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Stan Oldak, NYCC Club Rep
Yesterday we heard the awful news that Stan Oldak of the New York Cycling Club was killed by a hit and run driver while completing a 400km brevet outside Houston, Texas this past weekend. The crash happened about 210 miles into the ride in the town of Columbus, Texas. Stan was completing the ride as part of the qualification series for Paris – Brest – Paris later this year.
You can see from the NYCC cover story that Stan Oldak was a great cyclist and a tireless volunteer. He was the NYCC club representative to the League for a couple of years and had been a League member for many years. Our thoughts go out to his family, friends, and colleagues in the cycling world.
Stan’s death comes at that time of year when we should be celebrating bicycling. It’s National Bike Month, for goodness sake. The weather is turning nice (at least in the DC area). And bicycling is such a healthy, worthy, and enjoyable activity that people shouldn’t pay for enjoying it with their lives.
We don’t know all the details of the crash – except that, yet again, the driver couldn’t be bothered to stop. I don’t know what the actual numbers are, but it seems to me that each year more and more fatal and severe bicyclist and pedestrian crashes involve hit and run drivers. Given the pretty pathetic punishments handed out to many of those that do stop and face the consequences, this is even more disappointing.
What do we do? We express our sincere condolences. We hope the driver has the courage to turn themselves into the authorities. Maybe we join a Ride of Silence (May 16) and honor Stan and the other 700 cyclists we can be pretty sure will be killed this year on our nation’s roads.
Somehow it doesn’t seem like that’s enough.
We’ll carry on with our education programming and our exhortations to build better roads to accommodate cyclists. And we know that somehow we need to do more to instill in people in this country that cyclists are people too, with real talents, value, skills, family, and friends. Our lives should not be cheapened or diminished because we happen to wear Lycra on occasion and ride a bike. We must drive home the idea that driving a car is a responsibility, not a right, and that the privilege given people to drive can and must be taken seriously or be taken away. For real.
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May 8th, 2007 at 4:47 pm
The penalties for hit-and-run drivers need to be increased. There should be mandatory jail time and hefty fines.
May 8th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
That’s correct, “We don’t know all the details of the crash”. But you do know enough details to know better than to rush to judgement. What is known is that the incident occurred around 2 am and it was a large flat bed truck. Most likely it was on an unlit, rural road, with little, high speed traffic. The truck driver could very well have NOT known that he had struck or perhaps is that sucked in the cyclist with its wake.
Yes, it was a terrible accident, very upsetting and grave news.
May 8th, 2007 at 8:19 pm
Mea culpa…I just reread Rick Braun’s original message and noted it was a PICKUP truck and not a flat bed truck. Big difference – with respect to hit and run. Fully agreed. It’s inexcusible what that driver had done. Sorry for the confusion.
May 9th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
Peter, the road was right outside of Columbus and was not that poorly lit, nor that rural.
May 10th, 2007 at 2:38 am
I was a good friend of Stan’s & am trying to get the Houston & NYC media to cover what happened both to commemorate the person he was & ensure that the driver knows that people cared about Stan deeply, perhaps encouraging him to come forward.
This comment is linked to the blog post I wrote about my friend.
I understand that this was a special type of long, endurance race. But as a non cyclist, it just seems too easy for cyclists to get killed in these types of road conditions. I know when a race is hundreds of miles long it’s impossible to ensure it is well lit & safe the entire distance, but still…
May 10th, 2007 at 2:48 am
[...] I have contacted the assignment editors at the Houston Chronicle and the New York Times because I would like them to honor Stan’s life and also appeal for help in getting the driver to come forward and accept his responsibility for what happened. This post from the League of American Bicyclists about Stan’s death captures my feelings precisely: We don’t know all the details of the crash – except that, yet again, the driver couldn’t be bothered to stop. I don’t know what the actual numbers are, but it seems to me that each year more and more fatal and severe bicyclist and pedestrian crashes involve hit and run drivers. Given the pretty pathetic punishments handed out to many of those that do stop and face the consequences, this is even more disappointing. [...]