Posted on 05/12/2007 5:53:09 PM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
A white paneled delivery truck ran over a UW-Madison graduate student's head on Division Street Friday afternoon and, except for a concussion, he wasn't hurt.
Ryan Lipscomb, 26, said he was riding his bicycle pretty fast down the East Isthmus Bike Path where it parallels Eastwood Drive on Madison's east side just before 3 p.m. Eastwood had a green light, so the crosswalk for the bike path showed a white walk sign, Lipscomb said.
He saw the large truck, the kind that usually makes deliveries to offices, coming down Eastwood, preparing to make a right turn onto Division Street. Lipscomb said he could tell the truck wasn't going to stop. So Lipscomb slammed on his breaks, flipping his bike and throwing himself into the street. He landed right at the intersection of Eastwood and Division.
The truck ran over his head.
"I didn't see it coming, but I sure felt it roll over my head. It feels really strange to have a truck run over your head."
His helmet, a Giro, was crushed, but Lipscomb's head was fine.
Madison Police Department Sgt. Chris Boyd said the officer at the scene urged Lipscomb to keep the helmet. He did. It is all flattened and mangled and broken, unlike his head.
Even though the truck did not stop, Boyd initially refused to call the incident a hit-and-run. She said the police were not sure that the truck driver knew that someone had been hit. But Sgt. Bernie Gonzalez said later in the evening that the accident report calls it a hit-and-run.
Lipscomb agrees with Gonzalez.
"The truck driver definitely would have known. You know when you run over a curb and my head was definitely higher than a curb." Moreover, Lipscomb said, he was already in the street as the truck was turning. "He had to have seen me."
He was taken to University Hospital, but was released by about 6 p.m. "I'm OK except for a concussion," he said Friday night about 10 p.m.
He better hope he is. Lipscomb, who is studying medical physics in the School of Medicine, has an exam Monday and another Tuesday.
This is not his only brush with headache-causing fame this spring. Lipscomb is the treasurer of the UW-Madison Teaching Assistants' Association's political action committee. Mike Quieto, who worked as a limited-term election aid in the City Clerk's Office in March and April, is accused of forging Lipscomb's name three times to the organization's campaign finance report. The Ethics Board is tentatively scheduled to hear the case later this month.
And next week, Bike to Work Week begins. But Lipscomb didn't say whether he was going to get back on the saddle on Monday.
I agree about the ugly peach-pits. However, as a neurologist who has worked with chronic head-injury patients, it is my strong belief that these should be prevented, if possible. Helmets do that, in a large number of cases, including the one reported here. I understand that some people take the position that the government should not force people to wear helmets and I think that is a good point, provided that the unhelmeted have saved up several million dollars to pay for someone to feed, clothe and diaper them for the rest of their lives if they suffer a severe head injury that they could have prevented.
Since many of the brain damaged do not become organ donors or have millions of dollars to fund this care, but instead linger on for years in a semi-concious and totally dependant state, usually at taxpayer expense, it is reasonable to require the use of helmets.
Reminds me of these stupid Honda Civics and Mitsubishi whatevers with the Briggs Stratton engines that sound like lawnmowers...that have those huge metal stablizers mounted on the trunk.
I guess they need them to keep the car from leaving the ground.
It could be worse....the giant fluorescent peach-pits could be fitted with huge metal stabilizers....we should be grateful, I suppose.
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