Within 24 hours of a driving rampage that killed a Las Vegas cyclist and injured his 8-year-old son, my phone was ringing.
In Winnemucca.
Whenever a bicyclist is killed in Clark County, I get a telephone call from local news media seeking comment on the safety of the valley's roads for cyclists. It has nothing to do with my day job. It comes with the territory for the president of the area's largest bicycle club.
But I wasn't in Las Vegas April 15 when police say 40-year-old Michael Krivak plowed into Chris Holt and his son, Chance, as they pedaled down a bike lane on Torrey Pines Drive.
I started that morning in Lovelock with seven other bicycle safety instructors. We spent last week pedaling across Nevada with the state Office of Traffic Safety, giving bike safety assemblies in elementary schools along the way.
We gave a presentation in Lovelock early Tuesday and were arriving -- wet and cold -- in Winnemucca about the time Holt was struck by a motorist police say was drunk.
It is a grand thing to teach children the importance of riding legally, safely and for life. I cannot fathom a better way to use my vacation time. So it was with great sadness I greeted the news from home that evening that one of our local riders had been killed and his son injured.
"They were wearing helmets and in the bike lane. They were doing everything right," the KVBC Channel 3 news producer told me when she caught up with us by telephone in Battle Mountain Wednesday evening.
Tragically, drunk drivers do everything wrong.
Riding a bicycle in the Las Vegas Valley is safe when you wear the proper equipment, follow the traffic laws and ride in the road, rather than on the sidewalk where bicycle riding is prohibited in most areas of Clark County.
Holt did not die of a bicycle crash. He was killed by a drunk driver, police say.
State Office of Traffic Safety records show drunk drivers have killed 34 people in Nevada this year -- 29 of them in Clark County. Last year 134 people died on Nevada's roads as a result of alcohol-related wrecks.
We lost fewer Americans in the war with Iraq.
As one who spends most of her free waking hours riding a bicycle, promoting it through a local club and teaching people how to do it safely, it is annoying that the phone calls come only after someone is dead.
Where is the concern that too few roads have properly designed bicycle lanes, such as Torrey Pines Drive?
Where is the outrage that State Road 159 -- a popular bike route to Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area -- was not given the minimum 4-foot shoulder required by the Nevada Department of Transportation's paving project last summer?
Why is bicycle travel a priority only when one of us dies?
The valley's traffic woes will not cease until the entire community -- its state and local agencies, its elected officials, its news media and its residents -- demand a transportation environment that is consistently safe and enjoyable for all modes of travel.
That has nothing to do with what killed Chris Holt.
Police say a drunk driver killed him.
And drunk drivers are not safe for anyone.
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