A high-profile court trial has just ended in southern California. A perhaps-retired emergency room doctor, Christopher Thomas Thompson, was charged with multiple counts of several serious acts. They were hostile, violent acts, done on different days in his car on the same road near his home - against cyclists.
The coverage in VeloNews has been evenhanded and readable; the letters in reaction have been well written and expressive. Makes you proud to be a bike rider. Afraid but proud.
If you want to follow the trial as VN has, click around at the site where it's all archived. I'd do it that way (watch it as it unfolded) and experience it as did those of us who followed it all along. Riveting, I'd say.
Here's a link to VN, but please....start at the beginning. Some of the descriptions and photos will scare you, but no worse than evening television.
2 comments:
One less homicidal maniac on the streets, HURRAY! Now if we can get the otherwise nice folks to put down the cell phone, GPS, latte, newspaper, etc. and pay attention to their actual DRIVING all road users (not just the cyclists) would be much better off.
I'm not so sure about the homicidal maniac part but if we examine our souls we will find that every one of us cyclists has done something similar to the Mandeville Canyon riders. We've shouted asshole, flipped someone off, or done something like that. I have and I'm sure that sometime in your cycling career you have too.
In electronic there are two ways of controlling a circuit: positive feedback and negative feedback. Positive feedback doesn't work because the signal just gets stronger and stronger. PA feedback at a rock show is an example of positive feedback. And as we all know it continues getting stronger until some body turns the volume down.
These road incidents that we've all been a part of are an example of positive feedback. Need I say more?
Phil Brown
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