d2sk

I'm so mad! My son was riding home from the ice rink and was struck by a car pulling out of the parking lot. It messed up his front tire and brake and broke his front and rear light. The person(s) who hit him left the scene of the accident without stopping to see if he was OK. He went up on the hood of the car that hit him and then landed in a lane of traffic narrowly escaping a secondary impact from a mini-van (these folks at least stopped to see if he was OK). He's 16 and wasn't really thinking and didn't bother to tell us until the next day. He only had some road rash and the dinged up bike. To add insult to injury the police department refused to take a police report since "no one was injured" and we were reporting it a day late. Tempe has video cameras at every interesection, I would have thought they could have viewed the tapes.

I'm steamed.

CB HI

Same as Honolulu, Tempe likely has a law or policy that the traffic cameras may only be used to monitor traffic flow and may not be used by the police or any other investigator.
Glad your son is not seriously hurt and I share your feelings about police that will not do their jobs in situations like this.

San Rensho 

What about the criminal violation of hit and run? Are they just blowing that off too?

I would take this up the chain of command. Sounds like lazy cops that don't want to be bothered.

d2sk

Excellent idea! Thank you.

gosmsgo

Was he riding the right way down the street....on the right side of the road?

d2sk

He was going with the flow of traffic on the right side.

gosmsgo

Was it at or near dark and if so did he have lights?

These are the two main reasons it seems this happens in our town. In fact it seems that 90% of crashes occur after dark when the cyclists did not have any lights.

littlewaywelt

ask for a sergeant.
that's bs.
hit and run, even without injury is a serious crime.

donnamb 

Hit and runs are disgusting, no matter what the circumstances.

gosmsgo

They definetely are.

This summer we had two hit and runs both of which were the cyclists fault or the cyclists were at least doing things we would advice against.

One girl was riding on a busy 4 lane street at about 1 am without any lights and the other was riding on the sidewak.

I sometimes think that otherwise decent people hit a bike and just freak out. They should definetely stop and should recieve a felony if ever caught. Neither of these two were ever caught so I guess it was a good plan for them.

This weekend we had two pedestrians hit by a car and the driver took off down the interstate. He was later caught because the entire front of his car was smashed in and his windshield was caved in.

d2sk

Ah, yes. It was just after dusk, he had on a front blinking white light and a rear blinking red light. In addition he had side reflectors on each wheel.

gosmsgo

cool.

Sounds like the other person was just flat out wrong.

Not that it was your sons fault but I just feel like giving a tip out here.

I ride virtually every night and I used to have people pull out in front of me or beside me all the time. I have since bought an $18.00 headlamp from walmart and it works great. When I am traveling down the street and I see a car approaching a stop sign beside me I just turn my head and shine my light directly at them. This has worked 100% of the time so far. THose blinky leds are hard to see from the side and every little bit helps.

Clearly this motorist was wrong but a headlamp might jsut help the next time.

Servo888

Pure non-sense; reports are necessary as a proof of an accident, injury or not you should not be refused a report.

noisebeam

It also sounds like there was injury, although perhaps minor. What about property damage?

Al

d2sk

Thanks to everyone who has provided great advice on this thread. I agree that the police should take a report! I've fixed my son's bike and I'm upgrading the lighting system. He refuses to ride now, he's afraid and I don't really blame him -- I'll try to get him back in the saddle again very soon. I'm going to call the PD back today and insist that they take a report if for no other reason than to document the hit-and-run, even if they are ultimately unable to make any type of identification of the motorist.

I've also decided to author a law in hopes that one of our Arizona law makers will sponsor it. The law will ultimately escalate any hit-and-run to a felony level with mandatory prison time. This would be in addition to any penalty that may have resulted from an collission to begin with. "ACCIDENT" or "NOT" leaving the scene of an accident is criminal/coward behavior that should be dealt with very strongly.

This past weekend in Phoenix there were at least 3 "failure to render assistance/leaving the scene of accident" type events. One of which resulted in the death of a five year old.

I'll keep you guys updated if you are interested.

Thank you again.

Pat

The Human Car

First off, road rash is an injury.

Go down to the police station and try to file a report in person, if they still refuse get names.

If the ice rink is in you neighborhood association then get them involved otherwise write to your elected reps. Also get the League of American Bicyclists involved, Tempe is a high rated Bicycle Friendly City and stuff like this can have a negative impact on their rating.