What can you do if a driver breaks the law and thereby endangers or injures you or a loved one but the police fail to cite the driver?  Oregon law allows you to pursue the driver in court through Oregon’s Citizen Prosecution Statute (ORS 153.058). The statute allows an ordinary citizen to bring drivers to court to face the music for traffic violations, the same as if a police officer had given them a ticket. 

However, the process is detailed and can take a while to navigate, especially for a non-attorney.  But now there is help.  This week, Portland attorney Ray Thomas released materials on his firm’s website to assist you in prosecuting that dangerous driver.  Thomas assembled materials from three separate cases where an ordinary citizen sought prosecution for traffic violations.  All three cases involved bicyclists, but any vulnerable user, pedestrians included, can follow these examples with similar results.

The materials are available here on the Swanson, Thomas and Coon website.

Today we received our first shipment of Oregon Pedestrian Rights: A Legal Guide for Persons on Foot from the publisher!  We enhanced the material on these pages before sending it to the publisher, and soon these pages will reflect those changes.  Until then the book is free and available as a PDF.  Nevertheless, if you would like us to send you a hard copy of the book, please call Scott at 503-228-5222.

Walking on two legs is the original and definitive human transportation. Upright locomotion distinguished us from our evolutionary forbears and remained for some 100,000 years the primary way to get from point A to point B on land. Walking got most people 99.9% of the way through human history. But since Ford made four wheels affordable, Rockefeller sold us five bucks worth of regular, and Eisenhower built the interstate highway system, the Faustian ascendancy of motorized transport has been inexorable and accelerating. We now find ourselves at a pivot point in urban transportation, having realized, along with a small but increasing number of cities worldwide, that the future of getting around in cities will have to mean fewer cars and more human powered motion, we need to reevaluate and reestablish the norms that define relations among pedestrians, bicycles, public transport and the automobile. What does modern right of way mean, and who has it under what circumstances?

We would like to thank the following folks who have helped and inspired us in creating this legal guide: Cynthia Newton, Kristin Kidd, Connie Dailey, Scott Tucker, Charlie Gee and Bruce Morris from our office; Scott Bricker and Doug Parrow of the BTA; and Oregon’s pedestrians, bicyclists, bladers, boarders and wheelchair rollers who go out there every day and use their bodies to make their way.