was captured on video plus had a witness.
The problem with cars hitting bikes/peds is that the car driver will always say it as unintentional even if it wasn't. Since "oops" is a get-of-jail-free card there is little to stop drivers from acting aggressively around bikes/peds. Many of the "accidents" which happen on a weekly basis were intentional or at least the driver purposefully drove in such a way to put someone else at increased risk. (Also, If you're speeding and texting and hit someone it's hard to consider this an "unavoidable" accident.)
at least the driver
Which is still NOT the same as deliberatly hitting somebody with the intent to harm them, as was apparently the case here.
Negligence
Sure, there's a difference between negligence and direct assault as what happened this morning.
However, I'm arguing that many of the cases in which the driver claimed were accidental were in fact purposeful. Furthermore, negligence should be considered just as bad as intentional in these cases.
If a person is hurt it should be of little relevance of the motivation of the driver; the person is still hurt.
Did you see the tape?
It was intentional. Completely intentional. Anyone with an actual driving license who is unable to see how making that move would not result in hitting the cyclist needs to put their license in the garbage disposal.
The previous commenter's post
was titled
That is what my comments about intentionally striking somebody were based on. And yes, that incident in Cambridge was both intentional and reprehensible.
But let's change the goal posts because you don't bother to realize what I'm actually responding to or think I somehow believe drivers have a right to do whatever they want without impunity.
Excuses and deflection but I'll bite
Sure you can be yapping on your phone and UNINTENTIONALLY hit someone but you still hit someone because you deliberately decided to not pay attention.
"Officer, I didn't INTEND to hit the old woman using the cross walk, I just didn't see her!"
And I only need to name one instance? Ok.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-crash-las-vegas-strip-casino-2015122...
First, hitting somebody because you chose
to pay more attention to your phone than the road, while an intentional act, doesn't equate to "I'm going to hit that cyclist because I don't like cyclists."
Second, I am well aware of the Las Vegas incident. However, my response was in reference to the recent local incidents that the other poster alluded to in their comment.
And amazingly...
The law distinguishes gross negligence/recklessness from specific intent.
Keep moving those goal posts
And stay off the road please.
EDIT: And you even went back to shamelessly change your original post!! Get bent dude.
I revised my original post to provide
clarification for others who couldn't figure out that I was referring to recent LOCAL car/pedestrian incidents in my comments. Can't quite figure out how that qualifies as a "shameless change."
And forgive me for not buying into the matra that distracted driving, as serious as the problem is, should be treated exactly the same as someone intentionally deciding to injure or kill somebody - as many people on UHub seem to advocate for when somebdy is struck by a car or truck.
Why not?
If you're hurt in a hospital bed (or dead) why should you care if the person who hit you was trying to hurt you or not? A broken bone is still a broken bone.
If you get shot because a dope was playing with a gun across the street (but not trying to shoot you) would you brush it off as "accidents happen" and not want charges filed?
Oopos
EDIT: Wrong post
Yeah you decided to take down that road chief
I was commenting on how our weekly incidents of cars hitting pedestrians are generally quiet posts.
That's probably because most people on here
realize that a distracted or inattentive driver strikling a pedestrian, as serious as that is, is NOT the same as a driver INTENTIONALLY getting out of their vehicle and HITTING a cyclist in the face. It amazes me that some on this board still can't figure that out.
Should distracted or inattentive drivers be held accountable if their actions result in the injury or death of somebody. Aboslutely. Should we have a one size fits all set of punishments that gives no consideration to the circumstances of a particular accident. No way.
I wonder
If the headline was "Cyclist punches driver in the face" would you be asking the same question in reverse? Or would you still make a snide comment about cyclists.
Here are some reasons I get yelled at:
I get yelled at for riding my bike in the bike lane.
I get yelled at for stopping at stop signs, by drivers who presumably wanted to do their standard rolling stop.
I got yelled at (only once, luckily) by a guy who slammed his car door into me because he opened it without looking. He's lucky he hit me and not the car behind me, which would have torn his door off.
I get yelled at by pedestrians looking at their cell phones while jaywalking from out between two parked cars and don't notice me until I have to swerve around them.
The worst I've witnessed as a
The worst I've witnessed as a pedestrian, and I see this at least weekly during the summer, is cabbies 'squeezing' cyclists who are in bike lanes on Comm. Ave. in the Back Bay. Cyclists have no where to go because there's a curb. It's so dangerous. Cabbies seem to believe they don't have to share the road with anyone: other drivers, cyclists or walkers. Not saying ALL cabbies, but too many.
Saw this recently in front of
Saw this recently in front of MIT on Mass Ave. Motorist on cellphone drifts into bike lane and continues there, forcing bicyclist to think quick and hop onto sidewalk. It's dispicable!
I bet I know
He legally piloted a vehicle on a public road in a legal fashion, which somehow offended some violent thug's sense of entitlement.
