{"id":1669,"date":"2005-06-04T00:19:15","date_gmt":"2005-06-04T04:19:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2005\/06\/cyclist_killed\/"},"modified":"2005-06-04T00:19:15","modified_gmt":"2005-06-04T04:19:15","slug":"cyclist_killed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2005\/06\/cyclist_killed\/","title":{"rendered":"Cyclist Killed in Oak Ridge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Horrible<\/a>:<\/p>\n

A 47-year-old Oak Ridge man was killed Thursday evening in an accident on Illinois Avenue near Boeing Road.
\nMark Randall Martin, 109 Mockingbird Lane, was riding his bicycle at 6:40 p.m. Thursday on South Illinois Avenue near Boeing Road, when he was struck by a vehicle, according to his father, Bill Martin.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As if that isn’t tragic enough, consider the cause:<\/p>\n

According to Lt. Alan Massengill of the Oak Ridge Police Department, the vehicle was driven by Wanda Thornton, 39, 1113 Rockley Road, Knoxville. He said Thornton indicated to officers that she leaned over to adjust her radio and her vehicle left the road, striking Martin.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A female driver adjusting the radio as she approaches someone riding on the shoulder. Lovely. I can just imagine the thought process.
\nDriver: Man, I hate this song; they played it when I was listening this morning. I need to change the station.
\nLet’s see–is there anyone on the road ahead?
\nNo . . . except for that guy riding a bike. But he’s a good two or three feet outside the lane. I’m good at driving without looking at the road, so no problem there.
\nMan, how do you change the station? You’d think in this expensive SUV they’d have a simpler radio to operate. I know there are station presets, but the owner’s manual was too complicated to try to read, so I’ll just hit this knob until I find another station.<\/i>
\n[Crunch].
\nHmmm. What was that?<\/i>
\nAnd sadly, in our just world, she probably won’t receive any meaningful punishment for killing a father of two.
\nIf I sound irked, it’s because I am. It could just as easily been me getting squashed by some inattentive tank driver. There are too many dangerous drivers out there. Most of the time, I try not to think about it–otherwise I wouldn’t ride. But they’re out there, armed with radios, and cell phones, and make up, and kids.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Horrible: A 47-year-old Oak Ridge man was killed Thursday evening in an accident on Illinois Avenue near Boeing Road. Mark Randall Martin, 109 Mockingbird Lane, was riding his bicycle at 6:40 p.m. Thursday on South Illinois Avenue near Boeing Road, when he was struck by a vehicle, according to his father, Bill Martin. As if […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1669","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1669\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}