Man charged in Durham hit-and-run that killed Seth Vidal

http://www.wral.com/man-charged-in-durham-hit-and-run-that-killed-bicyclist/12644209/

by revnja • 13 years ago

75 49 13 years ago

wral.com

fvrghl• 13 years ago

I'm glad that he had the courage to turn himself in.

xauronx• 13 years ago

I hope the smirking picture was an old one though (not from after he ran a bicyclist over).

Also, I wonder what the chances are that he waited till he sobered up to turn himself in.

wavefunction• 13 years ago

Hit and run is a felony, especially failure to stop and render aid, while DWI is often still a misdemeanor. Not saying the dude was necessarily knowledgeable about that or weighing those options if he was intoxicated at the time.

One of the posters also claims to have met the suspect and attributes the "smirk" to some sort of skeleto-muscular deformity, though it's hard to determine validity with anonymous internet posters.

rdtsc• 13 years ago

I want to think it is courage but I suspect it could be a phone call to friend or family from a police investigator or the description of a car on a public news or social channel, or seeing a neighbor notice the dent in the car. At that point he might have realized his only 2 options: get arrested or turn himself in.

jessaustin2• 13 years ago

Yeah I'm a bit cynical about that too. Since he already has a revoked license (what a surprise: a bad driver, driving badly), he also already has an attorney. I suspect that's who decided he would be turning himself in.

Zigurd3• 13 years ago

The NTSB wants to make forward collision avoidance systems in cars standard. I wonder if it would be possible to spoof radar and/or IR return signals so as to trip the autonomous braking in a car that gets too close to a bike?

ars2• 13 years ago

Try thinking more than one step at a time.

What will be the very next thing that happens if you actually succeed in doing this?

Zikes• 13 years ago

It would be made illegal immediately due to the potential for abuse.

Zigurd3• 13 years ago

Cars would stop hitting bikes?

davidcuddeback• 13 years ago

I remember seeing on Top Gear a review of a car with a collision detection system that could detect pedestrians. (I think it was a Volvo.) I wouldn't be surprised if it also detects bicycles without active cooperation from the cyclist.

unwind2• 13 years ago

The company Autoliv has a bunch of such products, they're used by major car manufacturers.

See for instance http://www.autoliv.com/ProductsAndInnovations/ActiveSafetySy... which describes their "vision systems", the features of which include pedestrian-detection.

It's possible that Volvo has its own in-house tech for this, but Autoliv are huge.

melling• 13 years ago

Perhaps something as simple as having a little video camera on bikes would discourage drivers from getting too close. If lots of cyclists had them drivers might start to move over a little more. Just knowing that you might be recorded could be enough incentive to a avoid cyclists.

mgkimsal• 13 years ago

I half suspect that might be construed as some sort of terrorist activity/behaviour.

derekp72• 13 years ago

I thought about having a small flag on a really sharp antenna-style post sticking on the left side of the bike. About a foot or two, laying parallel to the ground should do. That would encourage drivers to give a bit more room, as they are probably more afraid of getting their car scratched up then they are of hitting someone.

Zigurd3• 13 years ago

I think there is a range of tools that would making biking safer. I saw a lighting system that outlined a "box" around the cyclist. Some kind of automatic horn/led-flasher that would activate if a car got too close might be of some value.

segmondy• 13 years ago

Perhaps cities should build bike lanes.

cjrp• 13 years ago

Mercedes have done a lot of work around this (more for pedestrians than cyclists I believe) for their S-Class: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7m9qI70L2yQ

edwardunknown2• 13 years ago

yum update reflective-clothing

sorry, couldn't resist.

swang• 13 years ago

wow, pretty terrible.

edwardunknown2• 13 years ago

Hey, don't ignore those security updates

mr_spothawk• 13 years ago

too soon.

oxtopus• 13 years ago

Crass.

On a serious note, it's not likely more/better reflective clothing would have helped. It sounds like the driver was deliberately and abruptly deviating from the normal lane to bypass traffic. It was not a decision made with the safety of others in mind.

ghshephard• 13 years ago

Incredibly inappropriate. You do understand that a member of the community died, right?

jbm• 13 years ago

I think HN has long passed the point where the passing of a community member has any effect on trolls. It's Eternal September.

http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/01/15/commenting-communit...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3468102

This was a pretty good example of something similar that happened an year back, and I'm sure there are more examples (I just never bothered to pay attention to them).

staunch2• 13 years ago

Fuck HN has gone downhill.

beggi• 13 years ago

This is utterly tragic. I lived near Hillandale rd in Durham and drove there almost every day. Not sure if it had any part in this accident, but the road is really poorly lit like most roads there.

When I moved it actually struck me how poorly lit the roads in Durham were, compared to where we come from in Europe. I'm guessing it's a mixture of being much more expensive (wider roads and much longer) and the city organizers not giving pedestrian/cyclists much thought (sidewalks seem to be scattered randomly around the town).

ethomson• 13 years ago

This stretch of Hillandale is really lousy, as it narrows from a multilane interchange to a two-lane road in about a block. But it should be fairly well lit (at least around the interchange) and I imagine that Seth was as visible as possible.

But mediocre roads in Durham are the norm, unfortunately. My least favorite was always University heading South/Southwest through Forest Hills. In a hundred feet, your bike lane disappears and you are suddenly on a narrow two-lane with little shoulder, in a right-hand curve with an uphill elevation. There's precious little visibility in either direction thanks to the trees and curves, and the oncoming traffic (northbound) traffic has an awkward intersection that tends to cause people to creep into the middle of the lane. (I may be misremembering the exact details, but that intersection has really stuck with me.)

The drivers in the Triangle are also pretty awful. I've never been yelled more or had more things thrown at me. The cup of ice landing on you is not so bad (it can even be a little refreshing on a hot day) but the handful of change is pretty frightening.

Durham is a great town in many ways, but its bicycling infrastructure is not one of them. Such a shame that it claimed another life.

joonix2• 13 years ago

Welcome to most of America. Really no sense of municipality, for the government is expected to strive to spend $0 lest they be accused of hoarding tax dollars.

interject• 13 years ago

Is cycling that dangerous in the US compared to Europe?

meepmorp• 13 years ago

Many (most?) US cities lack provisions for bicycles like dedicated lanes, etc., though I don't know about Durham specifically. The situation is worse outside major cities, too.

Another thing I've noticed is that many US drivers don't know how to, or are uncomfortable dealing with, driving near cyclists. Sometimes they're just careless and hostile toward cyclists - in one instance, I saw a driver attempt to drive a person on bike off the road with his car in an apparent fit of rage.

derekp72• 13 years ago

Where I live, there are some bicycle-friendly roads, but if you need to commute by bicycle you are probably going to get some road segments with absolutely no paved shoulder. So the smart thing to do then is to have a mirror, and if a car is coming up behind you and another one is oncoming (two-lane road), your best bet is to hit the gravel.

Also, there are some stretches of road where bicycle clubs seem to frequent. What they do is get a large pack of people, and end up blocking traffic on a 5-mile stretch (they purposely take up the whole lane, probably safer that way I guess, and when there is a bottleneck instead of moving right they take up both lanes). This ends up instilling a large amount of hostility in drivers, so when they see a loan bicycle they tend to be very aggressive (I've had water balloons, even beer bottles thrown at me before, even though I was far right of the white line).

Man charged in Durham hit-and-run that killed Seth Vidal

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