Thursday, December 27, 2007

I've never liked Judge Judy, But...

This video was on Bicycling Magazine's website. I then found it on Youtube and posted it here for your enjoyment! I've never been a fan of Judge Judy, or any of these court drama shows as I've always felt they make a mockery of the judicial system. Now that the judicial system makes a mockery of the judicial system they don't seem all that bad. But this video made me like Judge Judy a little more.

What was disturbing about this video was the defendants attitude towards the cyclist, and cycling in general. First, the husband makes the comment "well, he created the situation by riding his bike in the first place". Obviously ridiculous right? But a lot of people have the attitude that cyclists put themselves in harms way knowingly and therefore don't have the same rights as pedestrians or other vehicles. They look at bicycling as a frivolous past time that when practiced excludes the practitioner from their legal rights. What also bugged me was when the female defendant said "here he was riding his bike 40 miles away from his house, going 30-40 miles an hour" like bikes need to be kept in the driveway and should only go up to 10 mph.

Then the defendants tried to cop to only paying 500 for all the medical and damages because the plaintiffs wife has jumped the gun and said over the phone "yea, 500 should cover everything" which is just completely stupid.

Thankfully, Judge Judy saw through the crap and legal bias towards cyclists and awarded the guy $3,000. What is important to take away from this though is the attitudes of the defendants towards the cyclist, and cycling in general. This attitude isn't confined to these two morons, it's shared among millions of morons world wide.

1 comment:

Michael said...

Hmm, that couple has some mental problems. I really liked this post!