I don’t like to judge legal cases out of court.  That’s what the courts are for.  But sometimes I feel it’s necessary to make a statement.

Last March Sutchi Hui, a 71-year-old pedestrian, was run over and killed by Chris Bucchere, a bicyclist, at the intersection of Castro and Market streets here in San Francisco.  After months, it now looks like Mr. Bucchere is going on trial for manslaughter.  It’s a shame that a man with an otherwise clean record is going through this, but it’s far more tragic that he was riding so recklessly that another man had to pay with his life.  

I’m always torn when it comes to bicyclists because I believe the majority of them are responsible and law-abiding and that they are often the victims of drivers who either pay no attention to them or feel they are expendable.  At the same time I know – I know – there are a significant number of hot-rodders who don’t feel bound by any laws of the street or the sidewalk, who bounce between the two, so confident in their own superhuman abilities that they’re happy to go anywhere at any time and at any speed.

“Arrested development” is the term that comes to mind.

Several years ago when I was living in Seattle, “ghost bikes” popped up all over town – junk bikes painted white and placed where bicyclists had been killed or severely injured.  While I was moved by the thought of so many people being harmed in collisions, I also wanted to know what the cyclists were doing at the time.  I felt bad that that thought came to me so quickly, but I’ve seen too much crazy behavior to assume all of the victims were blameless.  Right or wrong, I have a lot more sympathy for the cyclist who is run down by a self-absorbed jerk in a Lexus than I am for the one who gets taken down while riding the wrong way down a one-way street or after he barrels down the sidewalk, pops off into the street without warning and tries to cut across four lanes of traffic or when he rides too fast to maintain control when he is surprised.

Mr. Bucchere was just going too damned fast – or in his words:  “too committed to stop.”  Nice spin.  Maybe it’s even what he believes, but it doesn’t hold up.  Market Street is a wide, wide road and Castro Street is an arterial, not a freeway.  No one in or on any kind of vehicle should be going so fast on Castro that he can’t stop in the width of Market.  Both sides of the issue are focusing on whether Mr. Bucchere entered the intersection before or after the traffic signal turned red.  What about the yellow?  A responsible rider – one who didn’t think he was beyond the rules – would have slowed on that yellow.  All reports are that Mr. Bucchere crouched and maintained speed.

I want to give Mr. Bucchere the benefit of the doubt.  Reports are that he’s generally a good guy.  But there is too much wrong with this situation – including the video of him roaring through stop lights further up Castro and his own blog post in which he concluded that the most important lesson from this was “always wear a helmet.”  I don’t think Mr. Hui’s family would agree.