Crash involving Milligan Cycling team
Not many details so far but certainly tragic.
Edit to add:
NYT has added an article on this. It says there were 9 riders, 2 killed, 5 taken to the hospital and that the driver of a vehicle was also hospitalized.
Between this and Fin Tarling’s death at Volta a Portugal it’s been a sad week for the cycling community
Story was updated, the names of the deceased were released, 4 riders still in ICU, 2 stable and one rider released. What a difficult time for all of them, their families and that university.
Vehicular homicide and assault charges have been filed against the driver.
I met a kid on the team at a local gravel race in PA. I imagine many of us are a handful of degrees of separation from a kid on the ride. Sad and scary, especially now that there are homicide charges. Doesn’t sound like an accident.
Absolutely devastating, shocking, infuriating, horrific news. My thoughts are with the riders, their families, and friends.
Incredibly tragic. This article has a little more info about what happened and the allegations against the driver. So sad.
Haylan was part of the MTB team that I help coaching before he moved to College. This one hits close to home. Prayers to all involved.
I live very close to this area and ride the route they were on a lot. It’s a great training route because it has a large shoulder for a large portion of it, curves that are not too bad (so cars should 100% be able to see you if they are not speeding or distracted), and it leads over to many great climbs, including a great 7 mile climb called Roan Mountain. Just the night before, one of the local bike shops had organized a ride where a lot of the Milligan cyclists joined in. There was a very large turn out (for our area). They were all very good cyclists/racers.
According to law enforcement, the guy made zero effort to swerve to avoid the cyclists, and did NOT use his brakes either. He plowed directly into them at full speed, and murdered two of them. Four remain in critical condition. And considering he was passing the car behind the cyclists (which happened to be a Milligan follow car), he had likely accelerated a good bit so he could make the pass. He has a history of impaired driving and there are (not yet reported) allegations he was under the influence at the time of the crash. No matter what the guy tries to explain, there is ZERO reason to justify why he was passing in that area, and ZERO reason to explain how he could run over that many cyclists. I’ve both ridden and driven that area so many times, and you’d either have to be impaired or intentional with your actions to do what he did. Fortunately, this trauma is reaching a very wide audience, including online posts by some of our state government officials. Also, the judge double the guy’s bond to $300k. Maybe something good can come out of this to help the public become more understanding and this guy be put away for life for his actions.
I’m beyond mad, and also terribly sad, at the same time.
Honestly, the driver needs to be treated like he used a gun to kill 2 people and injure 9. And try him with the death penalty on the table. Doing this is the only way that car drivers will take take responsibility for the fact that everytime they are in their cars, they are piloting a lethal weapon.
Yes, I drive a car
I’m generally not a proponent of the death penalty, but in this case I am. The blatant disregard for the basic traits that make us human means we don’t need that driver amongst us.
The one account I thought said the bikes were in the left of a two lane road. Were they turning?
Would you be for death penalty if it was car on car? Death penalty for any DUI? This doesn’t feel like a death penalty case, as awful as it was it was an accident. He didn’t intentionally hit them. He was negligent and the homicide charges feel appropriate especially if he was impaired.
But at least the preliminary evidence that has come out says he didn’t even try and brake. To me, this shows intent. Plus the impaired to me is an aggravating piece that should increase the penalty for his action, not decrease.
I’m going to take the extreme position: hitting someone with a car (or motorcycle, or way over powered "ebike’ [essentially an e-moped]) should be equivalent to shooting someone with a gun / hitting them with a sledgehammer. A car is lethal weapon, and we need to start treating it as such.
They are treating it as such. He is being charged with Homicide. I don’t think the accident though is something that should lead to the death penalty unless as a society we are putting to death everyone driving under the influence.
thats an interesting question, and I genuinely appreciate the additional perspective. for car vs car its obviously very circumstantially dependent (as it would be in car vs pedestrian, cyclist etc) but in some cases my answer would be yes. I must admit though that my views are definitely skewed by my professional background, and very emotionally driven. I will add that I can see no way to practically and fairly implement my views in the justice system. they’re just my very biased, jaded views.