UPDATE: The Seattle Fire Department says the victim, a man in his 30s, was not seriously injured. No word yet on the search for the suspect.
Original story:
From SPD:
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Ofrs investigating hit & run to bicyclist @ Yale Av N and Fairview Av N. Veh desc as a whi. Buick Century, female driver.
— Seattle Police Dept. (@SeattlePD) January 7, 2013
Approximate location of the incident:
We will update when we learn more.
Meanwhile, Capitol Hill Seattle reports that a woman in her 40s was struck by a car at 15th and Mercer around 8 a.m. Monday morning. She was left with a minor leg injury.
Comments
9 responses to “Police looking for woman who hit person on bike and fled – UPDATE: Not seriously injured”
Ugh, not again. Maybe 2013 will be the year we finally start to throw the book at hit-and-run drivers. I know the book we have isn’t terribly weighty, but let’s get serious about using it.
Tom, maybe you could do a post looking back at the various hit-and-run incidents from 2012 (well, the ones involving cyclists anyway). How many of the drivers were eventually caught? What kinds of punishment did they receive? Has the Vulnerable Users law been enforced at all?
That’s a story where I could use some help. If anyone wants to do some public records digging, let me know. I can help point you in the right direction if you are not familiar with how to look things like that up. But, unfortunately, it will take some time to track down all the hit-and-runs…
I am in support of the idea to track the hit and runs and look back two to three years. We all sense that there is an increase in those cases . The statistics would be very helpful to proof this and to help making a behavioral change in this town..
Uwe
Hopefully, we’ll be able to get that information from SPD crime stats. However, the hard part is figuring out if there has been legal follow-up. As a journalist, this is one of my weakest spots: Tracking an incident from crime to charges to court penalties.
Once the defendant has been loacted and you know his/her first and last name, it’s actually relatively easy to check the case status. On the Washington Courts website you can check the runner for any case that’s been filed in municipal, district, and superior court.
http://dw.courts.wa.gov/index.cfm?fa=home.casesearch&terms=accept&flashform=0&tab=clj
Typically hit and run cases will be held in municipal court (if in an incorporated area) or district court (if in an unincorporated area or an area that has an agreement with the county sheriff’s office). Felony hit and run cases would be heard in superior court.
Thanks, Brian. If someone would like to help keep such info organized, that would be a huge help for me.
The other hard part is finding out when/if a suspect has been located. So, say, I report on someone being hit. Without knowing the victim’s name and having no suspect name, it’s hard to find out later if that person was ever found or charged. It can be done, of course, but it’s labor intensive to stay on top of it all (unfortunately, it happens fairly often). As a journalist both here and on Central District News, I dream of a one-stop-shop online criminal justice website that can track a case from citation to sentencing to release. Right now, it’s a lot of bouncing around between different court websites, different police agencies, etc. I, of course, realize that I’m probably just dreaming that such a well-organized and transparent public information system could ever be created. But I can dream.
This is a very bad area to ride in due to construction. Drivers are simply not paying attention to anything around them, for the most part, other than getting through it – it’s actually truly a little confusing, but too many drivers are consistently either running the light at Yale and driving right through the crosswalk oblivious of any crosswalk users who have the ROW with the “walk” signal.
In addition, the turn to/from Fairview into the parking lot that runs along the west side of the street is treacherous at Yale. Again, drivers are making last-second decisions to turn into/out of the lot oblivious of other street users, sidewalk users, or those entering/exiting the lot (the lot is being used as an east/west unofficial detour route by cyclists due to the poor “sidewalk” detour through the construction area and drivers too impatient to use the street).
I know that at least one other cyclist who was recently hit down there by a deliver truck (last month I believe).
I saw a cyclist down in that area last week on my way to work, too (being tended to by EMS – didn’t see what happened).
It’s not just impatient drivers that make the parking lot a more attractive option, though they certainly don’t help. I quit using the street after one too many detours went at an oblique angle over the streetcar tracks with no warning at all, either to me or the cars behind me. That project has done a consistently bad job of creating & signing bike detours, and in my interactions with the crew and stories from coworkers, they don’t seem to recognize that the situation is as stressful and hazardous for us as it is for them. Huge contrast to the well-marked, generally reasonable detours and consistent professional courtesy from the folks who were working at Terry & Mercer.
Does anyone know why they haven’t signed the parking lot as an official bike detour? A few orange signs & blinky plastic bollards at the intersections would probably help catch drivers’ attention and calm things down a little.
Hit and runs should be prosecuted as first degree assaults. Accidents happen, we’re all human. But there is absolutely no justification for just driving away. In fact, if you don’t stay, who’s to say you didn’t intend to harm the cyclist. First degree assault.