320 hit-and-runs in Austin so far this year!

MichaelBluejay · 2012-11-05 23:46:11

A whopping 320 cases of failure to stop and render aid have been reported in Austin so far this year!

Kinds of puts it into perspective when motorists whine about cyclists rolling stop signs. Which class of road users is causing the real problems? You know, the kind where property is actually damaged and people are actually injured or killed?

In 2007 the penalty for hit-and-run when someone is injured got raised from a misdemeanor to a third-degree felony, and now there are calls to increase the penalties even further. That's nice, but the real problem is attitudes. If the only thing making people actually stay on the scene after they hurt someone is the fear of a big penalty if they don't, then we have serious problems as a society. I'd prefer to live in a world where people do the right thing because they actually have a conscience and a set of ethics.

http://www.kxan.com/dpp/news/local/aust … d-increase

MichaelBluejay · 2012-11-11 02:36:54

Some traffic safety statistics for Austin:

Total traffic fatalities

2007: 60
2008: 59
2009: 62
2010: 49
2011: 54
2012: 67 so far

Percentage of fatal collisions that were alcohol-related:

2009: 43%
2010: 53%
2011: 21%

Number of fatalities that were: driver or passenger, pedestrian, motorcyclist, bicyclist:

2007: ?, ?, ?, 1
2008: 25, 18, 15, 1
2009: 30, 16, 15, 1
2010: 28, 10, 9, 2
2011: 22, 22, 9, 1

Number of injury collisions of bicyclists:
2007: 230
2008: 264
2009: 286
2010: 283
2011: 338

Sources:
http://www.austintexas.gov/page/annual- … ic-reports
http://austintexas.gov/sites/default/fi … istics.pdf

dougmc · 2012-11-11 20:26:23

2012 Austin (within city limits) traffic fatalities so far.

28 car/truck drivers/ passengers
24 pedestrians
11 motorcyclists
4 cyclists
67 total, and of course 2012 isn't over yet.

m1ek · 2012-11-12 08:58:34

It's all about percentages - there's so many more drivers that you would expect much larger numbers of violations in absolute numbers.

I can tell you that I have never seen a motorist get away with the kind of strung-together violations on every single trip that a large minority of cyclists do - like the guy who jumps on/off crosswalks, runs three traffic lights, and goes the wrong way down a one-way alley - just in the three minutes I travelled parallel to him on Guadalupe the other day. (Frankly, a motorist trying to pull off that kind of lawbreaking in a short span would undoubtedly crash several times and be unable to leave the scene!).

Even bad motorists obey the law most of the time.

Donald Lewis · 2012-11-12 12:50:44

m1ek wrote:

It's all about percentages - there's so many more drivers that you would expect much larger numbers of violations in absolute numbers.
I can tell you that I have never seen a motorist get away with the kind of strung-together violations on every single trip that a large minority of cyclists do - like the guy who jumps on/off crosswalks, runs three traffic lights, and goes the wrong way down a one-way alley - just in the three minutes I travelled parallel to him on Guadalupe the other day. (Frankly, a motorist trying to pull off that kind of lawbreaking in a short span would undoubtedly crash several times and be unable to leave the scene!).
Even bad motorists obey the law most of the time.

Which laws? Going 56 mph in a 55 mph zone is illegal. Is this nitpicking? I suppose so. Or when you count things like failure to signal a lane change or a turn, most motorists break the law on a regular basis. Its all about everybody's different perception as to which laws matter and should be enforced.

Don in Austin

MichaelBluejay · 2012-11-16 01:07:26

This week's Austin Chronicle has a picture of 67 crosses planted alongside white bicycles outside Bouldin Creek Café, as tribute to the "67 bicyclists who have died in traffic fatalities this year." (Actually, it's 67 *people* who have died, which includes only four *bicyclists*. But probably the mistake was the Chronicle's, not BCC's, and I'm grateful to whoever put together the display, and to BCC for hosting it.)

