What is it about hitting a bicyclist that causes some people not to stop and try to help? A GhostCycle.org survey revealed that one in five bike accidents involving another vehicle were hit-and-run. Here are two recent cases that are particularly despicable:
Moved bike
Police in Beaumont, Texas, have a suspect in a Saturday night hit-and-run that killed a 26-year-old man who was riding a bicycle. According to witnesses, the woman stopped after striking the man and dragging him for 20 feet, pulled his bicycle out from under the car, then continued on her way.
Police questioned her after interviewing witnesses, and then she came into the police station on Monday to give a statement, according to the Beaumont Enterprise.
The case was forwarded to the grand jury, which will decide whether the unidentified woman will face manslaughter charges. She was released after giving her statement to police.
KFDM news interviewed a witness, Belinda Foster, who went to aid Crescenciano Pluma-Morales of Mexico after the collision. The woman said she heard the collision, ran outside, and saw Morales laying in the street.
As she attended to him, the motorist came up to her and tried to explain the bicyclist had ridden in front of her.
“The next thing I know, I look up to my right and I see the car take off.”
Foster says before the woman drove away, she saw her move Morales' bicycle out of the way.
Police say the motorist opened herself up to charges of involuntary manslaughter by leaving the scene of an injury accident.
Man, not a deer
A 23-year-old Oshkosh, Wisconsin, man faces the possibility of 25 years, 6 months in prison and $101,100 in fines. He's charged with hit-and-run causing a death and his second offense of operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated, according to the Fond du Lac Reporter.
His parents testified in a preliminary hearing that their son was upset and crying when they picked him up one night at a gas station after he called and said he'd hit a deer. After they brought the car home, the father took him back to the scene of the accident where the road was blocked off and police cruisers were parked.
He started crying again, and on the way home he told his dad he looked to set his cruise control and hit something, but didn't know what.
The next morning, the father's boss said a bicyclist, Vincent L. Greuel, 42, of Oshkosh, had been hit and killed out on the highway, and the father told his son he needed to contact police. Before he could, however, police showed up at the home after a citizen's tip. (Update: May 10, 2008 — Robert D. Johnson, 23, pleaded no contest to the charges in a plea agreement.)
Justice fund
How common are hit-and-run collisions involving bicyclists? Enough so that the St. Louis Bicycle Federation has a Hit and Run Justice Fund that offers rewards for information leading to the arrest and conviction of motorists who strike bicycle riders.
The fund was launched after a vehicle struck and injured a bicyclist and left the scene. Russ Willis, chairman of Bike Fed's committee on policy and advocacy, said in a press release that people started pledging money for the reward before the fund was even established.
Roger Kramer's Cycling blog tells more about two St. Louis collisions that sparked the fund.
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