Crosswalk blues | The Coast Halifax

Crosswalk blues

So, I'm walking my bicycle through a marked crosswalk with the lights blinking. I get out to the second lane and this American lawyer in a rental car speeds through without even touching the brake. He smashes my bicycle out of my hands nearly killing me, then tries to drive away. I flag down a passerby who was nice enough to call 911. Now that I'm calling the police he decides to stick around. The cops give him a ticket for failing to yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk, but won't give me his insurance information because he didn't directly hit me. So this guy can break the law (speeding, failure to yield, lying to police) and can damage my property (smash my bicycle out of my hands), but gets off without paying for my bicycle on a technicality?! The cops say that because he hit my bicycle and not me directly it wasn't an accident and they won't give me his insurance information. It would only be an accident if I was on the bike at the time. But then they would have given me a $600 fine for riding through a crosswalk. I can’t afford a lawyer because that would cost more than the bicycle. What gives? So if a car hits me while in a crosswalk and I have pants on then its not his fault because the car touched my pants and not me!? Isn't the bicycle a part of my person if I'm holding it and it gets hit? BS! —Bikeless and Lawyerless in Halifax