I was nearly killed riding my bicycle this month in Orinda.

Chirag Asaravala 

A driver hurrying to get on the freeway struck me with her new white Corolla. The impact threw me several feet up the road and headfirst onto the hot asphalt. As other cyclists arrived to help me, she sat in her car, still looking impatient.

When she finally exited her vehicle, I instinctively yelled at her out of anger and shock, and commanded her to wait for the police — but she didn’t. She left in exactly the way she arrived, in a rush and leaving no identification.

Within minutes, police arrived and took statements and pictures. I gave them the license plate number as I had managed to take a picture as she drove off.  But, to my dismay, they didn’t go after her or alert other police in the area.

There I was with my shoulder, arm and hand bleeding and burning in pain and, as I’d later learn at the emergency room, suffering from a concussion. My bike was mangled, and the driver had left the scene. By fleeing, she had potentially committed a felony hit and run, so why weren’t the cops in hot pursuit?

As I’ve come to learn, if you’re struck by a vehicle while bicycling in California, don’t hold high expectations of law enforcement to achieve justice. Bicycle accidents are simply not a priority unless perhaps you are killed. This was reaffirmed on follow-up calls with the Police Department:

Me: “Have you located the car or driver?”

Officer: “Not yet. We have limited resources. That’s not us, that’s just the state and DA priorities.”

More than 100 cyclists die in traffic accidents each year in California, one of the worst states for bicyclists. A 2018 study found that hit-and-run accidents were on the rise, and most victims of fatal hit-and-run collisions — 65 percent — were pedestrians or cyclists.

So why was this being treated as just another traffic incident?

I called the police department daily for updates. Their approach was deliberately passive: If the vehicle re-entered the city and triggered the license-plate cameras, they’d be notified. But what if the vehicle never returned? It started to feel like it wasn’t just I that was a victim of hit and run, but justice as well.

The vehicle did reappear in Orinda over a week later, and the police pulled over the driver. I was asked, as I had been repeatedly before, “Do you want her arrested?”

Why were they asking me whether to enforce the law? The burden of enforcing the law should not lie on the shoulders of the victim. This was a criminal matter in the interest of public safety — the police need to enforce the law. Asking the victim to make the decision is clouded with bias.

Do I want to send her to jail, to make her life miserable, to take vengeance? Of course not. Some might. I want certainty that she admits fault. And I want her and other drivers to be deterred from endangering cyclists — something only enforcing the law can attain.

Bicyclist safety ought to be given significantly higher priority and seriousness by law enforcement. In every instance where a vehicle and bicycle collide, the bicyclist always has the disadvantage. This is a matter of physics, but it should not be so as a matter of law.

Go after hit-and-run drivers and prosecute them. Investigate all vehicle-vs.-bicycle accidents and reports of drivers who endanger cyclists with aggressive driving. Treat every instance as if the cyclist was killed.

After all, law enforcement doesn’t give a pass to a gunman who failed to kill his victim or a bank robber who only got away with a few dollars. The pursuit of justice ought to be for its sake alone.

Chirag Asaravala is a biotech consultant, opinion writer and essayist living in Alamo.