So remember that crash back in September where John S. went down hard? And remember when someone posted something about John S. suing the guy that supposedly cut him off or something? Well, turns out it’s all true.
I just got a call from the guy. And he really is being sued by John! Just got the papers a few days ago. Apparently his insurance company says, from what I understood, that unless he can prove that he wasn’t the cause of the accident, that he (or his insurance) will be responsible for paying this lawsuit.
I guess the lawsuit includes a statement from Bruce/Neo (go f’ing figure!!) stating that this guy did indeed cause John to go down. And as I said, unless the guy can provide evidence that he didn’t do anything out of the normal for our type of riding, that he is responsible.
I think it is total bull on the part of John S. We know what we are getting into when we get on our bikes. And even worse, when we try to win a sprint or whatever. But what bothers me more are the implications of this.
This basically means to me that I can be sued at any time for any crash that someone thinks I caused? Do you know how bad that is?! It’s almost bad enough to make me want to never ride with anyone but my closest friends ever again.
Yeah, of course I read it. I agree with the sentiment. I don’t agree with posting the guy’s name, address and phone number and no way is dan going to let that stay there once he sees it. If the OP pulls that and also summarizes what happened then we may have a good thread.
Yeah, of course I read it. I agree with the sentiment. I don’t agree with posting the guy’s name, address and phone number and no way is dan going to let that stay there once he sees it. If the OP pulls that and also summarizes what happened then we may have a good thread.
He pulled it, but he’s obviously on the side of “the guy” and made up his mind. There’s a lot of that going around it seems what with everyone wanting to execute the police officer in Cali…
I am in agreement with the OP on this, I just had issues with the way it was originally posted. I don’t know the players involved, wasn’t there when it happened and have only read the accounts in the thread linked to in the OP but here goes…
Group rides are inherently dangerous. Anyone with half a brain knows this. Even of you ride with the same group all the time stuff can happen. If the composition of the group changes (and most do every time) then the risks are way higher. Anyone riding in a group should know this and is thus accepting it. It’s just ridiculous to sue over a crash unless something particularly egregious happened (and it does not sound like it did in this instance).
Some people shouldn’t ride in groups as they are a menace to everyone around them. This applies to triathletes who want to use their aerobars in the middle of a pack, people who don’t signal to those behind them, people who can’t ride in a straight line, anyone who thinks they’re robbie mcewan and assorted other species who are better off riding alone or on the trainer.
There is no indication that any of the above applies to the rider who is getting sued. It doesn’t sound like he even initiated the crash.
If the guy who’s doing the suing is going to run to a lawyer every time he falls off his bike he should take up some other passtime. Like sewing (boom boom).
We’ve just had a same kind of situation over here in the UK ( ok Scotland ) that a group ride organised by Rider A had a small
group pile up and rider B hit the grass verge and went over the bars and was injured.
Rider B sued Rider A for being the group ride organiser. Fortunatley that he lost the case and common sense won out.
It was suspected that he was not paying enough attention to what was going on around him in the group and that excesive force
was applied to the front brake to catapult him over the bars. Can never be proven.
This made all the way to High Court in Edinburgh. It could have had very serious implications for road racing and organised group rides.
These cases are unfortunately not uncommon. I was involved in the big Philadelphia Tuesday night river drives incident about 12 years ago that made National news too.
I used to be that Tuesday night in Philadelphia roadies would start a ride a little after 6pm in the park where the World Fair once was. It was timed as such that you would hit the river drives just about 6:30pm, after all bikes were prohibited on those roads between 4pm and 6:30pm because of rush hour traffic. On those rides you have pros show up including pro triathletes like Jeff Devlin and Steve Fitch and the group would be usually at least 50 riders if not over 100 riders. The actual ride is 3.5 laps of the 8.5 mile loop that comes from Falls Bridge near Manayunk down Kelly Drive to the art museum and back up West River Drive to Falls Bridge. The ride is done this way that you have only right hand turns and apart from a few parking spots along the rive there won’t be any traffic coming from the right, plus those river drives have 2 lanes each direction most of the way. When you went down Kelly Drive for the last time there was an agreed on finish lane after Boathouse Row and just before the art museum, and there would be wicked sprints a many Tuesday night for the honor of the “race” win. People would also just jump in late in the ride, and lapped riders would often try to rejoin, and that sometimes caused incidents such as crashes or vicious yelling matches. But mostly it was good and the best workout you could do on a Tuesday night, even a bald German mountain biker would be on those rides on his mountain bike but not get dropped
On the Tuesday night in question we were about 70 riders and I was actually on a road bike. Just like every Tuesday night a group in the front would set a wicked pace down Kelly Drive to thin out the field and drop as many as possible. By the time we rounded the art museum we were maybe 25 riders left and we pushed up West River Drive in a double pace line. I was sitting fairly far back in the rotation when we came up on a slower rider and a “rider up” was going through the pace line. All off the sudden though the first guys in the pace line went down and pretty much most of the rest followed like domino stones. I tried to bunny hop over the guy in front of me but got hit by a “flying bike” in the face that broke my nose and knocked me off the bike. Most everyone was bruised and battered but the worst off was the lone female recreational rider who seemingly “caused” the incident, as she had broken a cheek bone and was very scraped up. (Note here: there is a bike path all the way around and typically recreational riders stay on the bike path as they don’t have the safety in numbers as the big groups, and vice versa the big groups can’t ride n that bike path as there are kids on bikes, runners and inline skaters too)
To this day I don’t know exactly what happened, but the word is that when the front guys pulled to the left and said “on your left” the woman got startled and veered to the left into them and took them both out.
As the ambulances had disappeared and the cops were about to take the bike of that female rider, the owner of a local bike shop who is also a good rider offered to take the bike to his shop so it would not end up in some police shed. A very kind thought indeed, but something that would eventually backfire. Another guy on the group went to the hospital to visit the woman and bring her flowers and that would have implications too. I basically never saw the woman at all because I was maybe 10th or so in the rotation, but I was even a bit mad that no one came to visit me and bring me flowers, and fix my messed up bike.
What happened though is the woman sued the bike shop owner and his brother who were there, the flower delivery guy and 75 John Does for vicious riding and a “wolf pack style attack on an innocent park visitor”. The 3 named defendants were then forced to name a few more names and eventually I was one of around 15 named defendants. Initially I completely laughed about this, as I foolishly thought that I had never done anything to that woman, that I never saw her, never touched her, never even came close to her, and she should be so lucky that I am not pressing charges against her for causing me to crash. But I was told that as crazy as it sounds I better take a lawyer and get it handled. My homeowners insurance eventually settled with the woman and that issue actually ended up showing up in my credit report.
Maybe we should print him up a jersey*…“Ultimate Tool”*
**
I cant say that I often hope for an un-insured car to turn right in front of another cyclist…
