Posted on 01/04/2012 9:57:47 AM PST by smokingfrog
A wheelchair-bound woman crossing a city street in Wilmington, Delaware, was struck and killed by a series of three vehicles that all fled the scene.
Police were hunting on Wednesday for three drivers wanted in the hit-and-run death of Edith McFarland, 58, of Wilmington.
She was trying to get across South Market Street, a busy road near the Fairview Inn, where she had been living for the past three months, when she was struck at 6:35 p.m. on Tuesday, Delaware State Police said.
"After the impact, McFarland was ejected from her wheelchair into the southbound lanes of South Market Street, where she was then struck by two additional vehicles," investigators said in a statement.
Police said the disabled woman was hit first by a gold truck or SUV. All three drivers fled the scene without stopping.
(Excerpt) Read more at kfor.com ...
I think those people should be required to have flags, reflective material and bright blinking lights so we can see them during the day and especially at night.
Hell, I’d even be willing to subsidize them with a .000001% tax to install them.
(can’t believe I actually agreed to that but there it is. They really bug me that go out and expect us to see them. They are below eyesight and many times I thought they were a Mailbox)
Be a fountain, not a drain.
LOL
Stealing for personal use. Nuttin you can do about it either. /s
I like that.
I watched a city bus (not a school bus) drop off 30 eight year olds. They scattered into the traffic without so much as a glance. They’re taught that the cars have to stop, so you don’t have to look out for them.
When this went down I was a commuter in the DC Metro area. I had a 90-minute drive every night after work. I was often exhausted and frankly not at my best by the time I passed this spot in the evening. I did not usually have a passenger, but as it happened, that night I did.
Yep. A former manager of mine and a huge fitness nut was riding his bicycle at warp speed along the right side of an urban street with no shoulder. He was passing a line of stationary vehicles at a red light. The passenger in one of those vehicles opened thier door to step out (after all, who expects a bike to be hurtling down the 18" space between car and curb?) My manager hit the open door and his body went THROUGH the passenger window. He survived with a concussion and a cracked cervical vertebrae. His very expensive bike was squashed like Play-Doh. I think the passenger had a broken hand.
Bottom line was this guy never thought the accident was his fault.
There is some kind of smug self-rigthousness hormone that riding a bicycle stimulates. I won't regal you with my war stories. I do recall one sixty-ish guy at work who was over weight and slightly lame. Seemed he was a real fitness enthusiast, who kept winding up recovering from bicycle-car accidents that were - wait for it - NOT HIS FAULT!
BTW, know how many motorcyclist get killed and maimed when a driver opens the driver side door?
I've never seen any visibility aids of any kind on a wheelchair.
I’m just saying it really is possible.
It really is, and this isn’t the first time an incident like this happened in Wilmington, Delaware. Unless you are under narcotics/alcohol influence, you would be capable of perceiving that something hit your car, or at least scraped against the side of it. The question is whether or not it is your conditioned response to survey the damage to your car and whatever you hit, or to keep on going.
Road noise would mask this? Sheesh.
Having hit deer with a van, I could hear the sound of the deer being hit, or scraping against the broadside of the car, despite the various noises around me. I could also feel it by how it jerked. I would assume a deer is comparable in mass to a woman in a wheelchair (75-150lbs?) if not slightly less, so I would have a hard time figuring if how I could feel myself hitting a deer with a minivan, how someone couldn’t feel their car or van hit a woman.
Maybe my problem is that I’ve seen the effects of DWA in the Seattle area.
Never underestimate the capacity of human beings to be sincerely stupid or oblivious to things about which you are extremely sensitive or perceptive.
And that is even without drugs.
Well, I will admit that most of this is based on my assumptions that hitting a woman is comparable to hitting a deer on the road, which has happened to me twice. I felt the impact one time because the deer literally leaped out into the road and landed in my lane, the lucky part for me was the fact that I wasn’t moving very fast when this happened,however, I did feel the impact with my car. The other time I felt the deer scrape against the side of the car, not the same, but I heard and felt it too. Given the mass of a deer, and the mass of a woman in a wheelchair, I have a tough time thinking that it would be imperceptible if you struck an object of given mass such as a woman in a wheelchair and couldn’t feel it.
My monies on Mexico, I’ve got 100 bucks on the beaners driving muy Macho
Mexican males. Est muy macho!
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