I hate these kinds of situations. A Salem recreational rider called me about a serious accident several months ago. He was unhelmeted and had been riding on the shoulder on the wrong side of Commercial Drive in Salem when a left turning motorist had failed to see him and had turned directly in front of him. The bicyclist’s speed of between 15-20 miles per hour carried him up and over the top of the bike after his front tire impacted the left front fender and he was airborne on top of and over the other side of the car. Fortunately, he had a soft landing.
He was carrying a large bag of dirty laundry over to his mom’s house and holding onto the bike with one hand. At the scene, he told the investigating police officer that he had brakes which were not working properly. So many flags went up in my mind about how this accident was probably mostly his fault, that I immediately began to silently compose my “turn down” conversation with him.
Then he told me that he was charged with “Unsafe Operation of a Bicycle on a Sidewalk,” which all of my readers know is contained at ORS 814.410, and I began to get my activist ire up. How could a bike rider, even though he was probably mostly at fault in causing his injuries, be charged with unsafe riding his bike on the sidewalk when there is no sidewalk beside Commercial Drive? I looked up the law and it was clear that the shoulder could not be classified as a sidewalk. It looked to me like the investigating officer was just trying to cite the bicyclist with something and, in my view, he had made the wrong choice.
So What To Do Now?
Some readers may know that the League of American Bicyclists has a national listing of lawyers who are willing to represent bike riders wrongly charged with citations for reduced or no charge. This was obviously a case I was not going to be able to make any money on, but at least I could make a point out of what happened to the bicyclist. I agreed to represent him for no charge and entered a plea of not guilty.
At the trial, heard before a judge in Salem Municipal Court (long time readers will be interested to know that this was the same judge who heard John Sangster’s case a few years ago when he was charged with Unlawful Lane Usage), both sides presented photographs, diagrams, and the City introduced the testimony of the citing police officer. In a great example of courtroom drama, (okay, it wasn’t that dramatic, but it was a little dramatic) the police officer agreed with me that the area where the bicyclist was riding was not a sidewalk, and then when he realized that this meant that the charge was going to flounder, he suddenly changed his mind and constructed a sidewalk on the side of Commercial–the trial judge was carefully watching his maneuver and decided that this was a pinch which was not going to stick. The lawyers gave perfunctory closing arguments but it was clear from the questions that the court asked that we were probably going to win, even though the judge said that he felt that the only reason the client was being found not guilty was because he had been mischarged.
Nevertheless, as bicycle activists we have to welcome our victories when they arrive. So the moral of this story is wear a helmet, don’t ride on the wrong side of the street, and if you are ever charged with a bogus traffic citation, call the League of American Bicyclists local representatives and see if your case might qualify for their assistance. Here is a listing from the latest League Almanac:
L.A.B. Regional Director L.A.B. Area Representative
Gary G. Klein Richard L. Moffitt
Klein Bicycle Corp. 1150 Mohawk Blvd.
115 Klein Road Springfield, Oregon 97477
Chehalis, Washington 98532 (503) 746-5130
(206) 262-3305
Steven R. Stewart L.A.B. State Legislative Rep.
15130 SW Village Lane John C. Sangster
Aloha, Oregon 97007 1475 Evergreen Ave., NE
(503) 646-1410 Salem, Oregon 97301-1624
(503) 378-6951
State Bicycle Advocacy Org.
Bicycle Federation of Oregon
660 High Street, Suite 150
Salem, Oregon 97301
(503) 371-9092