Dr. Christopher Thompson, a Los Angeles doctor, was found guilty of six felonies and one misdemeanor on Monday, November 2. The convictions concerned an incident of motorist-on-cyclist road rage last summer that left two cyclists badly injured.
From the Los Angeles Times:
- "Thompson, a former emergency room physician who lives along the winding five-mile road, claimed that he was merely trying to take a photograph of Stoehr and Peterson, evidence of the way cyclists flout the law in the canyon and flip off the residents. An LAPD traffic investigator who arrived on the scene shortly after the incident testified that Thompson told him he "stopped in front to teach them a lesson."
The only lesson learned here is that no amount of annoyance is worth threatening the lives of fellow road users. At SVBC we are trying to prevent this very type of incident with our Share the Road program. As the LA Times piece notes, most motorists (and cyclists, too) are totally unaware of the fact that cyclists are treated the same as cars under the California Vehicle Code.
SVBC thinks that, by sharing the proper information and opening a dialogue, we can make the roads safer for all to use. Let's hope we see fewer, or none, of these "accidents" in the future.
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