In today’s KC Star, columnist Mike Hendricks talks about the a gap in the law that many motorists are able to drive right through… You see, it’s hard to prosecute someone for homicide, manslaughter, or whatever. The evidence of driver intent necessary for a conviction is often hard to come by in car/bike wrecks. The result is that motorists often get off with just a simple traffic ticket.

The Missouri Bicycle Federation has been working on a solution over the past couple of years, which involves creating a new level of penalties somewhere in between lowly traffic violations and more serious murder charges. With the help of cyclist and State Representative Mike Sutherland, MBF hopes to introduce legislation for the 2008 General Assembly. MBF has a lobbyist in Jeff City working this issue and the rest of its legislative platform, but it ain’t cheap. As always, you can help further the federation’s advocacy efforts with your donations.

Posted on Thu, Aug. 16, 2007

Tougher penalties needed when driver error takes a life

By MIKE HENDRICKS

I didn’t know either of them. But I still felt duty-bound to haul my bike to Longview Lake for this week’s memorial ride in honor of Larry and Sierra Gaunt.Hard telling how many cyclists turned out on the hottest day of the year for that somber spin. Estimates ranged from 100 to 659.

Whatever the number, it was an impressive armada of two-wheelers.

“That’s by far the largest turnout we’ve had at one of these rides,” Brent Hugh of the Missouri Bicycle Federation told me. “This thing with the grandfather and granddaughter, it really touched a lot of people.”

That “thing” was the horrible accident on Aug. 6. While training for next month’s MS 150, Larry Gaunt, 59, and his 14-year-old granddaughter Sierra Gaunt were rammed from behind by a pickup.

Both cyclists died. A spokesman for the Jackson County prosecutor’s office told me the case remains under review.

But almost two weeks after the loss, we don’t know much more than that. Just that two more people have joined the list of nearly two dozen cyclists killed on Kansas City area streets in the past five years.

In that, the memorial ride was fitting. Though the next morning, I called Hugh to ask whether these observances ever accomplish anything.

“One thing that’s come from the previous ones is this Share the Road Task Force,” he said hopefully.

Following a rash of cycling deaths last summer, a group made up of local officials, police departments and bicycle/pedestrian advocates formed.

That led to a publicity campaign promoting road safety and work to certify an investigator who could specialize in bike and pedestrian accidents.

There’s also an effort to step up enforcement of traffic laws.

But it’s not nearly enough, we both agreed. And the hope out at the ride Wednesday was that maybe, just maybe, this tragedy will bring real change.

“We need some new laws in place,” Hugh said.

Tougher laws that would let everyone know there are serious consequences when someone dies or is injured due to a motorist’s act of carelessness or worse.

Now in both Missouri and Kansas, that’s not always the case. The punishment is often either a slap on the wrist or else you get the book thrown at you. There’s not much in between, especially in the Show Me State, where the wrist slap is meted out regularly.

Consider a couple of local cases where driver error was involved.

Last August, Susan Brewer was riding her bike to work in Liberty when she was struck from behind. The driver said he never saw her in the morning glare. Accidents happen.

But consider that Brewer was riding on the shoulder and that the driver was ticketed for failure to drive within the marked lanes.

In short, if the driver had stayed on the main roadway, Brewer, 45, might have lived to see 46.

Yet his only punishment was a $200 fine after pleading to a reduced charge of defective equipment.

Then there’s the case of Pei Chen, the UMKC music student who was run over in a Kansas City crosswalk four years ago.

The 19-year-old driver who hit Chen was ticketed for driving around a line of cars that had stopped to let Chen cross the street.

The penalty in that case: probation and community service.

Of course, some will argue that drivers pay with a lifetime of guilt. Plus they can wind up paying civil damages.

But to get the motoring public’s attention, we need harsher legal penalties when driver error is involved in taking a life. Something more than the wrist slap and less than vehicular manslaughter, as prosecutors won’t normally bring the felony charge without proof of intent or impairment. (In Kansas, it can also be prosecuted as a misdemeanor.)

So the Missouri Bicycle Federation is lobbying for increased fines, suspensions and jail time where a moving violation results in injury or death.

It wouldn’t be only to protect bicyclists. The victim could be someone riding a motorcycle, walking down a street or riding in a car or truck.

Pushing such a bill in Jefferson City is Rep. Mike Sutherland, a Warrenton Republican and a cyclist.

“I’m trying to get the penalty to be stiffer,” he said. “Finding something in the middle might be the appropriate thing to do.”

Appropriate and long overdue. After all, just think how you’d feel to learn, as Brewer’s sister Linda Babcock did, that in the eyes of the law your loved one’s life was worth a mere couple of hundred bucks and nothing more.

“It seems like so little for a life taken,” she said.

To reach Mike Hendricks, call 816-234-7708 or send e-mail to mhendricks@kcstar.com.