I was going to come here and
I was going to come here and make a joke about people trying to find a way to blame the victim but see you beat me to it and it wasn't meant to be a joke.
I know.
The driver was just mad because they don't look good in spandex.
I'm actually surprised the driver got out
I'd have bet on "throw what's left of his 64-oz Super Big Gulp out the window at the cyclist"
Throwing a punch was probably
Throwing a punch was probably the most exercise the driver has gotten in months.
bicyclist punched in the face
did he fight back?
No,
violence is against the hipster creed. When this guy is caught they'll let the courts dispense the fixed gear, conflict free, fair trade, free range justice.
Question for you
Are you this much of an asshole all the time, or only when talking about violence done to a cyclist? Because you're being a real rancid flaming asshole here.
p.s. you douchebag
Hipster?
The age distribution of commuting cyclists in the area is simply not what you think it is.
Hint: think "old enough to be a parent of a hipster". Youngsters still make up only about a third of such cyclists in the area. A big shift, but not totally dominant.
You're not kidding
All the people I've seen bike commuting to our office are pretty grizzled veterans, like 45-50+
There will be a Candle light Bike/Car peace vigil on the
Cambridge Common tonight. We must stop the auto Jihad before it stops us. Vigil organizers suggest you don't bring candles since candles contributes to one's carbon footprint however Grateful Dead glow sticks will be available for purchase. Bike lanes will be closed on Mass Ave to allow for shuttle bus service from Harvard station.
Oh what wit
Most frequent cyclists aren't hippies or pysudo-environmentalists . We just want to be able to commute to work without being killed or harassed and if we are hurt for there to be some consequences for those who caused the collision. Why is that such a hard thing to accept?
Also, FYI: Most adults who bicycle also have licenses and drive cars.
don't bring candles since
And I'm sure the carbon footprint of manufacturing, packaging, and transporting those glow sticks is far less than lighting a few candles for a short vigil.
Love the irony.
Gonna be a slow shuttle
What with all the cars that double park in the bike lane, better off using the main lane :P
Question for you
Are you and Marco going to have your love child soon, or do you plan to wait?
Why not adopt one of the many fatherless
urchins left behind by you?
fatherless?
Well now that really would be some trick.
p.s. true to form, dimbulb.
Not for the hit and run
procreator. Now continue with your parsing.
Wow
You really are slow on the uptake, aren't you?
Take your own advice, you dope.
IIB you can't win.
Your go to post response is always personal. Defines your lack of intellect well.
I hope
Turkey Liberati comes to the peace vigil too.
surely
The comments to follow will be a shining example of respectful dialogue.
Did CPD speak with the driver of the car/person throwing punches
Curious if CPD took a statement from the driver/punch thrower or if the individual got back in their vehicle and left the scene before CPD arrived?
Just FYI to our host...
...I was unable to view the comments until I signed on.
I could see that there WERE comments, but when I clicked the link they never populated. Once I tried logging on -- bingo! -- there they were.
Could be an issue on my end, and certainly no big deal. But just wanted to let you know in case YOUR host has changed something :-) For what it's worth, I'm using Firefox 45.0.1 on a PC running Windows 7 Home Premium.
Sorry about that
Has to do with caching on the site. Both the home page and post pages are cached, but at different cycles, apparently, so looks like the home page cache got refreshed with a comment counter before the post page with the actual comments got rebuilt.
Logged in users bypass cached pages, so they get the choicest, tenderest, freshest versions of pages.
I need to look at the different caching cycles. Hadn't happened in awhile, but that's because, until yesterday, the caching wasn't even turned on, which might explain why the site had been failing more of late as the traffic went up (well, the caching was turned on, but I hadn't updated the .htacess file with the rules to direct anonymous users to cached versions of pages rather than to database-driven versions, which is probably more than you want to know).
I'd noticed the site was failing more often
recently myself. Better be careful Adam, or UHub might soon boast a failure rate worse than the Red Line.
Yeah
And then he'd have to raise advertising rates by 10%.
This post
Just FYI, if this incident is as serious as you say (i.e. there should be court charges), then this post will literally become potential evidence (or any other written statement from an on site witness). You may want to have a written copy.
I assume you will be summonsed to court for possibly a clerk's hearing or you may be contacted by the DA's office post arraignment of the driver.
Congratulations! You are now part of the system. If you gave the police your personal information and it is in the police report, you should also know that the defendant gets a copy of the report (and with it your personal info) upon arraignment.
LOL I'm a member of the bar
LOL I'm a member of the bar association and we're suing you for being an arm-chair lawyer and also reporting you for witness intimidation. See you in court !
Why would the post here matter
If she's already made a statement to CPD?
And if this got to court and she had to testify, woudn't the accused be able to recognize her then?
Lastly, if the accused did something to scare witnesses away, wouldn't be then face tougher charges?
Just thinking out loud.