See, your response is what I find puzzling on BARF.
When a rider makes a bad decision that ends up costing him his life, he's branded an idiot by many BARFers as well as non-riders. He's excoriated and abuse is heaped upon him for being selfish in making such a quick and fatal decision for his family.
I don't know if this will make it better or worse, but first distinguish between two groups.
We can pretty well count on non-riders to have the opinion that we're idiots. It's part of their perspective. For the purpose of this discussion, it's mostly irrelevant noise, unless you happen to feel the investigation may have been biased.
Then there are the riders who pile on when someone crashes. It's not insignificant that nobody really did that in this situation. On BARF, that's unusual, but then Craig was an unusual guy. People did seem to realize that he deserves the benefit of the doubt.
Among every group of riders I have known, there is an unspoken ethic that we should take responsibility for everything. It's not true in a legal sense, but the prevailing belief is that nobody is going to watch out for you but you. In large part, that is literally true. It's true for cagers too, but they survive a larger percentage of their crashes.
If you really look at most of the posts where people kick a rider when he's down, there's usually a clearer picture of fault. Many of these are single vehicle accidents, so it's hard to say the matter of fault is ambiguous. The facts that Craig was killed in a collision with a car and we have not heard the account of any objective witnesses make the scenario ambiguous; none of us really know what happened. Craig's experience level is known to many of us, as is the fact that he was a rational guy with good judgment. He gets the benefit of the doubt to the extent that nobody has accused him of being irresponsible.
But some guy driving a cage makes a bad decision or two and kills one of us and he gets sympathy?
If he could take his guilt and use it to make a PSA for motorists to watch out for riders, then I'd give him some due. But so far, he has done nothing to merit any feeling.
I've said this before and it just seems to float away into the ether: When a driver fails to see another vehicle, he may have a collision. If the other vehicle is a car, there may be insurance claims. If the other vehicle is a bike, there may be a funeral. In all likelihood, the driver is not more or less negligent in either case; his error is the same. The consequences of the error are the result of not only the error, but other conditions, including what kind of conveyance the other party chose to use that day.
So, if this was a simple accident, in which the driver wasn't impaired, distracted, being aggressive or otherwise negligent, I cannot see why he has any more obligation to make a PSA or any other restitution than any other motorist in a traffic accident.
It's a lot to ask of anyone to have any measure of compassion for a guy whose actions killed a beloved member of the riding community. Still, it makes me feel better personally to at least "try it on," partly because my impression of Craig was that of a guy who did have the ability to walk in another man's shoes. His words and ideas influenced mine over time and, whether it's what he would have intended, this is where my notion of his example and sensibilities leaves me.
