Lie 1. "I pulled over to take pictures of the cyclist, not to harm them"
Lie 2. "I never said to the police officer that I wanted to teach them a lesson"
Lie 3. "It was somebody else that herrassed the two cyclists in another incedent in March of 2008" (Those cyclists identified the Docter from a lineup and by the make and model of his car)

In addition to that he should pay the two victims $100.000 each for their injufies now that he probably doesn't have to pay his horrible lawyer.

People drive exactly the speed limit in the left lane, playing cop by preventing drivers behind from speeding. The drivers behind react by passing on the right, often unsafely. Then the blocking driver feels even more justified because that other driver is obviously a total maniac. On rare occasions I've played one role or the other, and I'm not proud of it. Almost all of us have, if our memory is honest.

Folks, don't take aggressive action on the road against other drivers or riders you think are being selfish. Don't take passive aggressive action either. It's stupid, it's counterproductive, and it increases the danger to third parties on the road, as it did to me in the example I posted at #39.

Keep your outrage to yourself. Be mature. Don't yell, don't flip people off, don't tailgate, and don't block. That's what it means to be a road sharer.

His testimony will resume tomorrow morning at 10:30 am. The defense attorney, Peter Swarth, expects to take about 2 hours for his direct examination. The prosecutor, Mary Stone, also expects to take another two hours for cross examination. Thompson's testimony will likely take all of the day, and closing arguments should begin Thursday morning.

However, the judge gave the jury a heads up yesterday. He told them that they would hear from the defense's witnesses Tuesday and Wednesday and closing arguments possibly at the end of Wednesday carrying over into Thursday. The case should be submitted to the jury for deliberation by Thursday. He also noted that the court would be closed on Friday.

Incidentally, those sports car groups typically use 2-way radios to communicate, so that the drivers in back know whether or not oncoming traffic, cyclists, or any other hazard is ahead. If you see them rounding corners on the wrong side of the road or otherwise acting nuts, the use of radios is a possible explanation. Again a reason, not an excuse. Or it might just be group insanity.

Radios or not, the head of a group of vehicles needs to be extra-careful. If radios are in use, the leader should announce each and every cyclist encountered. That procedure results in improved cyclist safety when sharing the road with a group of cars as compared to sharing the road versus a lone non-careful driver. I saw a group of BMW 2002 drivers recently, and they appeared to be behaving themselves quite well on a scenic and open 2-lane road.

I've never heard of any bicyclist being injured due to a road rally. If the organizers of road rallies have any sense, they'll avoid roads that have significant numbers of cyclists, including almost all the best two-lane roads anywhere near an urban center. With common sense, as opposed to leaning on defective laws, the roads can accommodate both car clubs and cycling clubs.

Sure, the five-car rule has been "embedded" in my mind since childhood, when my dad (a slow driver) would pull over to let those behind him get by on our trips up to Yosemite. And I think I revisited it in high school driver's ed class.

In your case, however, you don't mention whether or at not there were five cars stuck behind the cyclists. If there had been, of course, the cyclists would have had to let the line of vehicles go by.

From the gist of your writing, you seem like a reasonable sort of person. I think that you'd recognize that as a matter of law the cyclists weren't at fault, not in the way that you describe it. Instead, the driver was at fault for making a bad pass. This is why I thought that you might direct your attention at the driver rather than the cyclists. And yes, I understand that it's not practical to get the driver's plate, but the difficulty in blaming the driver doesn't make the ease of blaming the cyclists any more correct.

I understand your point about the uphill drivers becoming frustrated in having to make multiple passes over miles of cyclists. I also understand that this frustration may have caused your problem. But I think you might also understand my point, that frustration doesn't excuse the driver from making safe passes.

As drivers, many of use have been stuck behind RV after RV on narrow, mountainous, popular roads, and unable to pass. It's not the number of vehicles -- say, the tenth annoying RV -- that decides whether we are "justified" in making an unsafe pass. In fact, it's never justified. Each pass has to be taken on its own merits.

As a cyclist in the Malibu Hills, I've found myself passed by lines of sports cars, dozens of them, all of the same make and model, and all on some rally. On some days, there have been multiple rallys. I have to say that the fear I have of those all-but-racing drivers must be at least comparable to the panic you faced. It's terrifying. But I'm not really sure how I would go about asking the police to shut down a rally drive on the grounds of it being a "parade."

Cyclists know that traffic laws are often ridiculous when applied to bicycles. A full stop at every stop sign? Get real. I check the traffic and ride right through. I've never gotten a ticket for it. The point is that when traffic laws clash with common sense notions of fairness, those notions of fairness will usually win.

It's not fair to obstruct a public road with 5 miles of cyclists traveling at 5 mph, no matter what the law says. Therefore it's not safe.

If you support events that create these unsafe conditions (Google "critical mass"), you have the same basic problem as the road-rage doctor: You think you own the road.

The Golden Rule is not just for drivers. It's for cyclists, too.

There is nothing about peddling up a winding canyon road at 5 MPH that should encourage anything to do anything dangerous or illegal. If your principles are able to justify what the other driver did, then I pray I never come into contact with you (or the other driver for that matter) in real life whether I'm driving, walking or whatever. *HE* put your life in danger, and you are defending him. You're really screwed up in the head, man.

"But that would be a huge delay when there are 5 miles of cyclists."

And yet they have the *right* to be there. However, you're only driving on that road because society lets you. Behave yourself or we'll take it away.

I agree completely. But the event organizers are also the bad people.

