Road rager wants to know: You mean I have to stay in jail for a whole week?
| Cyclist on car hood |
The whole of bike-blog internetdom is awash in this story about a road raging motorist who first attacked a cyclist (after the cyclist told him to slow down) and then, when the cyclist stood in front of his car to get the plate, drove into him and thence down the road with the cyclist clinging on to the windshield wipers for dear life.
Somehow a guy with a cellphone got video of it. There’s lots more at the bikeportland blog.
Now the motorist wants to know why he has to spend an entire week in jail. My suspicion is that it is going to end up being a lot longer than a week.
I had a client two years ago who stood in front of a vehicle after the driver hurled a full “Big Gulp” soft drink at her. The driver took off down the road with my client’s beautiful vintage Zeus bicycle underneath it, totally destroying the bike.
The police blamed my client, of course, and refused to charge the driver. After repeated meetings, internal affairs complaints, and publicity, we at last got the police to charge him with leaving the scene of an accident. He pled down on that charge and escaped with just a few points off his license.
Luckily we also had a civil suit against him and recovered the value of the bike. But it was quite a lesson in how the system views bicyclists.
–Erik Ryberg
July 16th, 2008 at 11:24 am
Erik – both stories are good reminders that you have to carefully choose the time when you confront a driver by stepping in front of their motor vehicle.