That didn’t take long.
Mandy Benn, the Michigan driver accused of killed two men participating in a three-day Make-A-Wish fundraising ride while stoned on prescription meds, was found guilty on all 15 counts by the jury, including second-degree murder, after just three hours of deliberation.
Which works out to about 12 minutes a charge.
Benn was attempting to pass a UPS truck when she went onto the wrong side of the road and slammed head-on into a group of riders, injuring three others in addition to the two men who died at the scene.
A detective investigating the crash said she appeared disoriented, and “like she was on a different planet.”
Benn had two painkillers and an anti-anxiety drug in her system at the time of the crash, as well as bottles of prescription meds in her car. The defense tried to blame her disorientation on a concussion suffered in the collision — an excuse the jury clearly rejected.
She could now spend the rest of her life behind bars once she’s sentenced on the murder charges.
Photo by Sora Shimazaki from Pexels:
………
Maybe she should change her relationship status to “It’s complicated.”
A 29-year old Orange woman will be sentenced later this month after pleading guilty to intentionally running over her then-boyfriend as he rode his bicycle away from her home in December, 2020.
Diana Rodriguez pled guilty to felony counts of assault with a deadly weapon and corporal injury on a spouse or cohabitant, with sentencing enhancements for causing great bodily injury in a domestic violence incident.
Prosecutors dropped a felony count of mayhem, as well as three misdemeanor counts of possession of a controlled substance, as part of her plea deal.
The victim was scorched a hot vehicle part after being pinned under her car, but survived when a neighbor used a jack to lift the car off him.
………
The family of Joshua Cervantes Drayer called for justice and closure more than a year after the 40-year old Dana Point man was killed in a hit-and-run while riding his ebike.
………
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
The head of Brompton’s bikeshare program criticized UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s new “proudly pro-car” policies, describing Sunak’s attempt to halt the mythical “war on motorists’ as “wedge politics” and an “artificial construct” which will “hopefully blow over given time.”
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
A sidewalk-raging English delivery rider went over his handlebars attempting to get at a delivery driver who had called him a dick, among other less-than-friendly terms, for complaining about on the sidewalk, after pointing out that he wasn’t supposed to ride there, either. Meanwhile, the Daily Mail, apparently believing two wrongs do, in fact make a right, clearly sided with the foul-mouthed driver.
………
Local
A letter writer in the Los Angeles Times pleads with government officials not to take away the cherished right-turn-on-red that so many SoCal drivers seem to assume is their God-given right, arguing that if drivers and pedestrians both obey the law, it’s perfectly safe. Which is about like saying guns are perfectly safe if owners use them properly, and people don’t step in front of the bullets.
The Beverly Hills Courier considers the city’s plan to add bike lanes to a third-mile section of Beverly Blvd.
State
San Diego’s commitment to building an actual bike lane network is paying off, after our neighbor to the south was recognized as America’s “greenest” city.
I want to be like him when I grow up. Holocaust survivor and age-group world cycling champ Leon Malmed celebrated his 86th birthday with a South Lake Tahoe bike ride.
National
A 53-year old woman was charged with careless driving for killing a ten-year old boy riding a bicycle in a small town near my Colorado hometown; police concluded she was driving distracted, after initially blaming the victim.
Hundreds of Houston bicyclists turned out for a memorial ride through streets lined with green ribbons to honor a 14-year old boy who was killed by a driver while riding his bike to school last week.
Bloomington, Indiana hamstrung an award-winning bikeway by installing new stop signs, slowing bike riders as well as the intended drivers.
A Cambridge, Massachusetts letter writer calls attention to a recent USDOT report that says bike lanes protected with car-ticker plastic pendy-posts reduced crashes by 50 percent when compared to bike lanes without them.
Police in New York are looking for a man who beat a 66-year old woman with a collapsable baton, knocking her off her bicycle, after the two nearly collided in Central Park.
Echoing a statement we’ve all heard too many times, North Carolina bicyclists say a 61-year old man was doing everything right when he was run down from behind and killed by a driver while attempting to make a left turn.
International
Insider Monkey — no, that’s not a typo — lists the world’s 20 most bike-friendly countries, and somehow includes the United States, where bikes and all other forms of transportation take a back seat to cars, at number 13, ahead of Japan, England, Spain and Italy; the Netherlands and Denmark naturally lead the rankings, with Australia — which is even more bike-unfriendly than the US — coming in third.
A Toronto college student got his stolen ebike back after launching his own investigation, and finding it for sale at a “really sketchy bike shop with no name.”
Life is cheap in Jersey, where a 51-year old driver walked without a day behind bars, as if a lousy six-month driving ban and community service is sufficient punishment for seriously injuring a bike rider in a “momentary lapse of concentration.
A stoned truck driver in Edinburgh, Scotland will have to find a new line of work after he was sentenced to two years behind bars and banned from driving for eight more, for killing an intensive care nurse who was biking to work during the pandemic.
An 85-year old Scottish woman rode her bicycle to cope with her grief over the deaths of her adult children, riding 1,000 miles around the country while raising the equivalent of nearly $88,000 for charity in the process. I have no idea how many hundreds of miles I rode to cope with my father’s death.
The leader of the Cyprus Green Party calls for an end to the country’s mandatory bike helmet law.
A writer for Taiwan News wants you to put the island on your bike bucket list.
Speaking of Australia, The Guardian says more Australian families are ditching cars for ebikes, in part because they pay for themselves. To which Californians who have waited more than two years for the state’s long-delayed ebike rebate program, respond “We wouldn’t know.”
Competitive Cycling
Slovenia’s Tadej Pogačar became just the third cyclist to win three consecutive editions of Italy’s Il Lombardia, after Alfredo Binda won three in 1925-1927, and the great Fausto Coppi won four in a row from 1946 to 1949.
Fellow Slovenian Matej Mohorič won his first senior world title at Sunday’s Gravel World Championships, apparently while riding an as-yet unreleased Merida gravel bike.
Australian cyclist Nathan Haas was forced to ride a bike quickly pulled from Colnago’s in-house museum at Sunday’s gravel world championships after his bike was lost by the airline.
New Zealand’s 34-year old “Flying Mullet” Shane Archbold calls it a career after a decade in the pro peloton.
Mountain bikers from 19 states and three countries set off from downtown Hot Springs, Arkansas Saturday for the 1,000-mile Arkansas High Country race.
Finally…
Your next bike could come wrapped in 24 karat gold and cost more than a Rolls-Royce. Nothing like riding your bike to Hell and back. No, literally.
And that’s a very good question.
………
Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin
