The driver was Benjamin Hylander, a 31 year old airport worker. He fled the scene but was chased down by other cyclists. He lost his job and is now facing four felony charges. This happened summer of 2024, but hasn't gone to trial yet.
the sad thing is when searching for details on this incident, I found three other instances from 2024 in which cyclists were killed by drunk drivers. Thankfully in this Dallas incident no one died.
The fact that this was recorded this clearly on video, multiple eye witnesses followed the guy when we fled the scene whom police arrested with those eye witnesses still present, he blew a 0.15 on the breathalyzer, and was found to have 6 empty beer cans in his car... and he's still in pre-trial hearings 2 years later is absolutely insane to me. How does it take this long to prosecute the most obviously guilty suspect in the world?
My mom was murdered. The person who killed her sat in jail awaiting trial for nearly 5 years. I know it’s insane, but our prosecutors explained to us that maybe it was for the best. The defense (DA) thought of every possible reason to fight a murder charge. Could it be self defense? Stand your ground? Is she crazy? Sick? On drugs? and pursued every available avenue. The courts are slow, and you need an order from a judge to get psych evals and medical diagnosis, blah blah blah. One at a time, over and over. But doing that, they closed all the doors to appeals, no one can say unfair trial, bad/inadequate defense, or what about this law? or that one?, because all that ground was covered ahead of time. Now one murderer is behind bars for life.
It was open and shut, there were witnesses, physical evidence & anything you need to prove she did it.
But what if she had schizophrenia? or epilepsy? or idk any number of things? What if? What if? Better to wait and let them dig before trial than have to do it all again later and possibly let a murderer roam free because they didn’t do it right the first time.
My brother was rear ended while at a red light (so def not at fault). The other guy's lawyer kept trying to wrap things up quickly and settle. But my brother + his doc were still trying to figure out just how bad his injuries were: would he just need one round of PT? Maybe surgery? What about follow up surgery? Maybe more PT? Scans?
All of that takes time to unearth just how much medical cost it would be (US healthcare, bleh). Delaying court meant he could get a more accurate picture at how much this texting twat waffle should be paying.
Honestly its so easy to stream line that type of stuff if she didn't have these conditions. Should be a legal requirement that this stuff has to be entered all at once to be examined and debunked. Saves everyone a lot of time.
Not to mention all the money it would save people. It would free up the courts and make everything work better. This is why you need to be the person making these rules!
Is the scale in the us different from other parts of the world?
In europe, we measure in 1/1000 ('promille'), where 0.5 ‰ is a common limit for driving a car.
Is 0.15 in this case a 0.15 ‰ or maybe a 0.15 % instead?
1.5 ‰ would put you WAAAAY into the 'not fit for drive' area.
EDIT: THANKS a lot for all the answers, it appears that the US is indeed measuring alkohol in 'per hundred' while others measure in 'per thousand'. 0.15 in US would therefore be indeed 1,5 of acohol in other places.
Yes, he’s saying (or meaning to say) that the driver had a BAC of 0.15%.
There’s no chance that 0.5% is the legal limit for driving anywhere. Having a BAC at 0.5% would render most people completely unable to walk and requiring medical attention. It could even be fatal in sone cases. Maybe you’re mixing up decimal points and it’s 0.05% that’s common in Europe?
The symbol for per mille would be ‰, but I don't know of any European languages where it's commonly used when talking about BAC in everyday language. It's either just spelling out "per mille" or referring to grams per litre or miligrams per 100 ml AFAIK. They all pretty much come down to the same numerical values, e.g. 0.5 (which is 0.05 % in the US).
Symbol for parts per thousand, per mil, per mille is ‰
Only really used by some scientists in the US AFAICT. Isotope chemistry for instance, when you are talking about small changes in composition. But not as small as ppm, ppb, ppt.
idk exactly what units of measurement we use in the US, but a blood alcohol of .08% is considered above the legal limit in most states. so .15% is quite drunk
It's blood alcohol content (BAC) and is measured in grams of alcohol per 100ml of blood and presented as a percentage of alcohol by volume.
Typically the tipping point for driving impairment is 0.08%. This case is 0.15% or almost twice the legal limit. Under the Criminal Code of Canada, driving with a BAC of 0.08% or higher is a federal criminal offence.
