Commuting - Ow Ow Ow Ow Ow!!!!

Well, it happened yesterday. I was riding home from school, taking the long way, since it was so beautiful yesterday, when I'm crossing a bridge, and all of a sudden, I hear a screech and see the pavement about 8 inches from my face. When I'm able to get up and get out of the road, the first thing I notice is that I've left blood all over the pavement, and that the person who hit me was nowhere in sight. So, a jogger stopped and called an ambulance for me. When I get to the hospital, they do a cat scan, which came out fine, and they xrayed my jaw. Turns out I had a broken jaw, a huge gash in my chin, a torn quadricep (from my clipless pedals not disengaging), and lost of other cuts and bruises. I'm just so mad, because I don't have any insurance, and some other person was too scared to stay and face the consequences of hitting a cyclist. Now, the bills are going to start rolling in soon, and I have to even go for follow up visits to the doctor, since they had to wire my jaw shut. Any advice anyone? I already made a report with the police.

That sucks, was there anyone else around.

That sucks, was there anyone else around.
I didn't notice anyone immediately. No one stopped or anything.

I hope the jogger who stopped to help you can give some information, that is, if he/she left a name and phone number. Good luck to you.

Sorry to hear this happened to you. I hope you can get some more information to get the bastard that hit you.

Good luck with your recovery.

that's awful. i wish you well through what will undoubtedly be a tough time.

Stay strong! Ihope all goes well/gets better.

In the meantime I say make up some flyers and ask a friend or two to go out with you to the site if the accident and pass them around. Talk to people on that route and see if they have seen anything, ask for details about the vehicle. If its a regular commuter route chances are that around that same the same set of people is passing thorugh that area. good luck.

You might want to check around at some of the local body shops to see if you can get any information on people having front end work. It's a shot in the dark, but it might be worth a shot.

Get well soon.

Calling body shops and having friends try to track down information sound like good ideas. You should also consider asking media, especially television stations, to cover your efforts. You probably still look pitiful from the accident. The angle could be, "Community comes together to catch hit-and-run driver."

You might also want to check to see if being victim of a hit-and-run qualifies you for victims of crime money. Your local prosecutor or the state attorney general should have a victims' assistance section who could answer your questions.

Good luck for a speedy recovery.

Additional Note: The following web site might be helpful, http://www.victimassistance.org/VictimRights/VCCF.htm
It talks about victims of "violent crime." What happened to you was violent in any logical use of the word, but I don't know it was a "violent crime" under Indiana law.

Hope everything's Ok. My personal opinion regarding bike safety on streets is that police should start taking this type of accidents more seriously. Bikers are at higher risk than car drivers because they don't have as much physical protection during accident. If your local police department's reluctant and casual to pursue your case seriously, contact your local TV news channel or newspaper reporters. That will bring it to the mayor's attention who'll in turn hopefully change the police's attitute. Take care of yourself. Wish you the best.

Hope everything's Ok. My personal opinion regarding bike safety on streets is that police should start taking this type of accidents more seriously. Bikers are at higher risk than car drivers because they don't have as much physical protection during accident. If your local police department's reluctant and casual to pursue your case seriously, contact your local TV news channel or newspaper reporters. That will bring it to the mayor's attention who'll in turn hopefully change the police's attitute. Take care of yourself. Wish you the best.

Did the police have a bad attitude? I didn't see that in the original post. Sometimes cops do take a very pro-active role in going after drivers who hit cyclists. See this case from the US Supreme Court from two months ago. http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/03pdf/02-1060.pdf. A hit-and-run driver killed a cyclist late at night. The cops set up road blocks exactly one week later to try to get information from drivers who may have been going to or from work when the cyclist was killed. The surrounding publicity led to an arrest.

Did the police have a bad attitude? I didn't see that in the original post. Sometimes cops do take a very pro-active role in going after drivers who hit cyclists. See this case from the US Supreme Court from two months ago. http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/03pdf/02-1060.pdf. A hit-and-run driver killed a cyclist late at night. The cops set up road blocks exactly one week later to try to get information from drivers who may have been going to or from work when the cyclist was killed. The surrounding publicity led to an arrest.

I didn't mean to attack/offend police. But in general, biker safety issue is overlooked in most cities. Therefore, being little "loud" or proactive is important in my opinion. Getting public attention is also important since people who are watching/reading the news will be driving their cars the next day, so it helps raise public's awareness for bicycle safety issues. I personally don't want to wait till someone really gets killed when riding bicycle which is way too serious of an issue for anyone including police to ignore after the fact. I'd rather see drivers out there having mutual respect for bikers. And police attitude toward all bike accidents is key to shaping everyone else's attitude.

I didn't mean to attack/offend police. But in general, biker safety issue is overlooked in most cities. Therefore, being little "loud" or proactive is important in my opinion. Getting public attention is also important since people who are watching/reading the news will be driving their cars the next day, so it helps raise public's awareness for bicycle safety issues. I personally don't want to wait till someone really gets killed when riding bicycle which is way too serious of an issue for anyone including police to ignore after the fact. I'd rather see drivers out there having mutual respect for bikers. And police attitude toward all bike accidents is key to shaping everyone else's attitude.

I agree that cops sometimes neglect biker safety. But we need to look at the facts before attacking individual officers. When cops do neglect bike safety, we should vigorously (and thoughtfully) pursue official and unofficial complaints.

I agree that cops sometimes neglect biker safety. But we need to look at the facts before attacking individual officers. When cops do neglect bike safety, we should vigorously (and thoughtfully) pursue official and unofficial complaints.
Daily Commute,

I agree with you wholeheartedly. That's the exact reason why I said in my original post that pursue other ways of getting attention "if the police is reluctant to take your case seriously."

[QUOTE=Wasatch_commute] If your local police department's reluctant and casual to pursue your case seriously, contact your local TV news channel or newspaper reporters. QUOTE]

This is the statement I was responding to about the cops. I'm glad the misunderstanding is cleared up.

Check your bike for ANY colors that don't belong, you can get at least the color of the car. Plus if there's paint that came off your bike in an area that the car hit, there's another clue for the authorities.

It'll be a great help if you can tell the cops who can then alert local car shops about a certain color of car with damage and marks of a certain color, should make nailing the scum a lot easier!

Thats a bad deal , lets hope that the cops take it seriously & make a real effort to find the @rsehole but in the mean time don't let it eat you up, direct your efforts to getting healed !!