The right-turn-across-the-bike-lane thing just isn’t working.

I’ve sort of been trying to ignore the bad news that already yet another cyclist has died, in the same manner as the last one -- being cut off by a large work truck making a right turn. I was succeeding in not thinking about it for as long as the victim was still anonymous.

Before I knew who he was, in the back of my mind I was vaguely picturing some crazy drunken basket-case type of person riding like a loon, leading a disastrous and tortured life and wreaking pain and havoc all around him, and that this was just one more thing that went wrong and that now the world would be free of a burden and the burden would be free of the world. Not that such a person deserves to be smackered...

But then the identity of the victim came out, and of course he was the nicest imaginable guy, full of life and art and youth and energy, and not only that but a very experienced cyclist. And to make it even closer to home, he was a mechanic at the very shop where I have my bike work done, and I’m sure I’ve seen his bald head among the pool of bike repair workers when I’ve gone there.

I just can’t stand it.