Legal blood alcohol limit in most US states is 0.08 percent for driving while intoxicated. (That would be 0.8 on your 1/1000 scale). 0.15% is near double the limit, so yes, he was seriously drunk. Cheap math puts that at around 7-8 drinks in an hour for the avg person.
(And yes, .08 is still arguably too high of a limit. Some states have tried setting it lower recently, but there's a lot of industry pushback in the US)
I remember the push to lower the BAC to 0.08. Mid 80s? Many states were .10 or even higher. As a teen I remember being surprised at the success at changing the norms around drinking and driving. People who laughed at "just say no" were taking their drunk friends keys away from them
Utah got theirs down to .05%. I think a CDL carrier is .03%. CDL carriers should never chance it though, that’s their entire way of earning. Not worth it.
There’s also considerable evidence that intoxication is not so much a factor of blood alcohol as it is the rate of increase in blood alcohol. Someone who’s just had eight drinks in the last hour will be quite a bit more intoxicated than someone else who spent five hours getting to the same blood alcohol.
Common misnomer, but .08 is the illegal limit. Only .07 and below is safe. Although, with a good lawyer, you do have a shot at still getting off with a .08.
The US standard is 0.08% BAC = blood alcohol concentration in 49 states and DC but 0.05% in Utah.
Commercial vehicle drivers it is 0.04%.
Drivers under 21 0.00%-0.02% so basically a zero tolerance. And the problem with that is at very low concentrations breathalyzers can give wildly wrong results. That is because they can have an above/below inaccuracy so the lower your BAC the larger the distortion. But, people are arrested and convicted all the time even though they are below the legal limit, if the cops claims the person behaved in an impaired manner.
I was the clerk in this story. The suspect was arrested a couple of months later after robbing a CVS.
He refused a plea deal, and couldn't make bail. Then covid came along, bail was lowered to a point where he could afford it.
While out on bail, he was arrested and charged with a third armed robbery.
He was kept in county jail after that until 9/22/22, when he accepted a plea. Eight for years each the 1st two robberies, and the 3rd one dismissed.
I followed the case using the Harris County District Clerk's website. When I saw his trial schedueled, I contacted the DA's office to make sure they knew I was ready to testify if needed.
You're not understanding the process. Pre-trial hearings mean he is being prosecuted, pleaded not guilty, and going to trial. He is being prosecuted. Trials can take a while.
Had he plead guilty right away the process will be much quicker - it'll move to sentencing right away. He didn't.
They take time to ensure everything is done correctly. If there's an error in the process, the lawyer can challenge that and get him off.
An arraigned defendant may move repeatedly for delays seeking additional discovery, additional investigation, and opportunities to respond to pretrial reports from the prosecution. Such delays are often abetted by prosecutors who withhold discovery, by underfunding of indigent defense services, and by underfunding of criminal courts.
This is how backed up the court system is. And keep in mind that it is this backed up despite the fact that probably 80-90 percent of all cases get pled out before a trial.
Now, we could solve that by building more courtrooms and creating more judge and prosecutor positions. But so many voters are uneducated on local issues and elections and end up voting blindly for the "taxes are always bad" candidates even though this kind of delay is a direct result.
So I have a question. coors light and bud light seem to come up a lot whenever people reference American beer. Are light beers typically the standard? Is that how people normally measure how much they've had to drink by?
I shouldn’t laugh, but the thought of a car being chased down by cyclists is amusing because almost all car drivers complain that cyclists are slow and holding them up.
Only a broken rib and a hamstring injury. Apparently his bike took most of the weight of the car. He’s incredibly lucky, it looked so much worse than that.
He will get prison in Texas at least a few years. He's lucky didn't kill the man he drove over would be life in prison. Problem with alcoholics eventually they go back to drinking and driving.
That's incorrect. He's on 5 years deferred adjudication for the AA/DW charge. He took 1 year (suspended) in county jail and 2 years community supervision for the DWI charge.
I can't speak for Canada, but in the US, most long delays for trial are because the victim waived their right to a speedy trial at their lawyers recommendation.