Also, here's my letter to the editor printed in this week's issue:

Cars much more dangerous
Dear Editor:
You recently wrote, "Blasé and entitled auto drivers are just as much a public threat as cyclists who run stop signs, stealthily slide past rows of waiting cars, and don't use their damn hand signals." Not! The truth is that cars are actually a much larger threat to public safety than bicycles are or ever could be. Think about it: Of the 320 cases of failure to stop and render aid in Austin so far this year, or teh dozens of deaths of innocent road users on Austin streets, exactly how many do you think were caused by bicyclists? (Hint: zero.) And how many were caused by drivers? All of them! Law-breaking drivers cause about 30,000 wrecks in the Austin area each year, and in about half of those cases, a vehicle is towed away or someone goes to the hospital. Nationally, drivers running red lights kill about a thosand people annually and injure another quarter-million.
Both drivers and cyclists break the law, but the difference is that the drivers are the ones actually killing people. Chronicle, drivers aren't "just as much a threat" as cyclists "who don't use their damn hand signals." They're a fantastically bigger threat. When you're out driving around, which would be worse: getting T-boned by an SUV or by a Schwinn?
Michael Bluejay

dougmc · 2012-11-16 13:57:44

MichaelBluejay wrote:

Think about it: Of the 320 cases of failure to stop and render aid in Austin so far this year [deletia ensues], exactly how many do you think were caused by bicyclists? (Hint: zero.)

We don't actually know this to be true.

Certainly a cyclist can collide with a car and then leave the scene -- the relevant law says "the injury or death of a person or damage to a vehicle" -- so a mere scratch to a car would qualify, and smashing somebody's mirror with a U-lock and taking off might too (though that really ought to be counted as vandalism or something similar instead, something that involves intent.)

I suspect that in most of these 320 cases there was no injury and the damage was minor. In fact, I'll bet in some of the cases the party that left didn't even realize there had been a collision, but the other party did and saw some (minor) damage so they filed a police report.

It's hard to really make anything of this 320 figure without knowing more details -- how serious was the damage in each case? Any injuries? If so, how serious?

But yeah, your point is certainly valid. How many injuries and/or deaths were caused by cyclists who then left the scene? Probably close to zero. (Of course, the reality is, any collision where a cyclist hits somebody or something hard enough to cause serious injury to somebody else often leaves the cyclist and/or his bicycle unable to leave the scene. The converse is very much not the case with drivers hitting pedestrians or cyclists, however.)

MichaelBluejay · 2012-11-16 17:16:02

dougmc wrote:

We don't actually know this to be true....a mere scratch to a car would qualify, and smashing somebody's mirror with a U-lock and taking off might too...I suspect that in most of these 320 cases there was no injury and the damage was minor....

No, a mere scratch to a car would *not* qualify. The 320 cases is for failure to stop and render AID to an injured person. If you count only damage to vehicles, then the number is closer to 8000. From the article linked from my original post:

KXAN wrote:

In Austin, police say 7,746 cases of someone leaving the scene of an accident have been reported since January 1. That includes minor bumps in parking lots or a sideswipe on the street.
But there have been 320 reported cases so far in 2012 of someone failing to stop and render aid.

dougmc · 2012-11-18 11:00:05

MichaelBluejay wrote:

No, a mere scratch to a car would *not* qualify. The 320 cases is for failure to stop and render AID to an injured person. If you count only damage to vehicles, then the number is closer to 8000. From the article linked from my original post:
KXAN wrote:
In Austin, police say 7,746 cases of someone leaving the scene of an accident have been reported since January 1. That includes minor bumps in parking lots or a sideswipe on the street.
But there have been 320 reported cases so far in 2012 of someone failing to stop and render aid.

Fair enough. However, there is not a law called "failure to stop and render aid".

Instead, there's several different laws --

Sec. 550.021. ACCIDENT INVOLVING PERSONAL INJURY OR DEATH.
Sec. 550.022. ACCIDENT INVOLVING DAMAGE TO VEHICLE.
Sec. 550.023. DUTY TO GIVE INFORMATION AND RENDER AID
Sec. 550.022. ACCIDENT INVOLVING DAMAGE TO VEHICLE
Sec. 550.024. DUTY ON STRIKING UNATTENDED VEHICLE.
Sec. 550.025. DUTY ON STRIKING STRUCTURE, FIXTURE, OR HIGHWAY LANDSCAPING.
Sec. 550.026. IMMEDIATE REPORT OF ACCIDENT.

and all but one covers damage to property rather than injuries. Now, the police do make up their own codes for tracking purposes, and may certainly have one code for damage and one code for injuries, but in this case the mere name "failure to stop and render aid" most closely matches a law that involves damage to property *or* injuries.

