I know how this hurts; I lost a friend at the beginning of March, horribly similar deal... wide open country road, she and her husband experienced riders on a tandem (she was blind) with flags and banners and a trailer in the back... gone is such a permanent word.
(Here... our state's attorney will probably charge the driver with a petty misdemeanor -- failure to reduce speed to avoid an accident. I'm afraid that absolutely everything our state's attorney says, does, and doesn't would be indicative that she sincerely believes bicyclists should stay off the roads.)
It pisses me off. If the nice people who really didn't mean any harm and gosh, don't we feel *sorry* for them because they have to live wiht this ... are going to run me off the road, they *do* have to do it literally, because Cindy and David didn't have a choice-- their disabilities meant that bike was their way everywhere. And it's more bicycles out there that will make it safer. I am hoping to figure out how to make rear air bags for bicycles -- especially if they'll permanently take out the car that gets too close to them...