Glancing down to check a text while driving may seem harmless, but it’s illegal and can be deadly; as it recently was when cyclist Robin Ames, 37, was struck and killed by a woman who told police she didn’t see him because she was looking at her phone.
“I’m devastated by this loss,” said Ames’ friend Michael Simms, 41. “As a cyclist, drivers who are choosing to use their cell phones and be distracted and drive at the same time is a big fear.”
Simms met Ames around 2011 or 2012 and the two quickly became friends based on their love of the outdoors and similar upbringing. Simms was raised in Calhoun County and Ames in Gilmer.
“It’s hard to use words to describe somebody that was this great,” Simms said. “He was just, for anybody that would have met him or known him, he was a joy to be around.”
He described Ames as kind, caring, energetic, enthusiastic and “incredibly smart.”
On Wednesdays, Ames and others, such as JR Petsko, a daily bike rider, cycled about 37 miles on the rail trail to Kirby, Pa., and back to Morgantown.
Petsko said Ames’ death has gotten the attention of the entire cycling community, which has been increasingly aware of the dangers of distracted driving over the last several years as cell phones have become more common — to the point where road cycling has declined.
“Something we feared has come true,” Petsko said. “If you were to ask me five years ago, I’d ride anywhere in Morgantown and not think twice.”
Petsko said an older gentleman he spoke with compared distracted driving now to drunk driving several decades ago. It was a big problem and the community, law enforcement and society came together making DUI both illegal and socially unacceptable.
Now, the focus needs to be on discouraging distracted driving. Under West Virginia code, the penalty for a first time distracted driving ticket is a $100 fine. The fine increases to $200 for a second offense and $300 for a third. Third and subsequent offenses can also add three points to a driver’s license.
Simms said those penalties aren’t enough and he is going to work to change the law to something more appropriate and will push for legislation called Robin’s law. He hopes to educate the public and make distracted driving an important issue.
“Too many people are picking up their phones and choosing to drive on their phones,” he said.
For comparison, a first offense DUI can result in a suspended driver’s license for six months and up to six months in jail.
Distracted driving isn’t all that different from drinking and driving in terms of impairment, said Amy Boggs, pedestrian and bicycle safety coordinator for the Governor’s Highway Safety Program.
Both staring at a screen and driving drunk affect the ability to control the deadly weapon that is a vehicle, she said.
Boggs said one of the biggest problems with combating distracted driving is collecting the data. A lot of times drivers won’t admit they were on their phone because that would be admitting fault, so the number of collisions because of distracted driving is underreported.
“We know it’s a problem. We just don’t have the data to back it up,” Boggs said. “The crash data just doesn’t reflect how often distraction is an issue in crashes.”
Bikes have a right to be on the road
“We’re allowed to be there,” Simms said.
WV State Code, Chapter 17C, Article 11 states, in part, “Every person riding a bicycle upon a roadway shall be granted all of the rights and shall be subject to all of the duties applicable to the driver of a vehicle by this chapter.”
A Governor’s Highway Safety Program rules of the road pamphlet states, “bicycles are vehicles and should be treated as such.”
Other rules of the road for motorists include maintaining a safe distance from a bike, allowing bikes to ride near the center of a lane on narrow roads, not passing bikers to make an immediate right hand turn, not harassing or taunting cyclists and leaving three feet of space when passing a cyclist and doing so at a “safe and reduced speed.”
“Sometimes with drivers, their attitude towards cyclists are less than human and I just want to remind people that the folks riding bicycles have families, they have children and people that care about them. Just because we’re riding on the road doesn’t make our lives less valuable,” Petsko said.
Ames left behind a wife and two young daughters.
Simms set up a GoFundMe to raise money for Ames’ family to ease the burden of medical expenses, funeral expenses and to help them transition to a single-income household.
As of Friday, more than 280 donors had contributed over $31,000 of the fundraiser’s $50,000 goal.
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