Bicycle Austin forum

When will the move happen?  Even if the site isn't brought up again, it should definitely be archived for posterity or for bringing up again later.

Yeah, I'd take the database and any other assets that go along with it, and yes I'd keep emails safe.

I guess this is the flip side of cyclists often thinking that somebody hit them intentionally (as in, on purpose, they *meant* to cause a collision) -- this person thinks that the cyclist hit them or their dog intentionally.

I mean, both things are *possible*, but incredibly unlikely -- a mistake is much more likely.

It's kind of surprising that Nextdoor is actually letting me see things this time, and I see that the commenters are eating it up.

"Show his face. I’m on the trail all the time 🏃🏽♂️ if I see him - I will clothesline him off the bike 🚴"

Lovely.  Now some cyclist is going to get "clotheslined" (intentionally, this time) because they happened to sort of look like somebody else.  Or maybe Alonzo is just another internet tough guy (probably even more likely, but still.)

Well, the "three strikes law" is explicitly meant to put people away for the rest of their lives, with a penalty of 25-99 years in prison.  If very often does result in excessive penalties for crimes that aren't that bad.

Even actual murder -- a first-degree felony -- has a lesser penalty, only 5-99 years in prison.

For intoxication manslaughter, that's a second-degree felony, so the penalty is 2-20 years.

Scott Allan Taylor got the maximum, I guess.  And his case is very much the exception -- it seems like a lot of drunk drivers who kill people don't even get convicted of intoxication manslaughter -- they don't get charged at all, or they plea bargain to some misdemeanor or something.  Or the juries acquit them because reasons.

I think a lot of the inconsistency comes from "there go I but for the grace of God" thinking.

One bad decision?  The jury thinks back to the time where they drove drunk themselves (as you said previously: it's a culture) and realizes that it's just luck that kept them from being before a jury themselves.  So they identify with the accused far more closely than they identify with the victim.

But seven convictions?  Well, they (mostly) haven't even been convicted once (still luck, of course), so they have a much easier time not identifying with this guy.

Also, there's the "three strikes law", and the way that 3rd and subsequent DWI convictions are a felony, so that sounds like the three strikes rule working exactly as intended.

As far as I know, the organizer has been "KStyles" on  the meetup group for at least the last few years.  According to Meetup, he lives in Houston, and I've met him and he seems a nice enough guy, but I don't know anything about him beyond that.

There's also a  Facebook group, but that hadn't been updated since 2019, but now there's a recent comment that says

... so that's promising, but then again, I think we saw something similar in 2021, when the ride finally happened in October.

And for completeness, there's also Instagram and a web page. though I don't know if they're all run by the same person(s).

I'd say do message the organizers in these places and offer your services.  If there's no response after a while you could plan a ride without their involvement, but it would reach a lot of the previous riders if it could at least be advertised in the previous places, and things tend to get ugly if the previous organizers decide they don't want to pass the reins on after all.

The whole CM "faction" thing is definitely not about obeying vs. breaking traffic laws -- both sides are perfectly willing to break them when convenient, as has always been done.  It's about control.

And the 22 page "call to action" story got way more bizarre in the hours after this article was written.  It might be worth your time to read up on that.

And yes, it's a great article -- and I'm not just saying that because I'm in that last picture.

Tom Wald (on your board of directors) is likely to be a pretty good resource, as he's been involved in the social rides in Austin for over a decade.  He's not usually leading or organizing them, but I think I've seen him do that too.

Outside of that, any advice that SCA and RBA give would be pretty generic, stuff you could just find online about how to do a social ride.  That said, what they might have to offer is experienced manpower and advertising -- RBA especially has made a point of running rides like this for community organizations.

Regarding reddit ... not really.  There's some activity on r/bikingatx, but not a lot, and r/Austin gets some as well.

I imagine that people have mostly moved on to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Thanks for getting it back up!

Now, regarding that mailing list stuff from 1993 to 2008, is any of that stuff archived?  Especially the early stuff, that sounds like it would be fascinating ...

They actually did have a party -- but it was advertised on social media, for example facebook and instagram.

Alas, it looks like nobody thought to post about it here.

I can't feel too much sympathy for somebody hits somebody else and leaves them for dead.

I mean, if they'd just stuck around, there'd probably be no criminal charges at all unless they're drunk.  And maybe they could have saved the person's life if they'd only tried to help.

The fact that they fled tells me that they were probably drunk, in which case they'd have lost any "it was just an accident" sympathy I might be able to muster.

So ... not an ideal sentence, but long enough to be a message to would-be hit-and-runners and drunk drivers.