Cyclist hit by a car: the cyclist must have been running red light!

Have you read the comment section of news articles about cyclists who got hit by a car lately? Does it get a bit old how most of these sections quickly deteriorate into a bunch of rants about how cyclists are a bunch of law breakers who routinely run red lights and stop signs, even when the cyclist(s) in the news articles did no such thing? Somehow a few of us are under the impression that a great way of conversing with the rest of the world is by always blaming the cyclists for a crime they may NOT have committed whenever they get hit by a car on an American road. It doesn't seem to matter if it is well established that the cyclist(s) in question didn't commit the crime - if any other cyclists the commenters had ever noticed on the road have ran or rolled through a red light or stop sign, then all cyclists must automatically be guilty of it.

Translate that to drivers; if driver A runs a stop sign, does that automatically make driver B guilty of stop sign running? Why is it so hard for some to hold their tongue/fingers and wait for all the info pertaining to an incident to come out before presuming to act as self-appointed prosecutor, judge and jury and pronounce someone guilty? Especially when there is a fatality involved?

I no longer have a car, but in all the 10 years of 30,000+ miles per year that I drove first a Dodge Caravan then a Toyota Corolla I was a good enough a driver to never earn any sort of ticket. Now that I mainly transport by bicycle, I get along great with most drivers I share the road with, and I don't run red lights or stop signs or do any of the other icky stuff like riding against traffic or on the sidewalk. And yet if I get unlucky and get hit by a car tomorrow, it is a sure bet that some a--holes will pop up on news articles covering my crash to lump me in with lawless red light runners or the amazingly rarely spotted cyclist who ride "4 deep on a narrow road".

So... if you happen to be one of those 'cyclists are all red light runners' folks, here are a couple of videos for you because, you know, cars don't run red lights at all... ever. Uh-uh. Not gonna happen...

 

And cars never cut other cars or bikes off either, or merge without first looking, or getting into the wrong lane, or whatever else thingy. No, drivers never do any of that stuff. Drivers never notice any of that stuff done by other drivers... Do they? Hello???