Roadguy spent this past weekend traveling several hundred miles to see relatives in Wisconsin, and it was such glorious weather that he mostly forgot about the darker side of driving. Today’s Strib, however, jolted him back to reality with a couple of cringe-worthy stories:

• A husband and wife on motorcycles were killed Sunday when a car turned into their path in Cottage Grove; click here for the Strib story, here for a WCCO-TV version.
• A man on a Vespa died in Rosemount when the scooter’s back tire apparently blew out, and his passenger was critically injured; click here for the Strib version and here for the Pioneer Press version (which garnered at least one snarky reader comment). A single-motorcycle crash is also mentioned in the Strib version.

The driver of the car in the first crash had been drinking, meaning that two hot-button Roadguy topics were involved. (An earlier post on motorcycles is here; drunken driving is here.) I don’t like to revisit topics too frequently, but after learning some of the gruesome details of this crash – the noises that the female motorcyclist made as she died in a friend’s arms or the fact that some of her husband’s clothes were peeled off by his impact with the ground — I’m wondering whether there’s any new light to be shed.

A few weeks ago, alert reader Mike (who appears does not appear in this MPR story from last week) sent along this link about how wearing brighter clothes might keep motorcyclists safer, and in last month’s post, Pat over at the Department of Public Safety posted some pointers. And given the ongoing questions about helmet use, I’ll add this link from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety to the mix.

Both motorcycling and drunken driving can be lively and sensitive topics, touching as they do on personal choices and the common good. Given that we’re talking about real lives lost, my vote is that we try to take the road less snarky today, so please add your carefully considered thoughts and links below.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 12th, 2007 at 6:10 am and is filed under Links, Transportation conversations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.