My GUESS, is that he was attempting to ‘coal roll’ the second group. To do this requires a hard acceleration. This also causes something called ‘torque steer’, where the hard acceleration causes the vehicle to pull to the left or right. Which put him on the path to running over the 6 cyclists.
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In my area of rural mid Michigan, the trucks move over into the on coming lane to pass me, cars give me less room. On gravel roads most everyone waves at me, trucks usually slow down as not to “dust” me, cars rarely do. Trucks are not a problem in my area, but it only takes one bad driver in whatever vehicle.
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Nah. He was driving a f250… That’s a rwd truck
Torque steer happens on fwd vehicle.
My guess is that they were laughing and looking on his rearview mirror after the roll of the back group and didn’t noticed the second group in front of the truck until he hit it . Maybe he was recording the reactions and failed to notice more cyclist in front of him…
Whatever it was… It was negligence
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I think this is what happened. Given the report that the cyclist in the rear group was trying to catch up to him makes me think the two packs of cyclists were not that far apart.
One ironically annoying tangent to this story is as I was riding to a local mountain bike trail yesterday I am on a small country road. I came around a bend to a large dualy pick up truck coming straight at me in my lane, crossing a double yellow in a curve, speeding up, and rolling coal on two cyclists he was passing. I had to slam on brakes and almost completely stop or we would have been in a head on collision. He made no attempts to slow down and thankfully didn’t swerve into the cyclists, but scared the crap out of me and I’m sure those cyclists.
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RWD vehicles definitely experience torque steer, I spent many years racing rwd vehicles. I’ve seen many cars almost hit the guard rails in the first 60 ft at the drag strip.
I agree it is 100% negligence. I also believe it’s criminal assault. His intent might not have been to make physical contact but he was 100% assaulting them by rolling coal and anything that happens in that act imo is linked back to the original intent.
As a brit all this rolling coal stuff is completely bizarre. As bad as the roads are over here any driver spotted doing anything like this would probably be reprimanded for dangerous driving - it seems pretty accepted over there?
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No, not accepted, but we have so much land area over here that once you get out of the city you are on some pretty rural roads and there just isn’t enough law enforcement to patrol all of this space so people can get away with doing crazy things like this.
OT a bit… Torque steer is mostly a FWD problem. On RWD is a different problem. The power causes the driver lose control. It looks like torque steer, but is not the same, at least on the pure definition of the word…
At the end, it doesnt matter… this was not that problem… it was stupidity of a teen.
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OR,
LE dont care enough and chose not to enforce the law.
In Florida its illegal to have a truck lifted more than certain amount (and lowered too), plus is illegal to modify a diesel car to do roll coal.
Yet, it ridiculous the amount of trucks with lift that you almost need a ladder to climb, plus the diesle pickups modified to do roll coal…
and they drive by police every day, and yet LE chose not to ticket them… 
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Just a slight derailing of the thread and not relevant to the accident, but I’ve noticed a lot of TT bars on the wrecked bikes in the pictures - is it normal practice for people to ride in groups with TT/Tri bars in the States?
Over here in the UK that’s pretty much a hanging offence in any club I’ve ever had any interactions with (Cycling and Tri).
It was a group training for Ironman Texas, so yes it is not uncommon for there to be so many tri bikes on such group rides.
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I see many tri people in my area riding their tri bikes in smaller groups…
Its not a pack like ride tho, like the one you would see on road bikes. They are usually not drafting and keeping safe distances between them…
At least that what I have seen (and done) when doing a group ride using my tri bike…
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Thanks for sharing that. I learned something as a cyclist in North Carolina too, wow. Bike Law does impressive work.
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Thats a good source for information.
I remember hearing about them over when I was living in Virginia.
Sadly, they do not have a partner in FL.
I have found that that the advantage is in knowing how many vehicles are coming.
I get to be able to call ’ 3 cars’ and then watch 3 cars come past. Then take a safety look.
If I had looked over my shoulder after the first car I might have wobbled…
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That’s a good point. I’m mainly riding in rural areas so it’s usually just one at a time.
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maybe justice?
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Good news…but it will only be justice if he is convicted.
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Expat Texan here. Completely shocked that this resulted in charges. Never thought I’d see the day.
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