Citation issued to driver who backed into bicycle rider on North Tillamook

Something is not quite right about this backing in to a parking space story. The photo shows the jeep with the bike wedged underneath right in front of the stop sign. The entire side of the street is clear of cars except for the cop car. If the driver wanted to park there they could have just pulled over in to a spot while moving forward. To back up to this spot they would have had to been in the middle of Williams when they decided to reverse. It makes more sense that they were trying some kind of three point u-turn. Either way, I would be in favor of crushing the jeep as punishment, future generations will thank us.

I’m thinking that “sign” on the construction fence likely says “No parking”, so it does make some kind of sense that they may have been backing up. But it does look like they are pretty far forward in the street, I’ll give you that.

I just rode by this location and the entire fenced lot along both Tillamook and Williams is marked with no parking signs, so he would have to have been backing up for an entire block before he would have come to a legal parking space.

Citation for careless driving and released. Case closed.

A few things:

The man driving the Jeep didn’t just back into the woman, he backed over her. She was under his Jeep with her bicycle before EMS came. She was positioned in the middle of her lane and not in a “parking space.”

It is surprising that he passed a field sobriety test and it would be interesting to know if a breath test was administered. If you look at the photo, you may notice a bottle of wine or beer in a paper bag that happened to show up under his car before the police came. It was actually standing up under the Jeep before this picture was taken.

The woman’s injuries were very painful. Maybe not “life threatening,” but potentially will require a long time to recover. They could have been much worse.

I imagine this was very traumatic both physically and psychologically, and I hope that the woman is doing well, now.

The driver was clearly negligent and I don’t trust him to drive safely. If we could collectively grasp the harm caused by careless drivers, we would have laws that would stop this man from driving again and encourage other drivers to be responsible.

Or meds. But I’ve seen too many drivers (and not so few cyclists and pedestrians too) who are so focused on moving by whatever mode they are using that they are seemingly oblivious to everything else, even people, things, and animals outside of their comfort zone. Cars more or less parked in the middle of intersections, the driver staring at their phone (directions?, a text?, a cute kitten video?), other drivers playing Pokemon (pointing their phones in odd directions while driving), and other equally odd behavior. So I’d say it’s possible that the Jeep driver might not have been intoxicated but simply oblivious. And clearly should not have been behind their driving wheel.

So a careless driving citation was issued, AND a VRU was injured to the point of being transported to the hospital… so it would be interesting to find out how many hours of community service will be prescribed by the judge when this case comes to court…

I hate Jeep’s. You know, the driver would be going to the pokey if he wasn’t driving. Just saying …