I was glad to see that the law does mention some rider responsibilities too.
Around where my folks live there were a few riding groups that also wanted to
go out and see the sights, its the coast of Maine, seems nice right? Well these
folks thought they could just get out of work a little early and go for a ride.
So every Friday night around 4:30pm 20 or so riders would go 5 abreast all
around town, during rush hour. They wouldn't yield for anybody and you had to
creep along behind them until you parted ways with them. They were totally
obnoxious. If you were sitting at a stop sign they would swarm around you and
then take off ahead of you, often cutting off traffic and nearly causing
accidents.
This went on for about a month until enough people called the police that the
group was met by a group of officers whole explained that they could ride
politely or not ride at all. They tried to keep up their antics and were
quickly shut down, IIRC bikes were impounded, charges were filed. It got quite
messy for awhile...
-Curt
On Wednesday, June 9, 2021, 5:36:39 PM EDT, Floyd Thursby via Mercedes
<mercedes@okiebenz.com> wrote:
yeah but for some reason they need to be codified to keep the idiots
somewhat in line.
A coupla years ago there was a group doing these tour rides around here,
maybe a dozen people would sign up for a week or two and they would have
vans to take the riders to different areas around to ride maybe 30 or 40
miles a day, just see the sights, have a picnic somewhere nice. I saw a
group of them at one point and chatted with them, had seen the vans
carrying the people and the bikes a few times. Some woman on the next
island over took exception to being inconvenienced (meaning she had to
wait maybe 20sec to pass the group, if that, on roads that are seldom
busy, which is why they were riding out there) as she was towing a horse
trailer. She got on FB and started ranting about how she was going to
"take out" the whole group next time they got in her way, her big truck
and 7000lb horse trailer would make short work of them. She was proud
of that. I pointed out that this would be premeditated murder if she
did so, or even if she was ever involved in an incident with a cyclist
it would show premeditation to do harm, and that would be really Not
Good for her prognosis at the hands of Peter Wilborn (who wrote the
law). I shared the post and the subsequent discussion with a friend who
runs the local cycling group, she shared it with the Sheriff who
immediately dispatched 2 deputies to this woman's residence and sat down
with her for quite some time and explained what she had gotten herself into.
Subsequent to that some of her peeps determined that this tour company
did not have a County business license and were doing business in the
County (which was something of a stretch, as there are any number of
outfits that do business in the County without a license, trucking
companies and whatnot, and any others you could think of that do not
have a physical presence. These people hounded the tour companies and
County staff about it for weeks, whether they were justified or not. In
any case this tour company and another one said F it and quit doing
tours, to the detriment of other businesses that benefited from the
people -- hotels, restaurants, whatever else.
These are the mentalities that laws are needed to address, unfortunately
usually after the fact of a incident. I have been involved in one or
two others where aggressive drivers who were inconvenienced by a few
seconds gave me a brushback, one of them I chased down into a parking
lot where he was working at a restaurant, got pics of him and his truck
and went to the Sheriffs Office local station and was going to file an
incident report and get some action going. The cops were pleasant
enough until they recognized the individual, a young hothead who had
been a deputy up until a year previously, when he was fired after he
beat up a motorist he had stopped (and turns out the guy was a criminal,
but that was not relevant to his actions) and the SO had to pay the vic
$300k. The cops said they would take care of it, I asked what that
meant, they said not to worry it would be taken care of. That was
weird. I looked the guy up later and found it was this hothead and
remembered the story then. I don't know whatever happened, maybe
someone did have a chat with him. He actually tried to run me over in a
roundabout just before the shopping area where he worked, I think he was
late for his shift and felt terribly inconvenienced that he actually had
to give way to me on my bike at 11AM on a Sunday when there was very
little traffic of any kind.
But whatever, there is just a lot of foolishness that laws have to be
made to address
--FT
On 6/9/21 3:53 PM, Randy Bennell via Mercedes wrote:
> True, I guess, but one would think they are just standard rules of the
> road.
>
>
>
> On 09/06/2021 2:50 PM, Floyd Thursby via Mercedes wrote:
>> It encapsulates the transgressions that get cyclists injured and killed
>>
>> --FT
>>
>> On 6/9/21 3:41 PM, Randy Bennell via Mercedes wrote:
>>> Looks to be pretty ordinary. I was expecting something more.
>>>
>>>
>>> On 09/06/2021 2:29 PM, Floyd Thursby via Mercedes wrote:
>>>> https://www.bikelaw.com/laws/south-carolina/
>>>>
>>>> On 6/9/21 11:40 AM, Randy Bennell via Mercedes wrote:
>>>>> What is the gist of the "new SC bike law"?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 09/06/2021 9:37 AM, Floyd Thursby via Mercedes wrote:
>>>>>> the 13th anniversary of getting hit while riding my bike by a
>>>>>> dumbass (whose name was "Lance Leopard") driving a Sprinter van
>>>>>> (Mercedes content!). I ended up getting the first conviction
>>>>>> under the new (at that time) SC bike law, the lawyer who helped
>>>>>> write the law was my abogado, he was quite enthused at the
>>>>>> proceedings. I had to get the deputy who responded to rewrite
>>>>>> the charges as she did not know about the bike law. Case was
>>>>>> heard at out local magistrate's court after some few months,
>>>>>> dumbass plead guilty to one count and we decided not to pursue
>>>>>> the other in a jury trial.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I ended up getting some money from his insco, covered some
>>>>>> medical stuff and some left over that disappeared into the former
>>>>>> wife's accounts somewhere I never figured out. On another
>>>>>> aspect, I called her to come collect me after the incident, she
>>>>>> showed up and after consulting with the EMTs on medical aspects,
>>>>>> was speaking to the deputy who was standing there, and the
>>>>>> dumbass driver's dumbass girlfriend mouthed off to Dr. wife about
>>>>>> something, that was escalating rapidly, I pointed this out to the
>>>>>> deputy and suggested she might want to intercede in that exchange...
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Interestingly enough I was at a community meeting last evening
>>>>>> and the judge/magistrate was there, he has been retired for a
>>>>>> coupla years now. Didn't get a chance to speak with him, but we
>>>>>> have spoken a few times since then, seeing each other at various
>>>>>> meetings and he is a good friend of another friend, and he
>>>>>> remembers me and the case and was pleased I think to mete out
>>>>>> justice under that law for the first time. Plus the dumbass and
>>>>>> his low-rent shyster were annoying.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________
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>>>
>>> _______________________________________
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>
>
> _______________________________________
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>
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--
--FT
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