Bizarre Dragging Death in Toronto

Originally posted by ipsedixit
A number of factors were at play in the bizarre series of actions taken by Mr. Bryant, not the least of which was the personal situation of the Bryant marriage, Mr. Bryant's alcoholism, Mr. Bryant's high intelligence and possibly that he was under the influence of some drug or alcohol.

To remove ambiguity in the above paragraph the word possibly should be read as possibility.

No one knows if alcohol was a factor in Mr. Bryant's actions because the police did not give him a breathalyzer test after what is without question the most famous case of erratic driving in the city's history.

What medications he may have been on and his drug use, if any, is also unknown, at least to me.

Also, I am told by someone who knows something about Buddhism that there were 16 Arhats, not 18.

Here is a question for Mr. Peck.

If the events of August 31, 2009 happened as Michael Bryant says they did, if he was not able to control the car as it drove down Bloor St. at the edge of the sidewalk, headed for the obstacles that would eventually kill Darcy Sheppard, because Darcy Sheppard was holding onto the steering wheel with one hand and the top of the driver's side door with the other, hanging low off the side of the car, if that was the case, why didn't Sheppard use his attested strength, arms and legs, to pull and push himself into the car and wrench the steering wheel to the right, away from oncoming obstacles?

Maybe that is what he was trying to do. It would require the strength necessary for one "chin up".

Mr. Sheppard could only be saved from serious injury by pulling himself into the car or if Mr. Bryant were to stop the car. Mr. Sheppard's foot was not on the accelerator.

Was Susan Abramovitch yelling "Stop!" at Mr. Bryant as he drove into his twilight zone tunnel?

The recent incident of the killing of a skateboarder in Toronto, which is the subject of the thread, At Least He Had The Decency To Stop:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

led me to review this thread.

One of the things that puzzled me when I read Bryant's retelling of the events of that fateful evening in MacLean's Magazine (September 3, 2012) was his statement that,

His front wheel was within a couple of feet of the Saab's front bumper. I knew he was too close for me to drive around him. In a millisecond, my eyes darted up to my rear-view mirror, then back to this man. I saw there were cars behind me, so I couldn't back up. I couldn't move forward. Trapped.

CCTV footage of part of the incident does not support Mr. Bryant's statement that he had no room to back up. In fact, throughout the portion of the incident from the time Mr. Bryant first stalled his vehicle when cut off by Mr. Sheppard, until the point when his vehicle pushes Mr. Sheppard and his bicycle off screen, there is no point at which there was less than half a car length of space behind Mr. Bryant's Saab.



Given the fact that by the time Mr. Bryant's account went to press in his book, excerpted in the MacLean's article, he must have known that his vehicle had been video taped at the start of the sequence of events that ultimately led to Mr. Sheppard's death, and the fact that his statement about being boxed in was not true, why would he make such a statement, saying that he was boxed in?

Was Bryant, in fact, telling the truth in his book? If he was then it might be an important indication of alcohol impairment. It turns out that alcohol, in addition to its effects on muscular coordination also effects depth perception.

knowledgex.camh.net...

Alcohol blunts alertness and reduces motor co-ordination. People who drive after using alcohol can’t react as quickly when they need to. Their vision is affected, and may be blurred or doubled. Alcohol alters depth perception, making it hard to tell whether other vehicles, pedestrians or objects are close or far away.

Maybe Mr. Bryant was impaired and simply thought, based upon alcohol impaired visual depth perception, that he was boxed in, when he wasn't. The following description bears an uncanny similarity to Mr. Bryant's driving performance that evening.

And because alcohol affects judgment, people who drive after drinking may feel overconfident and not recognize that their driving skills are reduced. Their driving is more likely to be careless or reckless — weaving, speeding, driving off the road and, too often, crashing.

Here is another attestation of the effects of alcohol on depth perception.

www.drugfree.org...

A research team from North Dakota State University concludes that alcohol impairs a person's driving ability by hindering their depth perception, the BBC reported Jan. 3.

For the research, 15 volunteers performed tasks that measured a particular type of depth perception, called motion parallax, before and after drinking alcohol. The study found that when participants were intoxicated, their ability to judge depth was impaired, hampering the ability to gauge distance.

The question remains, was Mr. Bryant given a breathalyzer test? If so what were the results? If not, why not?