Mailbag: Motorcyclists are human beings who share the road

As a motorcycle rider I am sad that another life has been lost on PCH (Coroner identifies woman killed in Huntington Beach motorcycle crash, Daily Pilot, Sept. 13), and that the City News Service has depicted the accident in an unfavorable light due to the motorcycle traveling “at a high rate of speed,” while noting that the auto was completing a legal U-turn.

Any auto making an ill-advised U-turn on this section of highway must do so safely. The speed limit of 60 mph alone should tell anyone that pulling into traffic from a dead stop is dangerous, and extreme caution must be exercised no matter the speed of the oncoming traffic.

We are tired of being categorized as unworthy of sharing the road with autos and are routinely pulled out in front of by people rolling through red signals or too busy on their phone to regard a motorcycle as ferrying a human life.

People have got to start paying attention to the way they drive because it seems to be getting worse. Your article could have mentioned these points or simply stated that it was under investigation. Instead we hung high rate of speed on the unfortunate couple.

Mark Mello
Huntington Beach

Would mayor be in pocket of developers?

I might be all in for electing a mayor in Newport Beach, if none of the current City Council members were allowed to run. We definitely don’t need anybody in elected city government to serve more than eight years. Sixteen consecutive years of the same person in office is not a mayor, it’s a king.

If you think that we have a strongly pro-development group now, imagine 11 more years of that, with a mayor who would hold enormous power by primarily setting the agendas for the council. Newport Beach could become just sand and cement.

Lynn Lorenz
Newport Beach

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