OPINION - RAGBRAI suit could be end of the ride

Mon September 18 2006
Posted Sep 17, 2006
8,114

OPINION September 17, 2006 Regarding the Aug. 27 article, "Judge Won't Dismiss Suit in Cyclist's Death'': In 2004, Kirk Ullrich died in a bicycle accident on RAGBRAI. Ullrich's widow has filed a lawsuit against the county where the accident happened. When cyclists attends RAGBRAI, they sign a waiver waiving the right to sue municipalities along the route. But the Ullrichs and their attorneys found a loophole in the RAGBRAI waiver: You cannot sue the Register or the communities you ride through, but you can sue the county governments for negligence concerning road design and inferior road surfaces. Was Ullrich a novice cyclist and/or traveling too fast for conditions that day? I rode the same route on RAGBRAI as Ullrich, but I did not encounter any problems with the road surfaces in Crawford County, and I exercised caution in riding down the hill in Crawford County. I believe that if the lawsuit is won by the Ullrich family, a very scary precedent will be set. When the RAGBRAI route is announced in the Register next February, will the various county supervisors along the route decide that they cannot afford to have RAGBRAI in their respective counties? Will insurance companies tell government officials in Iowa that they can not afford to pay another high-cost liability settlement over a bicycle fatality on RAGBRAI? Will RAGBRAI be history because of potential future litigation? - Michael Gerald Bennett, Davenport.