[OT] Cyclist charged with manslaughter after collision

Werehatrack said:

From Oregon, via AP:

Quoted message said:

A bicyclist was charged with manslaughter after he ran through
a stop sign and struck and killed a 71-year-old woman, police
said Monday.

Jean Calder died at Good Samaritan Hospital after she was struck
Friday night as she crossed a street at an unmarked crosswalk,
Corvallis police Capt. Ron Noble said.

Christopher A. Lightning, 51, was charged with manslaughter and
reckless driving.

Full (but short) article at
http://www.breitbart.com/news/na/D8CIQME80.html

This sort of thing can happen, but fortunately it's very rare.

99x, a radio station in Atlanta is notorious for hating cyclists. After
they heard about this, they went absolutely ape [censored]. "Get off your
toys and buy a car!" kind of ape [censored]. Needless to say, my buddies and
I at http://www.fastermustache.org are going to retaliate during
critical mass and with a separate event.

\\paul

--
Paul M. Hobson
Georgia Institute of Technology
..:change the words to numbers
if you want to reply to me:.

Werehatrack said:

From Oregon, via AP:

Quoted message said:

A bicyclist was charged with manslaughter after he ran through
a stop sign and struck and killed a 71-year-old woman, police
said Monday.

Jean Calder died at Good Samaritan Hospital after she was struck
Friday night as she crossed a street at an unmarked crosswalk,
Corvallis police Capt. Ron Noble said.

Christopher A. Lightning, 51, was charged with manslaughter and
reckless driving.

Full (but short) article at
http://www.breitbart.com/news/na/D8CIQME80.html

This sort of thing can happen, but fortunately it's very rare.
--

This is unfortunate for allot of people.

I have hit a pedestrian before. She was jay-walking, but I was going
too fast for conditions - - crowded sidewalks. She stepped out from
between two parked buses and BAM!

To think there are still people around that believe bicycles should
share the sidewalk with pedestrians. "She" probably only uses
crosswalks and looks both ways before crossing now. You could say we
both lived to benefit from the lesson.

These days, I slow down whenever there is allot of foot traffic.
Pedestrians can be as unpredictable as squirrels.

rsquared

Werehatrack said:

This sort of thing can happen, but fortunately it's very rare.

It blows my mind when I see bicyclists blowing through stop signs or traffic
lights; not even a California stop. Kids are the worst offenders but if no
one teaches them (parents/guardians) it doesn't surprise me. When I see
adults doing it ..... <shrug> I don't know.
--
Splat

"Werehatrack" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

From Oregon, via AP:

Quoted message said:

A bicyclist was charged with manslaughter after he ran

through

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

a stop sign and struck and killed a 71-year-old woman, police
said Monday.

Jean Calder died at Good Samaritan Hospital after she was

struck

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Friday night as she crossed a street at an unmarked

crosswalk,

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Corvallis police Capt. Ron Noble said.

Christopher A. Lightning, 51, was charged with manslaughter

and

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

reckless driving.

Full (but short) article at
http://www.breitbart.com/news/na/D8CIQME80.html

This sort of thing can happen, but fortunately it's very rare.

You should see a picture of the perpetrator, Christopher
Lightning -- looks like a ratty street person drug freak troll.
The local news has been plastering his ugly mug on the tube
nightly for the last few days. We have also been getting a lot
of coverage for all the bicycle deaths lately -- I think we are
up to eight or so in the last three or four months -- mostly hit
and run. The supposd battle between bicycles and automobiles has
been getting a tremendous amount of coverage in the media, and a
local rag even ran a full-front-page story on the issue. -- Jay
Beattie.

Werehatrack said:

From Oregon, via AP:

Quoted message said:

A bicyclist was charged with manslaughter after he ran through
a stop sign and struck and killed a 71-year-old woman, police
said Monday.

Jean Calder died at Good Samaritan Hospital after she was struck
Friday night as she crossed a street at an unmarked crosswalk,
Corvallis police Capt. Ron Noble said.

Christopher A. Lightning, 51, was charged with manslaughter and
reckless driving.

I am curious when was the last time a motorist was charged with
homicide for running a stop sign/red light and killing somebody.
Furthermore, if that has ever happened, I wonder what percentage of
such deaths have been prosecuted as homicides.

I see people driving with callous disregard for the lives of others
every day, whereas I very rarely see that from cyclists. This
manslaughter charge makes me think of the parable of the mote and the
beam.

Chalo Colina

Chalo said:

Werehatrack said:

From Oregon, via AP:

Quoted message said:

A bicyclist was charged with manslaughter after he ran through
a stop sign and struck and killed a 71-year-old woman, police
said Monday.

Jean Calder died at Good Samaritan Hospital after she was struck
Friday night as she crossed a street at an unmarked crosswalk,
Corvallis police Capt. Ron Noble said.

