Photos: Scene of deadly crash

@PsiSquared:disqus  " failure of the legal system to appropriately punish DUI offenders."The penalties for simple DUI (i.e. "just" dui, not involving any collision) have been recently watered-down. It seems to me this is a rather dramatic turn-about, and i haven't heard much about it: http://azbikelaw.org/blog/az-legislature-tweaks-dui-laws/ On the other hand, dui involving a death are routinely charged and convicted of manslaughter and draws a sentence of 10 years in prison... IMO, no slap on the wrist. I wonder what would help??? This is such a loss all the way around.

@PsiSquared:disqus : Absolutely agree that in this instance it makes no difference if this is a designated bike lane or not; the cyclist chose to use the shoulder and that was a perfectly valid and legal  choice.However. I disagree generally with the second part of your comment. It seems to me that the widespread belief that there are bike lanes everywhere (which is both wrong and seems to be the case) is absolutely catastrophic in terms of cyclists' right to use the road. The stripe is variously called a shoulder stripe, fog line. The MUTCD calls it an "edge line" which is probably the most correct term, I am not a big fan of edge lines in urban (i.e. not rural) settings. Here is a reference to the section of MUTCD: http://azbikelaw.org/blog/is-this-a-bike-lane/

The TDOT map of Escalante shows the section at Calexico as a bike route and the speed limit as 40 mph.  If you overlay the street signs it would appear that the signs on either end of this section are 40 mph.   I'm not sure that anyone has actually worried about whether or not  this road has a bike lane.  It clearly doesn't matter.  This section of road would absent an impaired driver be an extremely safe place to ride on a Sunday during daylight hours.   Reading some of the stories in the links section of the past several days I ran across a story that talked about automobile speeds in relationship to bicyclist deaths.  In northern European city cores with mixed bicycle automobile traffic the average speeds of cars are about 20 mph.  At 20 mph automobile bicycle collisions are not usually fatal in fact they are usually minor.  Move the speed up to 30mph and injuries increase for the bicyclist but they usually survive at 40 mph however the odds are that the cyclist is more likely to die than survive.

You're doing a great job at micro journalism...it's really interesting to watch all this.

Although I don't have the facts of the case, I'd be willing to venture that the driver was under the influence of something. Reason: This is a clear, unobstructed stretch of road. And the incident happened at a time when vehicular traffic was light.

I recall news media reporting that he was in a "bike lane."  The photo looks more like a stripe and a shoulder.  It's not a bike lane.