I travel through that same intersection daily on my bike, exactly where Anita was killed. All laws aside, as a cyclist, I never assume a vehicle is going to yield to me when I’m traveling straight past a right turn they may want to take, and I’d argue that any cyclist who does is living in fantasy world when it comes to how drivers actually behave on the road. I don’t think we can be one bit surprised when those situations turn out poorly.

Before I saw the video, I was wondering if that was the case here. It wasn’t. On multiple levels, the driver has culpability for what happened here. He was clearly speeding in an extremely congested area with heavy bicycle traffic. He overtook Anita and had an opportunity to see that she was there, regardless of whether she may have later been in his blind spot for a second or not. In order to make the turn with what looks like an unusually long trailer, he had to move to the middle lane, which Anita likely interpreted to mean he was actually traveling straight through the intersection.

The fact that this driver was operating a vehicle so long that had to cut to the middle of an intersection to take a right turn is HIS problem. The fact that there was a blind spot on the truck is HIS problem. Neither of these things make him any less culpable.

I really wanted to give the BPD, who I believe to be reasonable and professional in most regards, the benefit of the doubt in this situation. But having seen what happened, I just can’t understand their conclusion.