Christopher A. Lightning, 51, was charged with manslaughter and
reckless driving.

I am curious when was the last time a motorist was charged with
homicide for running a stop sign/red light and killing somebody.
Furthermore, if that has ever happened, I wonder what percentage of
such deaths have been prosecuted as homicides.

I see people driving with callous disregard for the lives of others
every day, whereas I very rarely see that from cyclists. This
manslaughter charge makes me think of the parable of the mote and the
beam.

Chalo Colina

I feel like I heard the word "vehicular" with "manslaughter," and
"homicide" a lot before I gave up watching TV for good.

--
Paul M. Hobson
Georgia Institute of Technology
..:change the words to numbers
if you want to reply to me:.

Paul Hobson said:

Chalo said:

I am curious when was the last time a motorist was charged with
homicide for running a stop sign/red light and killing somebody.
Furthermore, if that has ever happened, I wonder what percentage of
such deaths have been prosecuted as homicides.

I feel like I heard the word "vehicular" with "manslaughter," and
"homicide" a lot before I gave up watching TV for good.

I have often heard of vehicular homicide charges against drivers, but
almost without exception it has been consequent to a DWI crash rather
than ordinary dangerous or oblivious driving.

Many drivers, if not most, who kill with their cars seem to get off
with an administrative citation, or not even that.

My point is that when the police captain quoted in the article said, "A
car and a bicycle are both vehicles, and if they are operated in a way
that could be criminal, then charges are filed equally in both
situations," that he was implying a scenario that I've neither seen nor
heard of-- that a motorist who ran a stop sign and killed a ped would
face a homicide charge.

Chalo Colina

Jay Beattie wrote:
<snip>

Quoted message said:

You should see a picture of the perpetrator, Christopher
Lightning -- looks like a ratty street person drug freak troll.
The local news has been plastering his ugly mug on the tube
nightly for the last few days. We have also been getting a lot
of coverage for all the bicycle deaths lately -- I think we are
up to eight or so in the last three or four months -- mostly hit
and run. The supposd battle between bicycles and automobiles has
been getting a tremendous amount of coverage in the media, and a
local rag even ran a full-front-page story on the issue. -- Jay
Beattie.

Jay- is this the article you're talking about?
http://www.wweek.com/story.php?story=6678

It's a pretty good article about treatment and recovery from traumatic
injury- from the patient's perspective. It's not something I want to go
through.

Jeff

You know what I wouldn't be surprised hearing about in the near future?
A drunk Cyclist charged with DWI. That's next. Mark

Quoted message said:

You know what I wouldn't be surprised hearing about in the near future?
A drunk Cyclist charged with DWI. That's next. Mark

Already been done. This is the latest case I've heard of and the
charge was bargained down:
http://www.dui.com/drunk_driving_research/dui_bicycle_case.html

Chalo said:

My point is that when the police captain quoted in the article said, "A
car and a bicycle are both vehicles, and if they are operated in a way
that could be criminal, then charges are filed equally in both
situations," that he was implying a scenario that I've neither seen nor
heard of-- that a motorist who ran a stop sign and killed a ped would
face a homicide charge.

I can't speak to the accuracy of the statement globally, but I have
seen reports of this type of charge being filed in cases of non-DWI
pedestrian-auto fatalities here once or twice in the 20+ years that
I've lived in Houston. I have not followed up to see if those charged
were tried for the same offenses that were cited in the report; often,
there's a shift in the charges between the event and the trial.

It may be that there are local issues involved in this specific
instance, and it may also be that the cops are familiar with the perp
and have been waiting for him to give them an excuse to act. (This is
not necessarily a societally benign development if it's present.)
--
Typoes are a feature, not a bug.
Some gardening required to reply via email.
Words processed in a facility that contains nuts.

(Mark D) said:

You know what I wouldn't be surprised hearing about in the near future?
A drunk Cyclist charged with DWI. That's next. Mark

No, that was last year, in New England somewhere.
--
Typoes are a feature, not a bug.
Some gardening required to reply via email.
Words processed in a facility that contains nuts.

In article
<[email hidden]>,

Chalo said:

Werehatrack said:

From Oregon, via AP:

Quoted message said:

A bicyclist was charged with manslaughter after he ran through
a stop sign and struck and killed a 71-year-old woman, police
said Monday.

Jean Calder died at Good Samaritan Hospital after she was struck
Friday night as she crossed a street at an unmarked crosswalk,
Corvallis police Capt. Ron Noble said.

Christopher A. Lightning, 51, was charged with manslaughter and
reckless driving.

I am curious when was the last time a motorist was charged with
homicide for running a stop sign/red light and killing somebody.
Furthermore, if that has ever happened, I wonder what percentage of
such deaths have been prosecuted as homicides.

