Local station WISH initially reported that the driver, a Westfield, Indiana, woman named Laura Euser, told reporters that as she approached a roundabout at 161st Street and Carey Road, "...she noticed someone riding a bike in the roadway. She says this person on a bike was irritated by her driving." The cyclist, identified ten days later by WTHR-TV as Stephen Boller, says that "As I entered the roundabout, a vehicle startled me by aggressively laying on their horn. I quickly turned to look and I saw a red SUV glued to my rear wheel - ten feet or less. I continued forward into the roundabout, still carrying a fair amount of speed, maybe 20 mph when the driver began to speed past me on the outside of the roundabout and on my right side."
Sorry, Laura, tie goes to Steve: if you were just minding your own business, why would anyone be "irritated" by your driving? And blowing your horn at a bicycle? No one's done that in thirty years!
| Euser, proclaiming innocence, told police that, "He... swerved in front of her and eventually knocked her driver’s side mirror off her car." Boller, on the other hand, claimed in a written statement that "While the SUV was passing me, it was close enough that it was nearly brushing my right leg, I put my right hand onto the drivers mirror to alert the driver of the near contact and to push me away from the vehicle." As someone who's been flattened by a right hook, I can attest that the first thing that happens when a vehicle almost sideswipes you is to stick out your hand to try to deflect them. I'm with Boller on this again. In another interview, Euser claimed that he "punched my rear view mirror and broke it and it was dangling," which suggests to me the police probably found him at a hospital being treated for a broken hand! Boller, by the way, says, "She began screaming at me that I broke her mirror - which was not broken, merely pushed inward to a closed position." Well, that's easy enough to settle: does Euser have an insurance claim for a broken sideview mirror? FWIW, the video on WISH shows an intact mirror on the driver's side. Now, we come to the physical confrontation. Says Euser, "I shouldn't have exited my car, but I thought he was gone, and he came back for seconds. He was right there in my face, throwing his bike down and was so close to me in my face, swearing at me, shook his fist at me. He grabbed me by both shoulders, kind of pulled me forward and threw me back against my car and my head hit the frame and I didn't lose consciousness, but I just couldn't really function." Well, I don't know about others, but anyone I know wouldn't be "throwing" a bike anywhere -- especially a rider capable of a sustained 30 MPH. Still, most people who've almost been killed get kind of... perturbed. |
Boller, on the other hand, had a different take: "I told her that she had laid on her horn intentionally to startle me and nearly caused me to crash by [sic] bicycle and that she had nearly struck me with her vehicle in the roundabout while passing me illegally, I continued to tell her that her actions were reckless, intentional and illegal. The woman then physically assaulted me without provocation by intentionally spitting into my face, of which her saliva landed directly in my mouth and covered my glasses. I instinctively put my right hand on her face to stop her saliva from hitting me again and when I did, she stepped backwards and fell into her car but quickly snapped up and came at me in an aggressive posture. I raised my right hand into a defensive position to stop her from spitting or attacking again. The woman began screaming, 'You broke my glasses!', [sic] and I replied, 'You spit on me!'. [sic]"
|
Tough call, You can be pretty certain neither one's telling the whole truth. I suspect that both were confrontational and that, in order to keep the "heavy set female approximately 5’7”-5’9”" from physically assaulting him; the slender, 5'-8" Boller quite likely did more than simply "put [his] right hand on her face." |
Unfortunately, there are no witnesses to the initial traffic incident, only to the confrontation. Let's apply Occam's Razor to the story, however...
- Either a cyclist deliberately places himself in grave danger because he was "irritated" by someone's driving, or a driver was a) inattentive or b) pissed off because a bicycle was on "her road" and in her way. Occam says, "Inattentive and/or pissed-off driver."
- Either a cyclist "punched" a sideview mirror so hard it was "dangling," or he pushed at it and it folded in -- just like it's supposed to. Occam says, "He pushed it -- if it's broken, let's see the repair invoice."
- Either a woman came unglued and got confrontational with the cyclist, or the cyclist came unglued and went after her like a WWE wrestler. Occam says, "Neither, but it's conceivable that the driver came rocketing out of her car and the cyclist pushed her back into it." According to one account, "doctors diagnosed her with a concussion and a sprained knee." That ought to be easy enough to prove...
But, then, it should never have started in the first place...
Notes: 1) Indiana, like most states, grants bicycles both the rights and responsibilities of a motorized vehicle. 2) Indiana has no safe-passage law, although some cities have adopted one.
copyright © 2017 scmrak
No comments:
Post a Comment