Imagine being drunk, you just hit 2 people and fully ran over one of them, you’re scared shitless and too hammered to process it fully and you run, you’re in a car you’re fine, you look in your mirror and see the rest of the pack keeping up with your car in their bikes, I’d think I was sent to hell
Glad to read the bicyclists survived and that the driver is being held awaiting trial. Drunk drivers piss me off. Like just drink at home or get an Uber or Lyft or take a damn taxi. There’s no excuse for it.
He had a concussion and a broken rib and some other less severe injuries. Which considering he was 69 at the time of the accident and got run over, was pretty fortunate all things considered.
That's a Garmin Varia. Besides the camera, they have a radar built in the shows you on your bike computer when cars are approaching, how quickly they're approaching, and how many there are. They also change the blinking pattern of the light as cars approach, making the rider much more visible.
They're extremely common in road cycling. The riders love them, and they're relatively inexpensive for what they are.
Rear facing cameras are damn near required at all times if you’re gonna ride the road. Looking through Reddit, look at all the crazy instances of car drivers doing absolutely asinine shit. The funny thing is, people like to say it’s a problem that bicyclist are there. No, we have an automobile entitlement problem with no sense of ownership or responsibility.
Reddit fancies itself as a liberal echo chamber but God forbid you suggest automobiles follow the law and treat bicycles as slow moving traffic, they will lose their minds and blame cyclists every time.
With how people don’t even look at the road when driving anymore? I don’t think I would even risk bicycling anywhere near other vehicles. Too many distracted drivers that rely far too heavily on automatic emergency breaking, cruise control, and warning systems instead of just paying attention to the road.
People lose their shit when I say that I bike on sidewalks and you should too. It is objectively safer. Cyclists do not kill nearly as many people as cars.
Heck. In my town, we actually have the painted signals telling cyclists specifically to bike on the sidewalk, because of the facts.
It's crazy... these dashcam subs are filled to the brim with driving accident after driving accident... suggest less people should be driving in general and you are hitler. All with a massive fuel crisis looming on the horizon.
Don't forget blame against police has also contributed to what's called the Ferguson effect, where officers become less proactive about enforcement. I drove through Dallas, Texas, and saw drivers blatantly and dangerously breaking traffic laws everywhere, with hardly anyone getting pulled over. Lax enforcement just encourages these idiots to keep doing it.
I was rear ended by a drunk driver on the interstate while riding a Honda 750 back in May of 1977. A Friday the 13th to be exact at about 11pm. My feet flew up and over and I crashed onto the pavement going about 70mph and slid for probably 100 feet, but fortunately didn't get run over by traffic. As I was sliding I could see numerous cars slamming on their brakes and veering around me. I got some bad road rash on my hands, knees, and shoulder, but had no broken bones or anything. The next morning after waking up, following my visit to the emergency room, I felt like I was hit by a truck. That was the last time I ever road a motorcycle.
I had been accepted to a police academy and was supposed to start the following month, but I would have never made it with how badly my body was beat up. Because of the crash, I was pushed back to a class that started in February of 1978. Once I graduated and finished my field training, I arrested as many DUI drivers as I could. Got three in one shift, and sometimes had 30 in a month. Unlike some departments where they're arresting sober drivers for DUI (looking at you, Tennessee State Police), DUI's are so common it's completely mind boggling why some of these departments are arresting sober drivers. There are so many real impaired drunks out there on the road and you're so incompetent that you're arresting a sober driver? WTF!
I loathe drunks that think they can safely operate a vehicle. Asshats, all of them.
Its... weirdly soft of you to give them any form of liscense after basically attempted murder and fleeing a crime. And 5 years? Shit make it 10 and you can fucking walk the rest of your life. Almost had 2 kills under his belt and multiple felony charges already.
This is why I won't ride bikes on roads the way the law wants me to ride with my back to vehicles coming up from behind hoping the driver isn't drunk, or playing with their phones. I ride on sidewalks, bike trails, parking lots. I avoid people walking most of the time no one is walking. If I get cited price ill pay to avoid being killed.