In any event, the article isn't particularly clear about what the codes entered for the 320 and 7746 incidents really mean. Based on the context, I suspect that it's more the 7746 is minor and the 320 is more severe, but it's not clear what the difference is between the two -- we could assume that minor means damage and severe means injury, but I suspect it's not that simple. Though I could ask the attorney mentioned in the article -- he probably knows -- so I will.

MichaelBluejay · 2012-11-18 14:51:18

dougmc wrote:

...in this case the mere name "failure to stop and render aid" most closely matches a law that involves damage to property *or* injuries.

That's not how I read it. Sec. 550.021 is clear from both the name and content that it's about injuries to people, not property. Sec 550.023 covers both people and property but it seems clear from the content that the "rendering aid" part applies only to human injuries:

"provide any person injured in the accident reasonable assistance, including transporting or making arrangements for transporting the person to a physician or hospital for medical treatment if it is apparent that treatment is necessary, or if the injured person requests the transportation."

Maybe the difference is hitting attended vs. unattended vehicles. 550.023 is about hitting a vehicle whose operator is present. 550.024 is "Duty on striking an unattended vehicle." So, maybe 550.023 is what we colloquially call failure to stop and render aid, and 550.024 is a hit-and-run of parked cars.

(For everyone following this, here's a link to the Texas Transportation Code.)

dougmc · 2012-11-18 19:56:52

MichaelBluejay wrote:

dougmc wrote:
...in this case the mere name "failure to stop and render aid" most closely matches a law that involves damage to property *or* injuries.
That's not how I read it. Sec. 550.021 is clear from both the name and content that it's about injuries to people, not property. Sec 550.023 covers both people and property but it seems clear from the content that the "rendering aid" part applies only to human injuries:

Right -- 550.021 is the only one that covers *only* injuries, and the others either cover "damage and injuries" or just damage. And generally, if somebody is charged with a crime, they're only charged with one relevant crime (usually the most serious one) rather than every possible permutation. (Though every once in a while, the police and DA go nuts and do everything. I'm not sure what makes the difference.)

But it's not really clear what the police given names of "failure to stop and render aid" and "leaving the scene of an accident" indicate. We can can make an educated guess, but we won't really be sure without asking.

And even if the 320 cases each *did* involve an injury, we can't assume that *zero* of them were caused by cyclists as you did in your letter to the editor. While motorist fatalities caused by collisions with cyclists are unheard of, especially when the cyclist then left the scene (I guess it's *possible*), pedestrian fatalities caused by cyclists are rare -- but not unheard of. (And it's even more rare that the cyclist is able to leave the scene.) But none of these deaths have happened in Austin in 2012 so far.

But reports of cases where a cyclist struck a pedestrian, injured the pedestrian (often fairly severely) and left the scene are somewhat common. (Now, how often it *really* happens is another matter. But certainly, it seems like every time there's a newspaper story about a cyclist hit by a car and the comments turn into a cyclist bashing frenzy, somebody talks about how their mother's leg was broken by a cyclist who then took off. And then there's this case. In any event, while I think it's exaggerated, I do believe it really does happen.)

We'd have to dig into the data more carefully to see if any of the 320 (or 7,746, though that wasn't your claim) cases listed were of this sort.

MichaelBluejay · 2012-11-18 23:34:03

dougmc wrote:

And even if the 320 cases each *did* involve an injury, we can't assume that *zero* of them were caused by cyclists as you did in your letter to the editor.

