@mstone 178551 wrote:
I question the idea that hit & run only applies on roadways. (So, if a car runs off the road and then hits someone, it can’t be hit and run? I think the statute very specifically doesn’t say that.) I question the idea that it only applies to automobiles. (I don’t see that in the statute, either. There’s some language about license & registration that doesn’t apply to bikes, but I assume that you can be charged with hit & run even if you’re an unlicensed driver of an unregistered car.) It may very well be that the fact that the dual treatment of bikes under the code makes hit & run not apply in this case, that was even my initial thought, but not necessarily for the reasons stated above. (Or it might–precedents hold more weight than guesses.) My curiosity is mostly because police departments have a terrible record for knowing how to apply the law to bikes (to be fair, the officers tend to get zero bike-related training) and I wonder if, regardless of the merits of this case, there are other cases where hit & run would be appropriate but they won’t even consider it.
The issue under Virginia law, is not that a hit and run can only occur on a highway, but that bicycles are only vehicles when operated on a highway. See Va. Code Ann. 46.2-100 (defining “vehicle” to exclude devices “moved by human power,” but explaining that for purposes of Chapter 8, which includes the prohibition on hit and runs, a bicycle, among other things, is a vehicle “while operated on the highway”). Section 46.2-100 further defines “highway” as “the entire width between the boundary lines of every way or place open to the use of the public for purposes of vehicular travel in the Commonwealth, including the streets and alleys.” See id. Since the multi-use pathways aren’t open to the use of the public for vehicular travel, it’s unlikely they’d be considered highways… As an aside, the actual charging decisions will be made by the Commonwealth’s Attorney, not the Sheriff’s Office.
