[SDCBC] Joggers in the Bike Lane - WTF

[Frank Paiano]

"Very little settlement money," you say?
Did you finish the article?  Lawyers for two other joggers in Orange County hit by a car argued that the bike lane was too wide and the driver mistook the bike lane for a car lane.  The award was $49 million.

-- Abulifia <abulifia1 at cox.net> wrote:
I have to believe that running westbound on the eastbound side of the 
parkway distracted with an iPod most likely had something to do with 
it.  That particular section of Bake Parkway and North Pointe Drive in 
Lake Forest is always bad.   And at 6a.m. on a Sunday, it's no 
different.  I don't have the State Vehicle Code section at the moment, 
but regardless of personal opinions on the level of softness the street 
provides vs the sidewalk, the law is the law, and the Handbook clearly 
states joggers don't belong in the bike lane.  And you can bet the farm 
that the law will factor mightily into any lawsuits filed by Ms. Soto's 
heirs.  The city of Lake Forest will not just forgive that she was in 
the wrong and was killed as a result.  The driver may have been 
negligent, but she shouldn't have been running in the bike lane and that 
makes her comparatively negligent.  Translation = very little settlement 
money.




John Eldon wrote:
> I get as frustrated by groups of walkers or joggers hogging the bike 
> lane as much as the rest of you, but mandatory sidepath laws for 
> pedestrians are irrelevant to this particular case. Had Ms. Soto been 
> cycling instead of jogging, the consequences would probably not have 
> changed much, if at all. The motorist was grossly negligent and caused 
> an easily preventable death.
>
> By the way, I do understand the appeal of jogging in the bike lane 
> instead of on the sidewalk -- macadam is a slightly more forgiving 
> surface than concrete, and pedestrians have even worse right-hook and 
> other intersection movement conflict problems than cyclists do. When I 
> walk or jog in a bike lane, I cower against the curb or parked cars to 
> give cyclists the right-of-way, just as I defer to pedestrians on 
> those rare occasions I resort to using a short stretch of sidewalk 
> while cycling.
>
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