I'm confident making that assumption. If anyone actually got hurt by a hit-and-run cyclist in Austin this year I'm sure we would have heard about it. I know it's *possible* that it happened without our hearing about it, but I doubt it. In my letter I could have said "Zero--or pretty close to it," which would have been technically accurate, but that just shows that the number would be so small that the distinction would be trivial. Anyway, we're getting sidetracked: The point is that it's motorists that are causing the carnage on the roads, not cyclists. Yet the Chronicle seems to think that cyclists "who don't use their damn hand signals" create the same level of public threat as inattentive drivers. That statement is just wrong, and irresponsible.

eileenstx · 2012-11-19 13:09:04

Ironically, a friend of mine hit a pedestrian yesterday while on his bike and the pedestrian was quickly escorted away from the scene by her two companions after the initial "are you OK?" conversations took place and witnesses starting asking about the cyclist and his bike being OK.

I only heard the cyclist's side of the story of his confusion surrounding the peds using the crosswalk without activating the hybrid beacon. The victim was not looking as she moved back into in the crosswalk while her companions completed crossing then tried to restrain the victim before the impact. (The companions had seen the cyclist approaching and reacted accordingly by completing the crossing.) The cyclist theorized they had been drinking at the Hula Hut based on their actions.

No call to 911.

dougmc · 2012-11-19 14:50:28

MichaelBluejay wrote:

If anyone actually got hurt by a hit-and-run cyclist in Austin this year I'm sure we would have heard about it.

Why would we hear about it? "Mere" injuries are rarely newsworthy.

Most likely if you did hear about it, you'd hear the pedestrian (or cyclist) griping about it in person or in the comments section of an article somewhere. You wouldn't hear about it in the news unless 1) the victim was a celebrity of some sort, or 2) the injury was super severe, like the person was put in a coma or something.

It's often not even reported to the police, though the more serious the injury the more likely a police report is.

Hell, I personally got knocked off my bike by another cyclist, fell on my tailbone (I was on a recumbent which made that more likely) which hurt for several weeks. Not a serious injury, but it was an injury. I don't even know who the guy who hit me was -- he took off. It was a few years back, however. No police report was filed.

MichaelBluejay · 2012-11-19 15:21:29

dougmc wrote:

Why would we hear about it? "Mere" injuries are rarely newsworthy.

Unless they're caused by a bicyclist! Given the extreme fanatacism in this culture about scofflaw cyclists (and not other road users), yeah, I do think the media and the community would pounce on such a story. Though again, this is beside the point. Even if the number of reported injury hit-and-runs caused by cyclists isn't *exactly* zero, it's pretty damn *close* to zero. That's the point.

m1ek · 2012-11-30 09:58:34

On this I think I agree with Michael - near misses happen a lot with lawbreaking cyclists but actual injury-causing collisions are rare - we would, in fact, likely hear about them if they were more than vanishingly rare.

Bicycle Austin forum

#1 2012-11-05 23:46:11

320 hit-and-runs in Austin so far this year!

#2 2012-11-11 02:36:54

Re: 320 hit-and-runs in Austin so far this year!

#3 2012-11-11 20:26:23

Re: 320 hit-and-runs in Austin so far this year!

#4 2012-11-12 08:58:34

Re: 320 hit-and-runs in Austin so far this year!

#5 2012-11-12 12:50:44

Re: 320 hit-and-runs in Austin so far this year!

#6 2012-11-16 01:07:26

Re: 320 hit-and-runs in Austin so far this year!

#7 2012-11-16 13:57:44

Re: 320 hit-and-runs in Austin so far this year!

#8 2012-11-16 17:16:02

Re: 320 hit-and-runs in Austin so far this year!

#9 2012-11-18 11:00:05

Re: 320 hit-and-runs in Austin so far this year!

#10 2012-11-18 14:51:18

Re: 320 hit-and-runs in Austin so far this year!

#11 2012-11-18 19:56:52

Re: 320 hit-and-runs in Austin so far this year!

#12 2012-11-18 23:34:03

Re: 320 hit-and-runs in Austin so far this year!

#13 2012-11-19 13:09:04

Re: 320 hit-and-runs in Austin so far this year!

#14 2012-11-19 14:50:28

Re: 320 hit-and-runs in Austin so far this year!

#15 2012-11-19 15:21:29

Re: 320 hit-and-runs in Austin so far this year!

#16 2012-11-30 09:58:34

Re: 320 hit-and-runs in Austin so far this year!

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