Five Years Ago Today A Distracted Motorist Knocked Me Out And Knocked Me Back To Las Vegas To Start LVSportsBiz
By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
The final touches on my last story I wrote in Florida came on the night of March 6, 2017. Only hours earlier, I was at a new spring training baseball complex used by the Houston Astros and Washington Nationals in West Palm Beach.
I went to an Astros spring training game that day with my reporting and bicycling buddy, Joe Capozzi. Before the game, we biked on utility truck dirt roads in a nature preserve a few miles from the spring training center, watched alligators sunbathe near some swamps and munched cheesesteaks at the new ballyard.
I used the baseball gab session and spring game to get photos for a story I wrote for Florida politics publisher Peter Schorsch about Major League Baseball teams hunting for better Grapefruit League ballpark deals.
That night, I sent this photo among several to Peter for my story that was going in his Influence magazine.
It was the last time I worked on a story for a while.
The next day on March 7, 2017, a 65-year-old distracted motorist by the name of Dennis Brophy drove his Chevy Cruz sedan into my bicycle as I pedaled on Old Dixie Highway in St. Lucie County north of Fort Pierce. I suffered two broken vertebrae, a bad concussion and a banged-up leg that collects fluid in my knee.
The driver who knocked me out cold was not issued a ticket.
I stayed home in my Vero Beach, Florida house to recover and wondered about my future.
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This morning on March 7, 2022, I walked six miles in Summerlin in the chilly, windy weather after sunrise.
At 9:15 AM today, I drove three miles to meet my friend Brett, a bicyclist who bike commutes to his job. He wanted to buy my book, Bicycle Man: Life of Journeys.
I met Brett at UNLV’s Thomas & Mack Center and was impressed with his bicycle-commuting commitment.
He had no idea that he was buying my book on the fifth anniversary of the crash.
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People operating motorized vehicles maim and kill bicyclists so routinely that I get the sense that it’s become an acceptable fact of life of doing business on our nation’s roads.
To this day, I’m still shaking my head that the St. Lucie Sheriff’s Office did not issue a ticket to a driver who admitted to being fatigued and distracted for smashing into me exactly five years ago today.
“Florida is a no-fault state,” Deputy Bryan Beaty, spokesman for the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office, told Tampa Bay Times reporter Sharon Wynne. “He didn’t intentionally hit the bicyclist and there’s no evidence that indicates he purposely set out that day to go and run over a bicyclist.”
And that folks, is all you need to know about why motorists are NOT held accountable for smashing their two-ton vehicles into walkers and bicyclists.
This was my bicycle after Brophy’s car smashed into it.
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To cope with the recovery process, I moved back to Las Vegas in June 2017 and started this news site, LVSportsBiz.com.
I then wrote a book, Long Road Back to Las Vegas, on the comeback.
And when the coronavirus pandemic hit two years ago, I wrote, Bicycle Man, the book purchased by my friend, Brett, that celebrates bicycling in its many story forms. Both books are available by emailing me at asnel@LVSportsBiz.com.
Both books have been well-received and have drawn nice media coverage.
Chris Maathuis, the veteran sports director at Channel 8, the CBS affiliate in Las Vegas, put together this report on Bicycle Man.
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On March 7, 2017, I came away alive. The crash was a violent one, sending me into the motorist’s windshield and to the ICU in the local hospital.
While recuperating, a former Denver Post colleague, Mark Obmascik, visited me and suggested I return to Vegas to create my own sports-business website after I covered that beat for the Las Vegas Review-Journnal.
That’s exactly what I did.
In early June 2017, LVSportsBiz.com was launched.
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On March 7, 2022, LVSportsBiz.com has reached more than 963,000 readers and we are projected to hit 1 million in early May.
We report on the business and marketing of the hottest sports industry market in the country — the stadiums and sports of Las Vegas.
Today after selling Bicycle Man the book to Brett, I drove over to the Thomas & Mack Center to report on UNLV’s women’s basketball team defeat Utah State to reach the Mountain West semifinals.
Later today, our photographer, Tyge O’Donnell, will join me over at Orleans Arena for a Gonzaga basketball game at 6 PM tonight. Here’s that story.
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This news site delivers more than just market-leading news, intelligence, enterprise and breaking info on Las Vegas’ sports/stadium industry.
It’s given my life purpose after a driver nearly snuffed it out.
People wonder why bicycling topics make cameo appearances on LVSportsBiz.com.
The reason is simple: On March 7, 2017, five years ago, bicycling found a way to start this news site.
PSA
