Bicyclists Band Together To Catch Hit-and-Run Drivers

St. Louis cyclists are mad as heck, and they're not going to take it any more.

Fed up with riders being struck by hit-and-run drivers -- including a pair of incidents that injured three cyclists within the past week alone -- bicyclists in St. Louis have banded together to create a reward fund that pays for information to bring the guilty to justice.

"If each of us put in, say twenty or forty bucks, I bet we would start grabbing people's attention," wrote Patrick Van de Turin, the cyclist who got the whole thing started on a local bicycling message board. "I'll start the pot with $100.00."

Within 24 hours, the fund had swelled to over $1,000. Then the mayor pledged an additional $500. Then the newspaper and TV stations picked up the story. And the pot -- now officially administered by the St. Louis Regional Bike Federation -- continues to grow.

Whether it's enough to capture the dirtbag that clipped two cyclists, running them off the road with his truck and horse trailer, or to nail the one who struck a cyclist and then drove off, leaving him lying broken in a downtown intersection remains to be seen. But I have to say that I have yet to find a more inspiring story of cyclists banding together to help and protect one another.

• Information about the Hit and Run Justice Fund - a Press Release (PDF) from the St. Louis Bicycle Federation
  
• Donate to the Hit and Run Justice Fund

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