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Fatigue Caused Sunday Pulaski Highway Crash, Police Say

Days later, no charges had been filed against the driver.

 

Police say driver fatigue caused a crash over the weekend that injured and hospitalized a bicyclist.

At around 10:42 a.m. on Oct. 14, a 20-year-old Dundalk woman was driving a 2004 Dodge Stratus westbound on Pulaski Highway, near the intersection with Jones Road. Her vehicle drifted from the left lane onto the north shoulder, where it struck a curb and continued with the right wheels on the grass and the left wheels on the roadway, according to Baltimore County police spokeswoman Louise Rogers-Feher.

The vehicle then struck a 20-year-old man from Abingdon who was on the shoulder fixing a flat tire on his bicycle. After striking him, the vehicle skidded to a stop. The man was airlifted to Maryland Shock Trauma, Rogers-Feher said.

No further information was available on the bicyclist's condition.

Rogers-Feher said the driver was not intoxicated, but was fatigued, which contributed to the crash.

As of Thursday, no charges against the driver had been filed.

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Mike Fisher

3:49 pm on Friday, October 19, 2012

When you get your driver's license, you take on a lot of responsibility. You are expected to drive that car without endangering other people's lives and make responsible decisions about when you drive. If you've had too much to drink, you should sleep it off or hang out until you're capable of driving safely. Driving while fatigued to this degree is just as irresponsible and in this case, may have killed someone. To me, being "fatigued" is no excuse. You know when you're too tired to drive and if you don't sleep when you need to, your body will eventually force you to sleep. I just don't feel like this is an excuse especially if you hit someone with your car. I have a bad feeling that no news about the man who was hit is bad news. If he dies, it would be involuntary manslaughter, wouldn't it?

I was almost hit by a driver who was falling asleep at the wheel and ran a red light at Belair and Joppa/Ebeneezer a few years ago and he scraped my bumper as I was able to stop in time, just barely. He didn't even brake at all until he passed me. Fatigue is no excuse, you may as well be intoxicated.

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