Cyclist hit by car near Emory puts spotlight on bike safety

ABINGDON, Va. – J.W. Kiser was pedaling along at about 15 mph near the Emory & Henry campus when a maroon car full of teenagers pulled up right beside him. He thought they were trying – successfully – to scare him.

Then they brushed his bright green bicycle. He wobbled, but managed to stay upright as the car sped away.

“It’s lucky you’re not reading about me in the obituaries,” he said.

Kiser, an executive at the First Bank of Virginia in Abingdon, shouted after the car. A kid in the back turned around to look, but they didn’t stop.

Angry, Kiser trailed after them. He figured they were probably students, so he cycled around the campus parking lots. In one, around 200 yards from where he’d been hit, he found it – a maroon Chrysler sedan with Florida tags and bright green paint all the way down its side. He took pictures and called the police.

Kiser said the young driver saw him and ran from beside a dorm, waving his arms and shouting “don’t call, don’t call!” Kiser got out his dog spray and told the boy if he took another step, he’d spray him.

When a Virginia State trooper arrived, Emory & Henry student Joseph Earle, 19, was charged with reckless driving and, later, hit and run with property damage, 1st Sgt. M.R. Willis said.

“I was on a straight stretch: bright sun, bright green bike, red cycling shirt, reflective shoes. There’s no way they didn’t see me,” Kiser said. “People just don’t understand that when you’re on a 17 pound bike and they’re in a 3,500 pound car, there’s really no way for the cyclist to win that. If you bump them, or even just scare them, they could lose control, hit a telephone pole, go into a ditch and break a collarbone, it’s endless. In a car, you have a safety belt and airbags. On a bike, you’ve got a helmet made out of Styrofoam. It’s a no-win.”

Kiser, a member of a Washington County cycling club, said his colleagues often lament drivers’ rage about cyclists. They complain about being honked at, yelled at and hit with various projectiles – from beer bottles to chewing tobacco spittoons.

Willis said this is the first time in his two years on the force that he can recall a cyclist being hit by a car. But, he said, cars passing bicycles without enough clearance is a common problem.

“Sometimes it involves waiting and people hate to wait, as you know,” he said. “We’re an inpatient society. But sometimes you just have to wait to get it done safely.”

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration cites three feet of clearance as standard safe passage.

The first American car accident, in New York City in 1896, involved a car crashing into a bicycle, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which they further attribute to Famous First Facts by Joseph Kane. In that crash, the cyclist died.

Since then, more than 52,000 cyclists have died in traffic crashes. In 2007, the death toll was 698 cyclists, representing 2 percent of all highway deaths. Another 44,000 cyclists were injured that year. Six of those deaths were in Tennessee, and seven in Virginia.

Kiser’s friend, former professional cyclist David Wall, was nearly one of them. He was run over by a car on Main Street in Abingdon and rushed to the hospital with a ruptured disk in his back. He hasn’t been able to cycle professionally since.

Sometime before that, on the same road Kiser was hit on, a car full of kids passed him, going in the opposite direction, and chucked something at him. He gave them what he described as a “friendly hand gesture.” So they turned around, came back and ran him off the road.

“It’s not uncommon at all to hear about a cyclist being harassed,” he said. “And nine times out of 10, it’s young kids just doing it out of meanness. Young, punk kids who get a kick out of it. Every cyclist I know can tell you about it.”

cgalofaro@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2531