What Was This Driver Doing On The Road?

 Someone drives illegally. They* strike and kill a cyclist.

That driver has been sentenced to…

**

…five months in jail. Oh, and the badass judge tacked 40 hours of “community service” and “no more than five years” of probation.

Call me cynical, but I think the judge handed a sentence, light as it is yet still harsher than most for similar infractions because:

• the cyclist was a priest and
• as Paul Walsh, a reporter for the Minneapolis  Star-Tribune noted, Trejean D. Curry had “a penchant for driving without a license.”

A “penchant for driving without a license.” According to a court filing, Curry has never had a driver’s license in his home state of Minnesota. Yet, by the afternoon of 25 October 2021, when he plowed into Rev. Dennis Dempsey from behind, Curry had accumulated “10 convictions for operating a vehicle while his driving privileges were revoked, six for lack of insurance, two for speeding, two for instructional permit violations, one for expired tabs and one for passing another vehicle in a prohibited area.”

Rev. Dennis Dempsey R.I.P.

All of that when he didn’t have a license? To me, the most pertinent question is:  How and why was this guy even on the road on the afternoon of 25 October 2021?

Oh, and he had the gall to claim that Dempsey had swerved in front of him. Skid marks and other evidence pointed to the exact opposite:  Curry swerved, accidentally or not, into Dempsey’s path on the should of the road where the driver and cyclist were traveling in the same direction.

I will end with two more questions: Will the jail sentence, “community service” and probation—even if they are served in full—change Curry’s behavior.  And what sort of sentence will Judge Dannia Edwards mete out the next time she is faced with a scofflaw, or simply careless, driver who kills a cyclist?

*—I have used a gender-neutral pronoun to eliminate, as much as I can, any biases.

**—If you were expecting me to say something like “a $50 fine” or “two points on the driver’s license,” I understand.

Crossing The Line Into A Collision

Once again, Florida leads the nation in bicycle deaths and injuries, overall and per capita.  And it's not even close:  the next-worst state--Louisiana--has about half of Florida's numbers and rates.

Having cycled in the Sunshine State, I could see why there the body count is so high.  Many thoroughfares are "stroads:"  multi-lane streets, avenues or boulevards that cut a straight line from Point A to Point B.  Such an arrangement seems to bring out the inner Dale Earnhardt in drivers. Also, those "stroads" are not only the most direct routes from one place to another:  They're often the only routes.  Worse yet, they often don't have "service" or emergency lanes or even sidewalks, let alone bike lanes.

The arrangements I've described can be especially difficult to acclimate to if you come from a place that isn't as auto- and driver-centric as Florida.   Just as my teachers and professors didn't teach me about female, queer or Black writers because they weren't taught them themselves, I think many drivers have the idea that the road belongs to them and nothing should be in their way because, well, they were inculcated with such a notion at a young age--and it was reinforced by road an highway engineering that prioritized moving motor vehicles as quickly and efficiently as possible from one point to another.

The conditions I've described had at least something to do with one of the more horrific car-bike crashes I've heard  of. Fortunately, it didn't add to Florida's death toll, though at least one of the cyclists involved has "incapacitating" injuries.

Notice that I said "at least."  The driver involved in this confrontation was piloting her Kia SUV south in the southbound lane of North Ocean Boulevard Gulf Stream, a Palm Beach County community.  A group of eight cyclists was riding northbound, in the northbound lane.

For some as-yet-unexplained reason, the 77-year-old driver crossed the center line dividing the two lanes.  The front of her vehicle met--with great force--the front of a 43-year-old cyclist and struck the others who were riding with him.

Perhaps not surprisingly, he's the one with the "incapacitating" injury.  Three other cyclsts had "serious" injuries; they, the others and the driver were brought to the hospital's trauma unit. 

I hope everyone--yes, including the driver--recovers and she explains, or someone figures out, why she veered across that road.  And I hope--though, I realize, this is a very long hope, especially with Ron De Santis in the governor's mansion--that Florida makes itself safer for cyclists, many of whom are tourists or, like me, were visiting family members.

How Many?

 An unfortunate fact of our lives is that we don’t have to wait very long or look very far to hear or read about a cyclist injured or killed by a motorist.

An online article from the Tampa Bay Times, however, grabbed my attention because its headline began with these two words: “Impaired Driver.”  

Brian Thomas was driving a 2017 Mitsubishi Outlander southbound along Seminole Drive.  Around 11:3O pm on Saturday, Nole Karcher was walking his bicycle across the Drive. 

Shortly afterwards, Karcher was declared dead at the scene and Thomas was in custody. 

Though there was no evidence of alcohol, Thomas failed some sobriety exercises and refused to take others, according to the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office.  That led to deputies searching and finding several pills including clonezpam, a tranquilizer used to treat anxiety and seizures.  

Clonezpam is a controlled substance and Thomas did not produce a prescription.  So, in addition to a charge of causing death while driving under the influence, he is facing charges of illegal possession.  Oh, and according to the Sheriff’s Office, speed was also “a factor” in the crash.

While reading the account, I started to wonder:  In how many incidents of motorists running down cyclists is driver impairments the, or a, major factor? I suspect the number, or at least the percentage, is high.