CO Needs a Vulnerable Road User Bill
Colorado is currently considered a Vulnerable Road User Bill. In March, I testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Since then, it has made it through the Senate Finance Committee, Senate Appropriations Committee, and Committee of the Whole Senate. Today it is being heard by the House Health Committee and I will go to Congress again with Triny (another cyclist who was hit in a crash after mine) to testify. Below is my notes for what I will say this afternoon. It isn't edited the way I would for my writing, but I think it important to share anyway.
My name is Adelaide Perr. I’m a vulnerable road user and I’m here asking you to vote yes on HB-175.
Today is day one for a young woman in North Boulder. I got home from a run this morning and saw my husband a few hundred feet away, standing by the street as someone was loaded into an ambulance. When he walked over to me I hugged him. As he cried, he said the woman looked like me. He said she her eyes were rolling back in her head and it looked as though she was trying to move her arm. She was bleeding from her face. I’m here because this is important, but I’m worried about my husband who is at home suffering from PTSD today.
In 2014, I was the one on a bike ride, when a driver ran a stop sign and pulled abruptly into my lane of traffic. I was going downhill and didn’t have enough time to stop. My wheels skidded out from underneath me and I went through the driver’s side window. The last thing I remember from that day was hearing an EMT say, “Her face is peeled off.” The entire left side of my face was shattered, teeth broken, and my skin was what they call degloved -- it was ripped from my lip all the way behind my ear. My boyfriend was supposed to meet me midway through my ride. When he came across the scene I had been taken away. My injuries were so severe that nobody could tell him whether or not I was alive.
I went through two major surgeries, was in a sedated coma for five days, and spent 11 days in intensive care, which ran up a bill of $251,000. When I got out it took a long time to figure out what the traffic penalty was for the driver. He was charged with careless driving causing bodily injury. I didn’t understand why it wasn’t considered reckless driving so I asked to the deputy DA. She told me that for reckless driving the DA has to prove, “wanton and willful disregard for a person’s safety.” She told me that was very hard to prove in bike v. car crashes and that she couldn’t do anything to change the law. Her example of reckless driving was a person doing donuts in an empty parking lot, even though they are only endangering themselves and property versus putting people at risk on the road like the driver in my case did.
The driver who hit me had 17 traffic infractions, had caused 4 crashes, and had previously been listed as a habitual traffic offender. However, after my crash he only received 4 points on his license, meaning he could go out and cause two more serious crashes that year before his license would get revoked by the DMV.
The day I was hit, I didn’t own a car and commuted by bike. Due to my injuries, I immediately lost my mode of transportation. Even now that I ride again, I will probably always own a car because some days my PTSD is too severe to ride. I think it is appropriate to take away a person’s license after they have harmed someone with their vehicle.
The first night I was in a sedated coma, my boyfriend proposed to me. I’m not just asking for your support on HB-175 to keep me safe. Every day that my husband leaves for a bike ride, I make sure to give him a kiss because I worry he is going to be killed. Please help keep unsafe drivers off the roads and make the consequences for injuring someone severe.