Tour de France: Police search for missing fan who caused crash with sign | Hacker News Reader

Tour de France: Police search for missing fan who caused crash with sign

independent.co.uk

16 pointsbelltaco18 comments

I wonder what they'd charge them with? Stupidity? From the video, it didn't seem intentional. It just seemed like a dumb person doing dumb stuff...

From TFA:

The police said they intend to charge the unnamed spectator with “unintentional short-term injury through a manifestly deliberate breach of a duty of safety or care”.

And I agree- it's silly to go after the stupid person here, people behave carelessly in similar ways almost anywhere you go.

It's actually the fault of the event organizers for not accounting for the 'people' factor.

The person is leaning way out into the street: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi7rJfSrW58&t=52s

This is clearly their fault.

This has been more or less normalised in the Tour though. There are hundreds of similar episodes every year, which are just close calls. It's less common early in a stage when the peloton is so large, but hardly a rarity.

Close proximity to "spirited" fans is a part of the culture of the race (and other European races). And it isn't really practical to turn 2000+ miles of public roads into a sports venue with barriers, security, etc on a rolling basis for a couple of days.

While this person is to blame, it's a case of when, not if, future incidents occur with the current situation. For me some responsibility lies with the organisers.

You say "it isn't really practical to turn 2000+ miles of public roads into a sports venue with barriers, security, etc on a rolling basis for a couple of days." and "some responsibility lies with the organisers." which seems contradictory to me. What more should the organizers do?

That's my point - they're choosing to put on an even which can't really be run safely. So they should shoulder some of the responsibility.

> they should shoulder some of the responsibility.

How? What does that mean? The riders sue the organizers?

> This has been more or less normalised in the Tour though.

So? Is that a good thing?

Any attempt to un-normalise it is to be praised, not pooh-poohed.

Finding a single scapegoat for a single incident when estimated spectators numbers are 12-15 million per year and poor behaviour driven by television broadcasting has been going on for decades is just a distraction from the elephant in the room. The huge money making event cannot really be run safely.

It's a start. Far from your "scapegoat", this nincompoop with her sign was obviously culpable. Start punishing more idiots who do shit like that, and after a whle you'll have fewer idiots who do shit like that.

These fan-caused disasters seem to happen at every single bike race.

Do they?

If they don't happen, it seems like a miracle of happenstance -- fans swaying or bikers leaning by a cm or two.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_World_Rally_Cham...

shit does indeed happen in multiple sports. Anecdotally in currently running Safari Rally, once again under WRC since 2002, military is providing support in form of soldiers with ARs and 1 meter long wooden batons they will use to beat you senseless for refusing to obey commands. Seems to be working.

Charge the organizer for negligence.

If we were to dig through all emails of the organizer, I'd bet at least one employee said "hey, crowd that close looks unsafe"... Then someone else higher up made a decision to ignore it.

That kind of race always look unsafe. One rider slip? The whole thing would go down.

I see the Indy (should I deign to still call it that after its purchase by a Russian oligarch several years ago) has started putting all their article images through a tracking system, so my Blockada app (local vpn for antispam) now stops every image on that article being loaded.

I was wondering why there was a black United States flag in the background in the Tour de France. But, it is actually the flag of Brittany from a region in France. What looks like starts are actually representations of ermines, and there are only 11 of them.

Hi from Brittany !

Our flag was inspired by the US star spangled banner around 100 years ago. There's a running joke that wherever there's a demonstration you'll be able to see someone fly the Gwenn-ha-du.

Check the wikipedia page [0], it's quite interesting.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Brittany

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandera_de_Breta%C3%B1a

Is this really a good fit for this site?

What does TDF have to do with technology, or this article? There is nothing here that has anything to do with anything that hacker news is about.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com