CNN illuminates how the NYPD often fails to investigate drivers who injure bicyclists, especially in hit & run cases.
New York (CNN) — Michelle Matson has a nagging reminder of the cycling crash that could have killed her. A year and a half later, flecks of asphalt remain lodged in her skin.
It’s not just the facts of the incident — or even the tiny particles of debris from the New York City street still in Matson’s body — that have left her upset. It’s what Matson describes as investigative inertia by the New York City Police Department when it came to her case.
“There were no legal repercussions for the driver whatsoever, because the NYPD chose not to investigate the hit-and-run,” Matson said. “It blows my mind that this is even possible … people get in worse trouble for double-parking.”
In 2010, in more than 6,000 New York City traffic accidents involving cyclists, 36 people died, according to the state Department of Motor Vehicles. Transportation Nation reported that no criminal charges were filed against the drivers involved.
One woman — the mother of an artist named Mathieu Lefevre, who was killed on a bike — is on a crusade to learn more about his death and to make roads safer for cyclists. There is a growing sense among the city’s cycling community that to many authorities, bicyclists don’t matter.
“Cyclists and pedestrians are being killed and seriously injured all over our city, once every 35 hours in fact,” New York City Councilman James Vacca said at a hearing this year. “And the drivers are literally getting away with it.”
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