Hi and my own accident experience

[wanglung]

Hi everyone,

Is it normal not having a police report for an accident?

It happened at around 3:10 pm of 6/13, I was riding northward on the left side sidewalk of Redland Road passing the entrance of Metro Station with pedestrian green light, I was hit by a car going out on the right turn lane. I fell down and had some minor scratches and generally ok, half of my bike was under the front of the car. 911 was called by the driver and a fire engine was there in less than 30 seconds, great job of these Montgomery firefighters. I felt fine and signed a release from for not going to the hospital then we were all waiting for the police to finish all this mess and I could go home.

Two policemen came about 10~15 minutes later and strange things started happening, the police let the driver go first then arguing with a lady witness, she said ‘she did not see when it happened but she did see half of my bike was under the car and me lying down on the ground but one of the policeman said you did not see it at the time and seems to me he just try to get rid of her. For me, the police did not ask me what happened, not even my name then ask everyone to leave.

2 days later I called the police station and asking for a police report for this accident and been told that there is not even a police report number, all they can give me is an event number 110181882, the officer for this accident can only be reached Saturday to Tuesday.

There do have some conversations between me and the Police,
1) they told me that riding on the sidewalk is illegal, which is not true for the Montgomery County and
2) I was on the wrong side of the sidewalk. I should riding on the right side of of the sidewalk, the same as the traffic flow, this I don’t know if true. I try to Google it by did not get any. What I think is that you are on the pedestrian sidewalk, you should behave like a pedestrian and yield to them. Which side of sidewalk does not matter. Any idea?

So my translation is that, you are lucky that we, police did not give you a ticket. Just go away. I was hit by a car on the pedestrian crossing with pedestrian green light then the driver just went away without a ticket, not even a police report? So back to my first line:

Is it normal not having a police report for an accident?

I am thinking of fighting this, like one of my friend talked to me, ‘you don’t want this happen to your kids, bad cop or bad driver getting away’

All the ideas are greatly appreciated.

Wanglung

Topic

[wanglung]

Thank you all again for these advices given. I am continuing cooling down and just treating this issue as some kind of paper work to deal with it. Actually I rode my bike to work today again.

I thought of a joke last night:
The driver said: Oh s**t, I hit a person on the pedestrian crossing!
Luckily, this guy was on a bike, I am not liable for this.

[DaveK]

@wanglung 4875 wrote:

Thank you all again for these advices given. I am continuing cooling down and just treating this issue as some kind of paper work to deal with it. Actually I rode my bike to work today again.

I thought of a joke last night:
The driver said: Oh s**t, I hit a person on the pedestrian crossing!
Luckily, this guy was on a bike, I am not liable for this.

If you want to legally murder someone in MD, just run them over with a car. Not joking. Of the last several cyclists who have been hit and killed I don’t think a single driver has been given anything more severe than a couple-hundred dollar fine. It’s ridiculous. Thankfully MD just passed a law making it easier for prosecutors to charge these drivers with a crime.

[wanglung]

Hi Davek,

Thank you.
It’s good to know about this and thanks to a lot of concerned citizens that the MD law is improving.

And to RestonToDC,
Thank you for sharing your experience, after a few days of thinking and thinking from the driver and insurance’s point of view, their denying of fault is just logical, after all, there is no punishment for doing it and if they can get away with it with even just a little chance, the better.

So I learned a lesson here, behave as a civilized person, it’s good for all including me but never forget to apply rule of jungle because it’s everywhere.

[RESTONTODC]

Wanglung,

I think you made a good decision. Hopefully, you didn’t hurt badly. May be just scratches.

In my case, my medical bills were more than 30K and my head was hurt for weeks. My doctor send me ER when I learned the CAT SCAN and MRI cost a fortune.

Ride soon.

Rick

[DaveK]

Act like everyone is trying to kill you. In their own way, texting or reading the paper or (god forbid) putting on make up, they are all trying to kill you.

[CCrew]

@DaveK 4936 wrote:

Act like everyone is trying to kill you. In their own way, texting or reading the paper or (god forbid) putting on make up, they are all trying to kill you.

Shame is that statement would be kinda funny if it weren’t so durned true!

[RESTONTODC]

@DaveK 4936 wrote:

Act like everyone is trying to kill you. In their own way, texting or reading the paper or (god forbid) putting on make up, they are all trying to kill you.

That’s why they called “Defensive riding”

[Greenbelt]

This morning, I almost got run down by a car (I didn’t see the driver) who attempted to pass a line of traffic on the right by speeding through the bike lane at about 60 miles per hour. This was on Cherrywood Lane in Greenbelt. I didn’t have time to fish my camera out to get a picture. He (or she) had to get the Greenbelt metro, you see, which was a couple hundred yards farther up. Probably late for an important meeting or something. And nearly killing a couple cyclists and hitting another car was incidental to the extreme importance of gaining a couple car lengths going into the parking lot.

These sort of drivers really don’t care about killing others. After all, it’s just an accident, right?

[acc]

Whew, glad you are ok, glad the other cyclists are ok.
ann

[Greenbelt]

Yeah, I sent another letter to the mayor asking for traffic calming and better speed enforcement — Cherrywood lane connects most of Greenbelt with the Anacostia Tributary trails. It has bike lanes, but the road design is pretty awful and leads to speeding and reckless turns coming in to and out of the Greenbelt Metro and also near Beltway Plaza mall. You’d think our progressive city could do a better job taking control of that road and creating a safe corridor for riders to get to the trails.

[ronwalf]

Other than people right-turning into the metro, I rarely have problems on Cherrywood Lane. Not that it couldn’t use a road diet, though.

At its widest, if you ripped out the unused parking and the painted median, it could fit at least four lanes of traffic plus bike lanes. I.e., a tremendous waste of asphalt. If it was the width of Crescent Rd, I don’t think anyone would suffer.

[Author]

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