Woman arrested after hit-and-run injures two riders on Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway

Once again the reason why people flee the scene of an accident is because they are drunk. The penalty for hit and run should be higher than the penalty for drinking and driving because it is very rare that someone flees the scene when they aren’t intoxicated.

Thanks to the person who followed her home. This could have gone very differently without that bit of initiative.

Back in December I said this was the best safety improvement in the metro area per dollar spent. Those two feet may have just saved two lives. http://bikeportland.org/2013/12/02/first-look-new-buffered-bike-lanes-on-beaverton-hillsdale-highway-97978#comment-4480537

Keep it up PBOT!

Thanks for the quick thinking of the witnessing driver who took the initiative to follow the perpetrator.

It is less typical for drivers to get caught fleeing a collision with a bicycle since the car has less damage (is more drivable than if it hit another motor vehicle) and the witness (the bicyclist) is often dead or unconscious.

glad someone chased the car down… hope they are well and heal fast, was on that road few weeks back ppl drive fast and wreckless..

My wife tends to allow an unlimited budget for only a couple things, and one of them is bike safety gear. The other is kilts, but that’s not super relevant.

http://fly6.com/

This is a combination taillight and video camera. It shoots 720p video of proceedings behind you, stores a 4-hour loop (more if you put a bigger card in), and if it senses the bike go down it’ll stop after an hour automatically. Plug and play, USB rechargeable…very easy.

Reading too many hit-and-run stories is why I got one of those. Until I have an accident it was just an expensive taillight, but should one occur it’ll pay for itself twenty times over.

Hopefully they take her to civil court and sue her grandchildren into poverty for whatever they can get.

Not to belabor the point, but that location doesn’t make any sense (which I know you admitted). That would be going towards Alpenrose (West towards Shattuck), unless they were doing an extended cool down or something.

Regardless this is bad news. I rode BHH every day for the year we lived in the area and it was always a little bit nerve wracking (and this was pre “buffered” bike lanes).

I hope the Prosecutor throws the book at her, picks the book up, throws it at her again, then sends an intern to go get more books. Why wasn’t she charged under the vulnerable roadway user law? All of those charges listed about should be two counts, shouldn’t they?

yes broadcast this!! but pubic tv only really bashes the person outside an auto.

She has a number of beer photos and drinking related status updates on facebook. https://www.facebook.com/lisa.vesely

This is my neighborhood and I’m embarassed by BHH. Worse than Barbur since its notoriously high-speed traffic is compounded by even more stores and neighborhood streets dumping traffic into the corridor. The buffered bike lane gets some positive press, but an extra 2 feet of air doesn’t soften the blow from a 40 mph auto collision. This is the only relatively flat route throught the area, so obviously it is attractive for bicycle use. The comparatively few cyclists I see on it, however, speaks volumes about its overall continued lack of appeal.
PBOT (or is it ODOT?) can keep their extra paint and instead buy some new lower speed limit signs and traffic enforcement. As it stands, Beaverton Hillsdale HIGHWAY lives up to its name.

such a straight shot to catch the curves tho.. can we get a few less cars pls.. 🙂

Often in situations like this there is a positive impulse to collect money to help the injured party. I’m sure that could never hurt.

What stands out in this situation was the uninvolved 3rd party volunteering to be a material witness in such a way as to ensure positive identification and almost certainly a conviction. This does not usually happen.

While I’d prefer a society where people would automatically stand up for the weak and/or injured empirical evidence plainly shows it ain’t so.

As mercurial & mercenary as it may seem in light of a singular event it might make some good difference if we (the nebulous “bike” community) had a fund to reward witnesses who came forward with solid evidence thay leads to a conviction

Get a few thousand bicycle riders to pay in $1 per month, invest it in slow “safe” bonds, have the fund and payouts administered by a pro-bike legal firm and offer rewards in the $5,000 – $10,000 range for witnesses that are willing to step forward and testify to what they saw.

It’s ridiculous and sad that we’ve come to a place like this but the only reason this article stands out from all the others is because an uninvolved 3rd party stepped up and did good for no reward.

Imagine how many more we could get with a little cash incentive.
Imagine how paranoid absent-minded drivers might be about helmet cameras.
Now imagine what $10,000 does to an average person’s willingness to rat out a driver who does something injurious when the witnessing driver doesn’t know for certain who is at fault.
Only so many people can afford helmet cameras; our roads

Man, to start off the day with a video like that so-called ‘cop’ posted, and then to see this horrible news, I’m gonna have nightmares tonight. Maybe this lady watched that thing?? Sorry, I shouldn’t speculate – just thankful not the worst possible outcome, and hopeful that there’s quick and full recovery – and justice served.

Hit and Run: Lifetime drivers license revocation.
DUI first offense: Lifetime drivers license revocation.

Driving is a privilege, not a right.

Think they will drive anyway. Maybe not for long. Portland police now scan 128,000 license plates a day with automated plate scanners. But they are mostly looking for stolen cars. We need them to start looking for cars owned by people with suspended or revoked licenses. This would make it very difficult to drive with a suspended or revoked license.

http://www.kgw.com/news/Portland-Police-scan-128000-license-plates-a-day-216090771.html

where did I say “lock her up”…I said “sue the hell out of her”.

but your big-picture, PC view of the situation does little to financially compensate the two riders who were hit for their time lost, medical bills, future losses, etc. Time is money, and his woman just stole a lot of it from two people.

Any support for banning booze?

Spiffy
whenever I drive on BHH I feel like everybody hates me because I’m doing the speed limit and people are on my ass and passing my doing 10+ mph over the limit… it’s in serious need of traffic calming and enforcement…
Recommended 1

Plus 1 on that! I’m new to the Hillsdale area and noticed almost immediately people drive way faster than the speed limit on BHH… figured I was in the “Socal” transplant area of town… lol

“What if the other income earner needs that vehicle to remain employed?”

In cases where there is no other income earner, what happens if the only income earner commits a crime that gets them incarcerated for more than 30 days, and then they lose their job while they are in jail? Is this not just as bad, if not worse than confiscating a car? If incarceration of a sole income-earner for a family is worse than confiscation of a car from a family, then it should be the case that the crime committed to incur incarceration should be “worse” than whatever gets a license revoked. So we then have a question of when is some arbitrary infraction/crime “bad enough” to merit harming an entire family unit for the sake of sanctioning one member.

Is hit-and-run, with subsequent driving while revoked “bad enough”? Is DUI, with subsequent driving while revoked “bad enough”? Vehicular manslaughter, a traffic crime, must be “bad enough”, since people go to jail for that—is Vehicular Manslaughter worth harming an entire family in exchange for retribution on the perpetrator?

I’m sure she’s a “nice person” in other contexts, but when you assault two people with a deadly weapon and run away — drunk or sober — you get very little sympathy for me.

Oregonian has the story today on Lisa Vesely’s felony conviction and sentence:

30 days in jail. http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2014/11/drunken_driver_who_struck_sout.html

Vesely works as a caregiver. Doesn’t have much money. Stands to reason that, as she says she is, she’s broke, from hiring a lawyer. Let’s hope she stays off the sauce from here on out.