74-year-old bicyclist succumbs to injuries after hitting car on SW 34th Street
Staff report
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – A 74-year-old man has died after hitting a turning car from behind while riding an e-bike on SW 34th Street.
According to a Gainesville Police Department spokesman, at about 9:36 a.m. on November 19, officers responded to the 2000 block of SW 34th Street, where an e-bike had hit a vehicle.
The vehicle had been traveling southbound on SW 34th Street, and the bicyclist was traveling southbound in the bicycle lane. The vehicle slowed to turn right; the bicyclist failed to slow down and hit the rear quarter panel on the passenger side of the turning vehicle.
The bicyclist was not wearing a helmet and suffered a severe head injury. He was trauma-alerted to a local hospital and succumbed to his injuries last night.
I have had many a close encounter with an electric vehicle [e-bike, e-scooter] we need legislation to reclassify these high-speed machines. They shapeshift from bicycle [bike lane] to pedestrian [sidewalks and crosswalks] to motor vehicle [riding in traffic].
Helmets should be mandatory!
I’m honestly shocked that the state hasn’t gotten involved and made mandatory registration simply as a money grab yet. They do seem to be a big problem in the city though and there is basically no legislation for them.
@GetReadyForIt,
So true! To be honest making them register would be a great way to get the serial numbers off of them, so many of these are stolen. I have always felt that bikes should be made to register and pay a fee since we seem to use taxpayer money to make bike lanes that about .05% of the population use.
“bike lanes that about .05% of the population use”
What’s your source for that statistic?
I drive down multiple streets every day and see more people riding their bikes on the sidewalk then in a bike lane … well until it becomes their turn to stop, and then they just go into the bike lane and back onto the sidewalk.
Try common sense, Iggy. Or, if you are unlike 99% of the local leftists, count the number of people cars, etc going by and then count the bikes. .05% is a generous number.
The “shapeshifting” is with respect to applicable laws, not that most riders know or care about law. They should have built-in 20 mph max by state law (still too fast for congested areas), but they are easy to modify to go faster.
Being smaller than motorcycles and gas powered scooters they are hard to see. The lack of motion by the rider makes them harder to notice until they whizz past at 20-30 mph. These things really seem to come out of nowhere. Have you noticed that most of these escooters and bikes are black being ridden by riders dressed in all black?