It’s not necessarily a victim blame.
Biking rural roads at night is like walking through a dark urban park at night. Regardless of whether it should be as safe as broad daylight, on a practical level you’re going to encounter different dangers.
I see you are getting flamed already, but I thought I'd chime on this as I am a cyclist and I had a similar thought process after I heard what happened to Johnny Hockey.
From my house to the train station, it's a 2 hour walk, or 20 minutes bike ride. A good chunk of that ride is a rural road.
When I come back from Montreal past 9PM, there is no bus option anymore from the train to "nearish" my house, so I bike. I have strong lights on my bike, but it's true that there are different dangers, not just cars. I always bike really slow when on that dark road since I fell (in daylight) because I didn't brake fast enough to avoid a crack in the road. It's too narrow and cars often go at 80+ in this 50 km/h zone.
This terrible news today makes me question this bike ride in the future. Roads aren't safe enough the way they are made for bikers at night on country roads. It should be, but it just isn't. I might spend the 15$ for the taxi ride next time, even though I try biking as often as I can.
It should be the other way around. Dangerous drivers should be the ones spending 15$ everytime they take that road, since they are the ones making it more dangerous.
The risk is even worse for a pedestrian, since they don't have lights most of the time and their ride is way longer, so they meet more cars on the same ride.
