It is disturbingly common.
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i had never heard of it before Bb posted the story about the kid filling the restaurant with smoke for yuks. i’m not a car guy, so most car-related stuff is lost on me to begin with. i agree this is a disturbing trend. the sooner we’re done with fossil fuels, the better.
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“There has been some online and community speculation that the incident was handled in the manner it was because of connections between the motorist and Waller city officials. At this point we can confirm there are some connections…”
Honestly, that’s the only surprising bit - because the cops routinely respond to these kinds of situations in that entirely shitty way even when they don’t have any sort of connection to the driver. Running down bikers or pedestrians? No big deal, generally, as far as cops are concerned, in any part of the country. Plus, being white, conservative and privileged, even without a family connection, would have provided immunity.
I wish it was only Texas.
And maybe cause them to drive themselves off the road.
Unfortunately I’ve been reading about this - specifically truck drivers “rolling coal” and blasting fuel efficient car/bike riders in order to poison them/cause them to have accidents, for many years now. It’s an established part of the right-wing culture war in response to talk about climate change, I’m afraid.
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When trying to assess whether something is strictly true but in normal everyday terms a lie, look for the weasel words - they usually stand out because they don’t need to be there. Here “have yet to see evidence of a city official directing the officer on the scene as to how to handle this particular situation.”
To me, that construction suggests that a truthful statement might have been “Officers at the scene were directed by a senior officer who was not at the scene and who was themselves directed by a city official. We know this but we haven’t, strictly speaking, seen evidence of it, yet.”.
I might be wrong about all that, but I wouldn’t be suspicious if the statement had been straightforward, and weasel word free. Something like: “To the best of our knowledge there is no evidence to suggest the collusion of city officials in influencing the handling of this event.”
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I remember a diesel pickup driving past a large, spread out peloton of cyclists (I was one of them) and repeatedly messing with his throttle so he could ‘roll coal’ at us during the Seattle to Portland group ride in about 2000 or 2001. 5,000 or so cyclists and assholes like this ‘sharing’ the road.
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i was wondering about the progression of the collision… was the smoke so thick he couldn’t see them? or did he lean over to make sure the cyclists were sufficiently gassed and steered the truck into them? or did he let them pass and then barrel into them through the smoke?
at the least, he’s a goddam idiot. and at worst, he is a twisted individual. i know, “why not both”?
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Twisted individual is the best case scenario. At worst he’s an attempted mass murderer.
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In a tragically large part of the US, if a perceived “conservative” commits a crime against a perceived “liberal” especially over an activity like bicycle riding that of course is only done by commie libs, the crime didn’t really happen. You can rest assured that if someone driving a Prius harassed and ran over a batch of Proud Boys carrying Trump flags the arrest would be immediate.
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Rural very much doesn’t mean poor. The median household income for farmers is almost 20,000 more than the median household income for the country as a whole. Add to that the possibility that they were likely able to write off the truck as a “business” expense and it isn’t surprising. USDA ERS - Farming and Farm Income
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This is insane. I’ve seen a friend get jailed overnight for rolling through a stop sign on a quiet road then blowing 0.085 (.005 over the legal limit there) after getting pulled over. That’s less than the margin of error on those machines.
This is even more insane. But not too shocking. Last time I was involved in an accident (Arkansas), I waited around for the cops and medics to attend to me, and everyone just started packing up and driving away. I wasn’t bleeding, but had been knocked around. My friend was bleeding, similarly ignored. Totally fucked up. Luckily I heard the driver who caused the accident lying about which direction she’d been driving and corrected that misinformation before everyone drove away. Shoddy work all around.
This should be completely immaterial, really. Was this investigation handled according to department policy or not? If so, that policy needs to be changed asap. If not, there should be swift and meaningful consequences and protections put in place to avoid it in the future.
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