I also remember the court case, and the driver offering up an “I didn't see him” excuse and the defence case centring around the fact he wasn't wearing any hi-vis. He was wearing the bright Eurocentric roadie kit that was in vogue at the time, but I guess it wasn't the right shade of yellow or orange because the guy who killed him got a small fine and lost his license for six months.
...and that was it. Done.
Being quite young at the time I remember being a bit pissed at the world after that, was that all that his life was worth? I went to war on people in cars: if you cut across my cycle-lane without indicating I usually kicked the door in, lock-ons were responsible for the local car-painters seeing quite a bit of work.
Yet, every single time someone else got run down, people would harp on
“Well, they wouldn't have gotten run over were they wearing high visibility clothing and lights!”
To which my response has been, and always will be, BULLSHIT.

The illusion of safety...
You can be lit up like the FRICKIN’ PROVERBIAL CHRISTMAS TREE and you’ll still end up dead! Another gent I knew used to come into the shop I worked at to get his bike tweaked and he ran (what I thought at the time) was an absurd number of lights, so I’d spend half my time removing them from the seatpost to put the bike in the stand.
It didn’t help him, some clown in an eighteen-wheeler got him, a “professional driver”, a man who inevitably got a slap on the hand with a wet bus ticket and sent on his way.
The problem with being a cyclist on New Zealand roads is not just crappy road design or poor facilities, it’s the value we place as a society on our most vulnerable road users, pedestrians and cyclists. Deliberately or not, any time something happens in a road corridor the car is automatically seen to be in the right until proven otherwise, usually when the fault is laid squarely at the foot of the motor-vehicle, the person behind the wheel is let off with very little in the way of consequences.
I’m not one for needlessly criminalising the innocent, but what sort of message does it send to the world when you can kill someone and just lose your license for six months? What sort of implied value does that place on the deceased's life?
What would happen in New Zealand if we started dishing out harsher penalties for being useless behind the wheel? Would we see drivers being more cautious? Or would it just up the ante and make people more aggro towards people who ride their bikes on the road? Do we need to be more responsible and get our day-glo on?
What do you think? Your thoughts callers.