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Jogger Killed in Lake Forest, California
March 03, 2008

A 48-year-old jogger was killed on Sunday when a car struck her as she jogged in the bike lane at Bake Parkway, just off North Pointe Drive in Lake Forest, the Orange County Register reports.

The woman, Marci Soto, was employed at Costco in Irvine where she worked in marketing. Soto reportedly had been an avid running enthusiast and had taken part in marathons before. The Sunday morning jog was a weekly routine for her. The driver of the car, a 44-year-old off duty security guard, Kevin Young, was driving a company owned Toyota Saris. The accident seems to have happened when he swerved into the bike lane for no reason and struck Marci Soto.

The driver apparently told a reporter that he couldn't believe something like this had happened to him. He'd never had a police record before his. That doesn't really mean much - you don't have to have a police record to be distracted and swerve off the road and into the bike lane, which is what seems to have happened in this case.

The feeling seems to be that Marci was somehow in the wrong because she was jogging in the bike lane when there was a sidewalk available for her to use. It's common knowledge that joggers prefer the bike lane to the sidewalks because the bike lane has asphalt, which provides a softer surface to jog on. This is what happened in Marci's case and she, from all accounts was hardly a running novice.

This incident is similar to the case at Dana Point we reported on a few months earlier. Two women were awarded a $49 million settlement by Dana Point, when they were left severely paralyzed after being hit by a drunken driver. The point is not whether Marci was jogging in the bike lane. The point is that even if she had been in the bike lane riding a bicycle, the accident would still have happened with most likely the exact same results. The driver would have swerved his car for no reason and hit Marci. So let's not go pointing fingers at what seems like, a perfectly sensible intelligent woman who was used to jogging. Regardless of where Marci was jogging, she didn't deserve to get hit by a car.

There's always been a pattern of car drivers not taking bike riders or those in bike lanes as seriously as they ought to. Joggers and bikers are in fact the most vulnerable people on the road. If we have to have any semblance of sharing of the road, we need to make sure that intrusions into a bike lane are made severely punishable. When a vehicle hits a biker or a pedestrian, the results are almost always disastrous. We hope that Marci's family decides to pursue the matter further.

If you have been injured in a pedestrian accident, you need the help of an experienced California personal injury attorney. Contact a lawyer at The Reeves Law Group for a free consultation.

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