I see people driving with callous disregard for the lives of others
every day, whereas I very rarely see that from cyclists. This
manslaughter charge makes me think of the parable of the mote and the
beam.

Look up "Jonathan Michael Conklin".

--
Michael Press

Michael said:

Look up "Jonathan Michael Conklin".

Vehicular manslaughter charges aren't uncommon in the case of DUI,
especially in cases like the one you cite where the driver was observed
to be swerving erratically before the accident. But I think Chalo has
a valid point that such charges are rare for fatalities that happen as
a result of other traffic code violations such as failure to yield,
running a stop sign, minor speeding, improper passing, etc.

Mark D said:

You know what I wouldn't be surprised hearing about in the near
future? A drunk Cyclist charged with DWI. That's next. Mark

What are you talking about??? That's been SOP here in college town. You
get the full penalty as if you were driving a car, which means you lose your
license, have to check-in every single day to see if you need to take a
random drug test... The law is not something to screw with.

--
Phil, Squid-in-Training

Chalo said:

My point is that when the police captain quoted in the article said, "A
car and a bicycle are both vehicles, and if they are operated in a way
that could be criminal, then charges are filed equally in both
situations," that he was implying a scenario that I've neither seen nor
heard of-- that a motorist who ran a stop sign and killed a ped would
face a homicide charge.

Strangely enough, here in Virginia the law states unambiguosly that a
bicyclist on a shared-use path has the same rights and duties as a
pedestrian. So what happens when two bicyclists in a crosswalk are
killed over three days by motorists on the popular W&OD Trail? The
bicyclists are held to blame for not coming to a complete stop before
entering the crosswalk, and the sherriff's department starts ticketing
other bicyclists under the bogus charge of "failing to stop before
entering or crossing a highway or sidewalk from a private driveway or
alley," a vehicular charge which is not applicable when the bicyclist
is in pedestrian mode. So not only do they not charge the drivers, they
hold the dead cyclists completely responsible for their own deaths,
they start trumping up charges against other bicyclists on the path,
and they take NO action to enforce the law that requires cars to stop
for bicyclists in a crosswalk (even if they are riding).

I am fit to be tied and have taken to yelling at cars that don't stop
once my wheel is in a crosswalk. I mean two people are dead while the
goddam Loudon County Sherrif Department has made it open season on
bicyclists- you don't stop (defined as putting your foot down) and it
is completely legal to run you down. And there are dozens of children
out there every weekend, whose naive parents think that they have found
a protected place for their kids to ride.

Michael Press said:

Chalo said:

I am curious when was the last time a motorist was charged with
homicide for running a stop sign/red light and killing somebody.
Furthermore, if that has ever happened, I wonder what percentage of
such deaths have been prosecuted as homicides.

Look up "Jonathan Michael Conklin".

As I noted in another post, vehicular homicide charges for motorists
appear to be more or less exclusively limited to cases of DWI.

The driver who killed the cyclist you mention was not only drunk at the
time, he'd been convicted of DWI 4 times previously. I think the
vehicular homicide charge against him pertains to that fact rather than
the fact he killed someone after a simple infraction.

Chalo Colina

"peter" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

You know what I wouldn't be surprised hearing about in the

near future?

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

A drunk Cyclist charged with DWI. That's next. Mark

Already been done. This is the latest case I've heard of and

the

Quoted message said:

charge was bargained down:
http://www.dui.com/drunk_driving_research/dui_bicycle_case.html

It's been done so many times my former DA partner had a name for
it: PUII -- pedalling while under the influence [of intoxicants].
I asked her why the DA bothered prosecuting these cases and she
said that the drunk bicyclist was usually doing something else
that was suspicious or stupid, like in one case, the drunk
bicyclist actually ran into a parked police car. You have to
remember that there are a fair number of bicyclists out there
that are riding because they got their licenses yanked for
DUII. -- Jay Beattie.

http://www.katu.com/news/story.asp?ID=79759

September 20, 2005

Cyclist cleared in collision that killed woman

CORVALLIS, Ore. - A bicyclist accused of criminally negligent homicide
after he struck and killed a 71-year-old woman has been released from
jail.

A Benton County grand jury has cleared him.

Fifty-one-year-old Christopher Lightning was charged after police say
he
ran a stop sign and struck Jean Calder as she crossed a street at an
unmarked crosswalk.

Lightning had been held since his arrest September 9.

A deputy district attorney says the case was weakened because there was
not a lot of physical evidence that would give a clear picture of how
it
happened.

There was no evidence to indicate that Lightning had been speeding,
such
as skid marks or damage to the bicycle, and he was not found to be
under
the influence of alcohol or drugs.

(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)