Hassan Bakr: Judge rules 40 cyclists’ lives worth only $1200
It seems if you want someone dead, or at the very least to just scare the hell out of them, destroy their property and possibly injure them; run them over in a car while they are cycling.
Hassan Bakr (pictured right) decided to be a smartarse back in May 2008 and swerved infront of a group of 60 cyclists and then slammed on his brakes. Collisions ensued and luckily nobody died. Hassan then decided to speed off and was later aprehended by police.
What happened then can only be described as absolute comedy. Well it would be if the end result wasn’t so disheartening.
After speaking with police, and not even twenty four hours passing since the incident occured, Hassan Bakr called in a local radio station and under the name ‘Jason’ proceeds to tell his side of the story.
Apparently his car backfired so he cut off the cyclists and put his hazard lights on. Then after the evil cyclists crashed into him and feeling threatened his car magically came back to life and he sped off, fearing for his own safety.
Instead of reporting the incident to the police, he went straight home and slept all day because he was out partying all night (the incident happened at 6:30am and didn’t wake up till the evening when the police caught up with him at his home.
The hilarity here was after telling listeners all of this, the radio announcer then cut to one of the riders involved, Ben Kersten who claimed everything Hassan had just said was ‘complete and utter bull’ and labelled him a ‘lying dog’.
Nothing much happened after that till the first court date rolled around in June, which Hassan missed because he was allegedly stuck in Albury with a blown head gasket. A new date was set in July, which on the day Hassan sent a note to the court stating neither him or his lawyer would be attending, and that he’d like to enter a plea of not guilty.
That’s how the Australian courts run these days, you just scribble down you’re not going and your plea and Auspost it in, no worries.
After that the case kind of dissapeared into oblivion. From discussing it with others most people thought the case would simply just disappear into legal
oblivion or the charges would be dropped and forgotten.
Then today the case was brought back into the spotlight. A future court date had at somepoint been previously set and Hassan intended to defend himself against the charges and maintained that he was not guilty.
Today was the court case and Hassan continued to show his heightened level of intelligence furthering the case for his innocence;
“Hassan Bakr has told a court the riders were in the wrong for cycling in his lane.
One professional cyclist, Kate Nicholls, told the court that Bakr was about half a metre away from the cyclists when he veered into their lane as he drove by. Bakr suggested to Ms Nicholls that she had incriminated herself by admitting she was riding in the left lane. “By law it’s not your lane, your lane is the emergency lane,” Bakr told Ms Nicholls. Magistrate Chris Clisdell said that cyclists were permitted to drive in traffic lanes.
Another cyclist, Khalid Toefy, told the court he had seen Bakr swerve into his lane before slowing down in front of the group of cyclists, which he believed was intentional. Bakr asked Mr Toefy: “What gives you the right to say it was intentional? Are you a psychiatrist?”"
The hearing continued and after deliberation Hassan was found guilty on all but one account and awared the whopping punishment of $1200. The $45,000 in claims from the cyclists to cover their equipment were denied.
So there you have it, if that’s the penalty for slamming the brakes on infront of 60 people riding expensive bikes… god help the poor lone rider on his average bike against a smartarse who decides to do the ol ‘HAHA I’LL SHOW YOU EAT MY BRAKES!’
I can see it now, some guy in his ute driving along eyeing the cyclist on the side of the road minding his own business, hey what’s the worst that could happen, I get fined for $1200, HAHA LOL TASTE MY BRAKES!!$% Drivers could create a new sport out of it and post videos on youtube, ‘Cyclist Baiting’… the possibilities are endless.
I mean really, $1200 is play money compared to the lives of 60 riders, let alone one.
February 4th, 2010 at
[...] first post on OzSoapbox, ”Hassan Bakr: Judge rules 40 cyclists’ lives worth only $1200” went live on the 28th January, 2009. At that stage OzSoapbox was running on Godaddy’s [...]