What shall we do now?
by Ray Thomas
Oregon’s bicycle community mourns every time we hear about a seriously injured rider. We share our vulnerability on the roadway so when one of us gets hurt we take it personally. We know like few others how much heart it takes to go out on the roadway and try to share it with cars and trucks. Then when nothing seems to happen to the drivers involved in horrific collisions it makes us frustrated with the whole legal process.
The last year has seen too many injuries and deaths. While it’s correct that there are more bicyclists than ever before and the actual injury rate has gone down it still hurts when no matter who makes a mistake that causes a collision, it always seems to be the bicyclist who gets hurt.
Our city leaders and law enforcement can make good on their promises to improve facilities and traffic enforcement, but for right now it is not acceptable that scarce police resources are used on bicycle stings at stop signs while no one is ticketing drivers who are clearly at fault in causing serious injuries in accidents. Following the law is important for bicyclists, but the consequences of running a stop sign and hitting the side of a car are almost always visible on the body of the cyclist. We bear the consequences of our own mistakes, but when we are hit by someone making a driving error, we are the ones who end up in the hospital.
As a community we can make a positive step forward by making sure that breaking the law and hurting a bicyclist has consequences, even if there is no accident investigation or tickets handed out at the scene by the police. For almost two years we have encouraged injured riders to use the traffic courts to take the law into their own hands and use the traffic court to bring charges themselves. The process has a clunky name, ” Initiation of Violation Proceeding By Private Party”, but it is part of our legal right to issue our own tickets and use the traffic court to convict folks of the violations that result in our injuries, Failing to Yield to a Bicyclist in a Bike Lane, Careless Driving, Illegal Right Turn, Dangerous Left Turn, all offenses that cause injuries to riders, often by drivers who are repeat offenders because they don’t recognize bicylclists’ legal right to the road. The Violation Proceeding has been successfully used by a number of riders, without lawyers– a Bike Gallery mechanic, an architect who commutes by bike. These folks pursued their own cases and obtained convictions that were moving violations. Their experiences are available to help others in using this legal process.
Our goal is to assemble and train a group of citizen volunteers who will help injured riders file a case and bring to court the witnesses who saw what happened. We have already written a guidebook available as a pdf at stc-law.com that contains instructions on how to use the system.
While we can take comfort that Portland is such a great place to ride, we can also do something ourselves to make it better. As the old saying goes, Don’t Mourn, Organize!
The website linked below contains materials including the red covered guidebook, and a copy is linked below as a pdf.
Ray Thomas
www.stc-law.com
www.oregonpedestrianrights.com
email rthomas@stc-law.com
Possibly Related
- August 2008: Getting your due
- August 2006: Going after dangerous neighborhood cranks
- April 2007: Accident insurance for bicyclists
- January 2008: Oregon's new passing law
- August 2007: The law of crosswalks
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