Human nature is what it is, and it's quite predictable that some minority of drivers will pass unsafely if that's the only way to avoid being stuck behind 5 mph traffic for an hour or more. I prefer to pull off the road and wait for the road to clear, so I can reach the destination at nearly the same time less stressfully. But that would be a huge delay when there are 5 miles of cyclists.

My point is that the law should anticipate human nature and accommodate it much better than this. The event organizers should do the same. Maybe they have a legal right to parade up the mountain this way, but that wouldn't make it the right thing to do.

In other areas of the law, if I create a situation that encourages dangerous and illegal actions, I share the fault for any resulting injuries. That's the way I see this situation. The fault is shared.

Yeah, it sucks, but I don't see how being inconvenienced, no matter how major that inconvenience is, has to result in injuries or even death. Going 5 MPH uphill isn't a crime deserving of the death penalty to be carried out by some impatient driver who absolutely has to get to his secluded shack in the middle of fucking nowhere as soon as possible. You, the driver, are in control of that.

Take your grievance to the courts, or hell, call the police if you think the cyclists are breaking the law, but don't attempt unsafe maneuvers on the road like that other driver did. This attitude of, "You didn't let me pass! Not my fault if I hit you, you queer cyclists!" is retarded. Sit there and wait. Sit there and stew if you want. But acting on it makes you the bad person.

The other driver was heading uphill, I was driving downhill. Nose to nose. I had no time to look at his front license plate, let alone memorize it. I was concentrating on the right edge of the road, so as not to go into the ditch. Once he was past me, he was gone. What would be the point of making a U-turn to chase down an already-enraged driver and start an argument over an incident in which no damage occurred? The guy would have assumed that I was nuts and perhaps even pulled out a weapon. You try that method if you want, but I won't.

"Substitute a tractor, RV, or other slow traffic" only a single pass would have been required for each driver going uphill. As I wrote, I believe that the drivers would have passed safely the first few times before losing patience and beginning to pass unsafely.

Substitute a parade of 100 tractors, 100 RVs, or 100 other slow vehicles and yes, the result would have been the same. But unlike these cyclists, those vehicles would certainly have had a parade permit or a full road closure. At minimum, they would have bunched up, allowing easier passing.

A parade of slow vehicles would also have been required to pull over under CVC21656. See http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d11/vc21656.htm

Did you even know about CVC21656? Cyclists really should be familiar with it. It's not much help to drivers when the cyclists spread themselves over 5 miles, but it's a start.

Might not you have noted the license plate of the driver and then lodged a complaint with the police for unsafe driving?

It seems to me that a bad driver -- the kind cyclists seem to face regularly -- nearly wrecked your car, not cyclists. Substitute a tractor, RV, or other slow traffic for the cyclists in this instance, and you would have been in the same predicament, or worse.

http://www.velonews.com/article/99475/defense-attorney-cross-examines-cyclists-in-la-road-rage

I saw Ron Peterson's testimony and was impressed by his composure on the stand. There was some powerful testimony from him, especially when he described the pictures of his injuries and the rear windshield of Thompson's car.

Today is a furlough day for the courts, so they will resume on Thursday with the cross examination of Patrick Watson, another cyclist who reported a strikingly similar incident involving Thompson cutting off a pair of cyclists and slamming on his brakes right in front of them on Mandeville back in March of 2008 about four months prior to Ron Peterson's incident.

The prosecution will call two more detectives and some experts and expects to be finished by Friday. The defense may call their first witnesses on Friday if time permits.

Due to the tightly winding road, drivers ascending the 35 mph two-lane double-yellow road had scant opportunities to pass safely. The cyclists did not appear to pull over or offer the drivers any help in passing. They just kept pumping at a steady 5 mph or so.

The drivers probably waited to pass safely the first time, the second time, and the third time. After that, the prospect of being stuck behind 5 mph cyclists for the next hour or more must have gotten the better of some of them.

I was descending the mountain. I began to see cyclists, and drivers passing them less than safely. I slowed down. The first two times I was able to brake sufficiently to allow the driver to complete his pass. Then I rounded another blind turn and found a passing driver in my lane with the other lane full of cyclists.

I didn't have enough room to brake sufficiently, so I moved to the very edge of the pavement, where there was a car-killing drop-off. It looked like a collision was certain, but somehow the other driver managed to miss my car by an inch or so. I slowed down even more, and managed to complete the nerve-wracking descent without a collision.

I was incensed at the people who organized this event for effectively commandeering the road for what amounted to a parade up the mountain. I contacted them, and they rejected any blame, saying that they observed all traffic laws. If so, this is another case where the law is the refuge of scoundrels.

The law needs to be updated to reflect the reality that large numbers of cyclists do not mix with cars on two-lane roads. Cars will crash into each other and cyclists will be injured or killed. Unlike this case, these will be pure accidents, but entirely foreseeable.

As I told the event organizers, get a parade permit and close the road. If you can't get a permit for that road, get a permit for some other road.

And to legislators: change the law so that cyclists need to make room for cars to pass within 60 seconds or less, even if that means pulling off the road. If that had happened, I wouldn't have been nearly forced off the road by a driver who would not have attempted that unsafe pass.

Cyclists' rights should not stretch to the point of virtually closing a road to vehicles. You might disagree, but you'd be wrong.

If the road is considered unsafe by local law enforcement, then it is their duty to restrict the traffic behaviours which are causing the danger. A posted lower speed limit, restriction on vehicle size, up to and including banning pedestrians and cyclists. Not that I am proposing that, but they the authority to do this. However, until this is established, the roads are open for all vehicles which by law includes bicycles.