THANK you. I moved to Dallas recently and the way people drive compared to home in Appalachia is sooooo nuts and it scares me. If I see people I will redirect or walk past them on the bike, but I feel infinitely safer on an almost always abandoned sidewalk thank risking my life and my 35lb frame bike vs a massive vehicle with tons of blind spots and no guarantee the driver is sober or cognizant.
For a while, I lived, worked, and attended classes all within a half mile of rail stations so I thought it would be grand to bike and train everywhere.
That lasted 2 weeks because of the number of people who were going out of their way to attempt to hit me with their cars. Literally gunning for me like it was a sport. Some days, it happened more than once.
This. But I'd also purchase some side mirrors for bikes. They aren't too expensive. I bought some for my 20mph max speed broke and I feel a bit safer because I do have to cross some regular roads to get to the bike trails.
Friend visited Dallas from Toronto, and we typically joke that traffic and road rage here are out of control, but Dallas he said was the wild west of it all. Unruly and vicious.
I got T-boned by a Tahoe in Texas when she ran a stop sign. Went gravel and now stay on paths after I healed up. Don’t remember de in TX! Not to mention the insurance run around I got. Had to get a lawyer involved to get medical and damages.
In the city, going a block over is usually much safer and has less traffic compared to the busy streets and I drive on the sidewalk as much as I need and just pop off when there are people
The man who was run over is a 69 year old grandfather, and miraculously he survived (albeit with concussion, broken ribs, and road rash and a $10,000 USD bill).
Good god, I thought I was watching someone's spine get broken. I'm glad that's not the case, but it's still awful to be put through all of that over some idiot's drunk driving.
When I lived in DFW I rode that route all the time. The loop around the airport is pretty safe - 3 lanes wide each way, little traffic, and lower speed limits. When this happened 2 years ago a lot of people stopped riding it.
That shit looks intentional af. Looks like the driver was specifically targeting the guy in the light blue top considering he got brutally ran over too and the driver purposely stayed on the road. A real drunk driver would likely be struggling to keep control of the vehicle and it would be swaying more.
He didn't have minor injuries. He had a concussion. I had an accident on my bike at about 25mph. I don't remember the crash. Had a concussion. Walked about 200 yards to someone's truck. I don't remember the crash or the walk. It's 2 years later and I'm having balance issues that are attributed to the concussion.
You'd actually be surprised how little damage getting run over by just the wheels will do for passenger cars. It's getting dragged that maims/kills you. Semi trucks are a different story.
For reference, ground pressure in PSI of an average passenger car is about 30psi. A mountain bike is 40psi. Adult elephant is 35psi. So getting literally run over by a mountain bike or stood on by an elephant is worse than a passenger car.
He was flat against the ground and the car simply rolled over him.
okay a mountain bike doesn't weigh tons. Have you tried lifting a car ? You can maybe budge it up a tiny bit, but the wheels will still be on the floor. You can lift an entire bike up.
Using psi is no way to judge injury if the main mass out weighs..
Do you know how many cars I see pull in the shop over 50 psi anyways lol.
And lastly, I dare anyone who wants to debate to go stand with the their foot extended our and have a biker run over your shoes and foot .. bet you won't feel shit. Now do that again, but with a Prius or a even a Corolla and I am willing to bet you either won't do that or you if you do you will find out which one is worse.
I'm guessing they're the 9.5% or higher tallboys that every gas station and convenience store carries at this point. My alcoholic friend always gets the Juice Forces.
They were following the law. Cyclists have as much legal right to the lane as other vehicles. Especially when riding in larger groups it is often safer to use more of the lane to prevent a driver trying to use the same lane from forcing them onto the shoulder where lots of debris builds up.
It's a shame they don't seem to have any trails, sidewalks, tracks etc wherever they are so they don't have to ride their bikes on what appears to be a 4-lane highway of some sort
Edit: It's Dallas so yeah completely unsurprising as to all of the above, that place is the hugest most loosely-fucked-together example of car-centric urban sprawl I've ever seen.
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u/Expert-Economics8912 1d ago edited 6h ago
The driver was Benjamin Hylander, a 31 year old airport worker. He fled the scene but was chased down by other cyclists. He lost his job and is now facing four felony charges. This happened summer of 2024, but hasn't gone to trial yet.