Driver who hit pedestrian charged with vehicular assault

According to KMBC news:

In May, a driver crossed two lanes of traffic at 54th Street and Troost Avenue, jumped a curb and then hit Ruth Austin, who was walking on a sidewalk.

Prosecutors charged Ricky M. Taylor, 49, with vehicular assault. According to court records, Taylor admitted to smoking marijuana before the crash.

"He creamed me, then went through some bushes, through the fence and hit a parked car. The first thing I remember is being lifted onto a gurney and being rolled into the hospital," Austin said.

Incidentally, the "vehicular assault" charge is purely because Taylor was stoned.

A sober driver who drove the same way with the same result would have been charged with improper lane usage [ 1 2 3 4 ] or some other similar minor offense and fined at most a few hundred dollars.

This is one of the issues MoBikeFed would like to address through new legislation.

MoBikeFed's Fall Membership Drive is going on now--and your support is very much needed to make initiatives like this move forward.