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Hit and Run Follow-up

In June, 2012, a driver I know hit a pedestrian at the corner of Wilkins and Wightman and left the scene. His girlfriend convinced him to turn himself in four days later. Two YEARS later, he went to trial (yesterday). He was given five years probation, 200 hours of community services, fined $20,000 as restitution for the victim's insurance co-pays, will pay court costs, and had his driver's license revoked. The victim was very seriously injured. He has recovered enough to resume his teaching job, but still has a way to go to mend physically. It doesn't look like this is going to make the newspaper which is too bad. Lack of public follow-up to these incidents seems to me a bad thing. If all the public ever hears is about the initial hit and run, what kind of message does that send to others who might be tempted to leave the scene? Otherwise a gorgeous day for a long ride and I took full advantage of it.
dmooney
2014-06-06 13:29:54
Thanks for posting that, David.
swalfoort
2014-06-06 13:37:33
Yes, thanks for the follow up. That is one block from my house and I remember it well. It is disheartening to hear the victim has not fully recovered, and the punishment is far too light for the amount of suffering he caused.
salty
2014-06-09 00:15:01
Thanks for posting. I"m going to ask a bunch of questions here. I don't want to get in David's face about this - not his business to inform us what he may have heard or what he guesses about his aquaintance. This may or may not apply to the case, I don't know. IIRC, the laws on this changed a bit not too long ago - and the old laws might be applicable to this case if the collision happened befopre the change. If the driver was intoxicated or impaired when he hit the bicyclist, he sidestepped some charges by running. Did they tighten up the hit and run laws to account for that? Are they tight enough? Like, did this guy skip some jail time by running and turning himself in? Were there enough people around for the victim to get medical help, even if the driver ran? Or not? That makes a difference to me, but I'm not sure if it makes a legal difference. I'm very curious as to the nature and extent of the victim's injuries. BTW, I swing dance often at the Wightman Community Center on Saturday nights, so I often go through this intersection around midnight on a Saturday. My working assumption is that all the drivers are drunk.
mick
2014-06-11 12:13:36
Yes, the change in the fixed the loop hole that allowed drunk drivers to get away with less punishment, because DUI accidents carried more severe punishments that hit and run. The new law evens it out. In the case of my acquaintance, he was not drunk. There were other factors, however, that made his driving at all rather questionable--a sleep disorder--but apparently he had been medically cleared to drive. The way he told it to me, he "woke up" on the other side of the intersection and realized he had hit something. He stopped. He saw in his rear view mirror that people were running toward the victim. That's when he made the decision to leave. I've been hit three times by cars on my bike in the almost six decades that I've been riding on city streets, fortunately none serious. Two were hit and run. Needless to say, my friendship with this guy has pretty much tanked.
dmooney
2014-06-13 08:50:27
Sounds like the doctor shouldn't have cleared him in the first place. Maybe there should be a mechanism to reject clearances from doctors with a history of putting dangerous drivers on the road, so there would be some kind of consequence for them.
steven
2014-06-13 11:32:08
Quite tellingly, the doctor who cleared him refused to testify at the trial. This suggests to me that he understood that he shared some culpability for the accident.
dmooney
2014-06-22 13:32:05