from Baltimore Brew by Fern Shen <\/p>\n
The lawyer for the family of a comatose Johns Hopkins University student, critically injured while riding his bicycle last month in north Baltimore, said the family\u2019s $10 million lawsuit against the driver whose car struck him is meant to send a strong message to motorists.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think she\u2019ll be (criminally) charged and I\u2019m not sure she should be,\u201d said Andrew G. Slutkin, the lawyer who filed the suit Monday against Jeanette Marie Walke in Baltimore City Circuit Court.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think she intentionally did this, I think she made a mistake,\u201d Slutkin said, referring to the 83-year-old Walke, whose car allegedly struck 20-year-old Nathan Krasnopoler on Feb. 26.<\/p>\n
But Slutkin argued that judgments like the one Krasnopoler\u2019s family is seeking against Walke are the only way to make Baltimore-area roads safer and prevent similar tragedies.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe moral of the story is, we need to better educate motorists about the law and about co-existing on the roads with motorcyclists and pedestrians and bicyclists and everyone else,\u201d he said, in a telephone interview. The suit alleges that Walke violated multiple traffic laws in the late Saturday morning collision.<\/p>\n
Messages left for Walke today were not returned.<\/p>\n
No charges have been filed against Walke. Police have not completed their investigation into the crash, according to Shonte Drake, deputy communications director for the Baltimore City State\u2019s Attorney, who said that media reports that police met to discuss the case today with prosecutors are \u201ca misquote.\u201d<\/p>\n
Baltimore city police have backed away from earlier statements that the driver would not be charged and that the cyclist was at fault.<\/p>\n
Until other accounts surface, though, the six-page complaint offers the most detailed scenario yet of what may have happened in the crash that has roiled the cycling community and set off a passionate \u2014 sometimes ugly \u2013 debate among motorists and cyclists about whose behavior most needs to be curbed.<\/p>\n
A University Parkway U-turn?<\/p>\n
According to the Krasnopoler family\u2019s complaint, Nathan was riding his bike northbound on University that day and Walke was driving southbound on University when she \u201cmade a U-turn, and drove past Nathan as both Nathan and Defendant were now traveling northbound on University Parkway approaching 39th St.\u201d<\/p>\n
Walke turned right into the driveway of her apartment building, the Broadview, and cut off Krasnopoler\u2019s right of way, the suit alleges. The suit also claims that Walke \u201cfailed to properly signal\u201d before making the turn into the Broadview driveway.<\/p>\n
The suit says Krasnopoler was unable to stop his bike and was thrown over Walke\u2019s vehicle, which then ran over him, pinning him on his back underneath. Krasnpoler was severely burned because the driver left the car running when it was on top of him, the suit alleges.<\/p>\n
His other injuries include eye damage, facial fractures, broken ribs and collarbone, two collapsed lungs and traumatic brain injury, the suits says. The Johns Hopkins engineering student has remained in a coma since the crash.<\/p>\n
In the phone interview, Slutkin reiterated the suit\u2019s claim that Walke broke several laws, including failure to yield the right of way in a bike lane.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, how much clearer could it be when there is a bike lane and there\u2019s a law that just went into effect three months earlier that protects them?\u201d Slutkin said.<\/p>\n
(He may be referring to a new law that requires motorists to yield the right of way to cyclists when they are in a designated bike lane or to the so-called \u201cthree-foot law,\u201d which says motorists overtaking bicycles \u201cmust pass safely at a distance of not less than 3 feet.\u201d)<\/p>\n
Slutkin\u2019s firm, Silverman, Thompson, Slutkin & White, also handled the case of the family of another cyclist, John R. \u201cJack\u201d Yates, who was killed by a truck turning right off Guilford Avenue in 2009. \u201cIt echoes this case,\u201d Slutkin said.<\/p>\n
The defendants (Potts & Callahan Inc. and the driver of the truck) settled the Yates family\u2019s civil lawsuit for an undisclosed sum. In the Yates case, police also made statements early on that the driver was not at fault. \u201cWe found video and other evidence to prove that was not the case,\u201d Slutkin said.<\/p>\n
He said the firm has spoken with about a dozen people, \u201csome were at the scene, some were there shortly thearefter,\u201d and \u201cpeople tell us (Krasnopoler) wasn\u2019t flying, he wasn\u2019t doing anything unusual, he was in the bike lane going maybe 15 miles an hour. She had passed him right before and must have forgotten about it. She turned, cutting him off and causing him to go flying over the car.\u201d<\/p>\n
Slutkin said even though he knows some cyclists are reckless, most are not and that he finds some peoples\u2019 hostility toward cyclists \u201cespecially in the Sun comments section . . . really annoying.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a lot of people with this terrible animosity toward cyclists,\u201d Slutkin said. \u201cAnd the police have their bias against cyclists too.\u201d from Baltimore Brew by Fern Shen The lawyer for the family of a comatose Johns Hopkins University student, critically injured while riding his bicycle last month in north Baltimore, said the family\u2019s $10 million lawsuit against the driver whose car struck him is meant to send a strong message to motorists. \u201cI don\u2019t think she\u2019ll … <\/p>\n
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