A bicyclist died Thursday morning after being hit by a car in Miami Gardens, officials say.
Emergency responders were called to the scene at 6:15 a.m. near Miami Gardens Drive and U.S. 441 after a driver in a black Nissan lost control of their car near Northwest 182nd Street. The car went off the road into trees before landing on a side access road, hitting the bicyclist.
The bicyclist died at the scene, according to reporting from The Miami Herald.
Any pedestrian crossing the street on U.S. 1 or trekking down the sidewalk on Kendall Drive during rush hour knows to remain vigilant. Drivers in Miami have been known to text behind the wheel, speed, take traffic laws as suggestions and honk when unnecessary. The joke that Miami’s distracted drivers don’t know what they are doing is shared among coworkers, friends and grocery store clerks alike with a disapproving shake of their heads.
It is only when there is a horrific and violent crash that cannot be undone that the chuckling stops and people are reminded of just how dangerous the roads can be.
What happened?
Among South Florida bicyclists, Key Biscayne is known for its perfect cycling area with approximately 5 miles of straight scenic roadway. Every day around sunrise and sunset, large groups of cyclists make their way up and down Virginia Key and Key Biscayne, located just two minutes from Downtown Miami.
This is exactly what our client was doing one October morning before a tragic incident with a motor vehicle caused him to sustain permanent injuries and surgery. Our client was lawfully riding his bicycle westbound on the Rickenbacker Causeway in the designated bicycle lane. At the same time, an Officer with Coral Gables Police Department, Officer Robert H. Thomson was driving his police car westbound on the Rickenbacker Causeway in the vehicle lane. Inexplicably and without warning, Officer Thomson cut off our client by making a right turn and crossing over the bicycle lane, which caused our client to collide with another cyclist and fall off his bicycle.
In November, attorneys with the firm filed suit against the City. Litigation is currently ongoing.
According to Broward Sheriff’s Office, a bicyclist was killed today after he was hit by a cement truck near Davie Boulevard. The authorities have not revealed the circumstances of this latest fatal bicyclist accident, but one can reasonably suspect that the truck driver did not see the bicyclist, or did not see the bicyclist with enough time to avoid fatally striking the victim.
Last year, Leesfield & Partners began its “Share the Road” campaign, by promoting the same message on its U.S.1 signage as illustrated below. This campaign was born out of the necessary collective realization that Florida is the most lethal state in the nation for bicyclists. South Florida alone has reported over 2500 bicyclist accidents in 2014. A trend that is continually increasing by all measures. Florida leads the nation in fatalities with 119 in 2014, which rounds up the number of bicyclists killed on the road to over 550 between 2010 and 2014.
This epidemic has not been curbed by community leaders, politics, policies, or fines and criminal penalties. If a change does come in the future, it will have to be triggered by a collective behavior modification of drivers throughout the entire state of Florida. The tragedy that occurred today is even more personal to Leesfield & Partners because it is eerily similar to a recent case where friends of members of our lawfirm were involved in a bicycle accident with a truck. In that case, the incident was caused by a distracted truck driver who decided to take his eyes off the road to adjust his GPS and failed to avoid two bicyclists whom he struck with incredible force and violence that it permanently changed two innocent lives.
Early this morning, two bicyclists were ran over by a motor vehicle in Key Biscayne. Police has advised that the driver who struck the bicyclists fled the scene, yet investigators have since indicated that the alleged driver was currently in custody.
There are very few details to date about the incident other than it occurred at around 5:30 A.M. and that the fatally struck bicyclist was in the right lane of the Rickenbacker Causeway near Crandon Park Marina. The other bicyclist, whose health condition remains unknown, was transported by ambulance to the hospital. Both families have a civil claim against the driver, and any other potential and non-obvious defendants.
Sadly fatal accidents of bicyclists in Key Biscayne is nothing new to authorities and to our law firm. In 2012, Aaron Cohen was on his bicycle on the Rickenbacker Causeway with his friend Enda Welsh, when he was also struck by a motorist, Michele Traverso. Much like today’s incident, Traveso fled the scene only to surrender himself 18 hours later. By the time Traverso was in custody, police could no longer garner evidence that Traverso was intoxicated at the time of the incident, and therefore could not possibly charge him with a DUI. Traverso was ultimately sentenced for less than two years behind bar for leaving the scene of a fatal accident.
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