Police charged a Yale student with failure to obey a school bus’s stop sign after she allegedly drove into a 7‑year-old boy at the corner of Orchard and Elm streets.
It’s unclear whether the police will also charge the driver under the state’s new “vulnerable users” law, Public Act. No. 14 – 31.
The collision took place Thursday afternoon around 3:20 p.m. A school bus was dropping off the 7‑year-old at the end of the school day. The bus’s stop sign was extended and visible, according to police, but the Yale student ignored it and struck the boy at a slow speed.
The boy remained “alert” and calm afterwards as police arrived at the scene and he was taken to Yale-New Haven Hospital for minor injuries, according to Sgt. Stephan Torquati, the top cop in the Dwight neighborhood. The child required a cast on his right ankle to help him heal from a sprain and a fracture.
The infraction for which the driver was charged carries a $450 fine.
Police are still deciding whether the driver should be charged under the vulnerable users law, which went into effect last year, according to police spokesman Officer David Hartman. A misdemeanor, the fines drivers up to $1,000 for recklessly — and seriously injuring or killing — a cyclist, pedestrian, construction worker, skateboarder, or other non-motorized human (as well as motorized-wheelchair user) in their path, as long as the victim exercised “reasonable care” in use of the street.
But the law presents legal authorities with limited guidance on when to charge, specifically what constitutes a “serious injury.”
The state judicial branch offers this definition on its website: “‘Serious physical injury’ is something more serious than mere physical injury, which is defined as “impairment of physical condition or pain.” It is more than a minor or superficial injury. It is defined by statute as ‘physical injury’ which creates a substantial risk of death, or which causes serious disfigurement, serious impairment of health or serious loss or impairment of the function of any bodily organ.”
Police have been directed to charge a driver under the law if, for instance, the driver is talking on a cell phone and then breaks a pedestrian’s leg by crashing into her, Hartman said.
Hartman noted that even a “broken bone” can be more serious in some cases than in others: “A hairline fracture and a compound fracture are completely different,” he noted. He predicted that with so much “room for interpretation,” authorities will be wrestling the question for time to come.
Downtown Alder Abby Roth said Thursday’s crash points up the need for more discussion about how to determine when the law should be applied. “It is quite limiting in its language,” Roth said. “There’s no precedent for what reaches that standard of seriousness.”