Then, Rueter talked to Ray Thomas, a Portland bike lawyer, and got surprising advice: "I can go after this guy myself," Rueter found out. Thomas had just finished writing a how-to manual for bikers, explaining a little-known law that allows citizens to enforce traffic laws.
If they can identify the driver, a citizen can ask the police to initiate a citation, Thomas explains, "and the cops have to do it," he says. "The law is very clear here. You cobble this thing together, and it's served by a uniformed officer. If the person is convicted, it's the same as if the citation was issued by a police officer." (Portland's cyclists used the citizen-initiated law in the '80s to go after drivers who threw litter at them, or tried to run them off the road, Thomas explains.)
"We've been working with the Portland Police Bureau, and they've heard our concerns and are working to devote more resources to crashes and take them more seriously," says Jessica Roberts, metro-area advocate for the Bicycle Transportation Alliance. "In the meantime, though, citizen enforcement is the only avenue open to many people who have been abandoned by the legal system."
Rueter went for it. He called the officer who responded to the accident. "I said I wanted to use the citizen-initiation law," Rueter says. "He had never heard of it, and I don't think his supervisor had heard of it. I kind of got a lot of blank looks the whole way through."
But the officer consulted with the police traffic division, and filled out a citation form. Then Rueter gave a sworn statement, "saying all the information I had was correct," and the police delivered the citation to the driver, summoning him to court on April 5.
http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/Content?oid=38057&category=22101
