Month: November 2013

3rd pedestrian killed in two weeks, Bee jumps to blame victim

In all of 2009, four pedestrians were killed in Fresno.

Over the past 3 weeks, three were killed by motorists, and one by a train. This is actually the second time this very year in which three pedestrians were killed in such a short span of time. I don’t know the total, but I would wager it’s trending higher than the 14 last year.

The latest incident happened at an intersection adjacent to Fresno State. The person killed was a high-school special ed teacher, who apparently was also studying at Fresno State. It happened on Shaw, between the college campus and the student neighborhood, filled with apartments, frats, and some restaurants. You know, the kind of place one finds heavy pedestrian traffic. Click to read more!

Meta: Comment spam-filter issues

Hey folks,

Just wanted to apologize at the delays in your comments being posted. For whatever reason, almost every single comment is now being sent into the “possibly spam”  folder, rather than automatically be published. I haven’t changed any settings, so I don’t know if something is going on at Google’s end.

It’s especially strange because that includes those of you signed into an account with a history of commenting. You’d think that after the 20th time hitting “not spam” the filter would have figured it out… Anyway, it may take a day or two for me to be able to manually approve them, so sorry about that. Click to read more!

Add “short driver” to the list of excusable reasons when a pedestrian is killed

Once upon a time, “I didn’t see him” was not an excuse. The rule was, if you hit something or someone, you were “driving too fast for the conditions,” or “not exercising due caution.” Most cops, it seems, have forgotten the rule, and take “I didn’t see him!” as a perfectly valid excuse. Fresno PD seems to have recently expanded that leniency in the death of a pedestrian this week in Fresno:

Officers also determined it would have been impossible for the driver
to see the pedestrian because of the driver’s short stature and seating
position. The driver faces no charges.
Fresno Bee
Click to read more!