Oregon Public Broadcasting

Hitting and killing a bicyclist with a car could be treated as a more serious crime in Oregon if a proposed law passes.

Cycling advocates are proposing the law to specifically deal with drivers without a valid license, or who are driving under the influence.  Pete Springer reports.

Mary O’Donnell of Aloha remembers her husband leaving the house on his bicycle last  June.

Mary O’Donnell: “He just loved going out, he left that morning at about 8 -- 8 o’clock and he was gonna go ride with his group and he had a big smile on his face.”

It was the last time O’Donnell saw her husband of 49-years. 

An Idaho woman with a suspended license struck and killed Tim O’Donnell as he signaled a left turn on a rural Washington County road.

The woman was driving with an Idaho license.  Her Oregon license had been suspended after she failed to appear in court for driving without insurance.

The incident prompted Mary O’Donnell to look at Oregon’s vehicular homicide laws -- and she learned Oregon is one of only four states without a vehicular homicide law.

O’Donnell decided to change that in her husband’s honor.

Mary O’Donnell: “Everything I’ve done has been for what I think he would have wanted.  And this is definitely what he would have wanted.”

Ray Thomas: “This targets the most serious consequences where somebody causes a death and after they’ve made a decision to drive without a license or drive without insurance or to drive while they’re impaired by some type of drug.”

Ray Thomas is an attorney.  He says the proposed law would give the police tools they currently don’t have under Oregon’s existing criminally negligent homicide law.

That law, says Thomas, makes it too complex to convict motorists who hit and kill bicyclists.

Ray Thomas: “The problem is that it’s hard to get law enforcement and juries who are conscientiously following the criminally negligent law, to convict somebody, where they have made decisions like not having a driver's license, for gross deviation for reckless conduct.”

The proposed law would make vehicular homicide a class B felony with a possible ten year sentence.  

Cycling advocates tried to pass a similar law last June, but say the legislature did not have enough time to seriously consider it.

Proponents of the new law say statistics back them up. They cite a study showing that drivers with suspended licenses are involved in car crashes at nearly twice the rate of licensed drivers.