Dr. Matthew Burke
BREAKING NEWS: Monday, October 17, 2011, Aiken, South Carolina
The driver who killed cyclist Dr. Matthew Burke pled guilty to felony manslaughter just after 3 p.m. and was sent to jail by an Aiken Circuit Court Judge.
On October 1, 2010, on a straight road in broad daylight in Beech Island, South Carolina, driver Daniel Johnson slammed into Matt and four other cyclists. After 128 days in a coma under life support, Matt was pronounced dead on February 6, 2011.
After months of investigation and legal wrangling, Johnson admitted to his crime this afternoon and pled guilty to felony manslaughter. Johnson was taken immediately into custody and will be sentenced tomorrow, Tuesday, October 18th.
The Burke family is represented by Bike Law’s Peter Wilborn: “Matt Burke’s legacy is that drivers can and should be treated as criminals for killing cyclists. Throughout the country, cycling deaths are regularly dismissed by law enforcement as mere traffic ‘accidents.’ But often they are not accidental, the needless fatalities are tragic consequences of reckless driving and lawless drivers. The driver’s felony conviction here proves to police, policymakers, and drivers to take cycling safety seriously. This case from South Carolina is an example of how to do it right.”
Paul Burke, the cyclist’s brother, stated: “Today’s felony conviction establishes the criminal responsibility of Daniel Johnson for the senseless death of Matthew P. Burke. Dr. Burke was riding legally in a group of fifteen cyclists when he and four other riders were struck from behind by Mr. Johnson on a long, flat straight road in broad daylight. Our family thanks Second Circuit Solicitor Strom Thurmond Jr. and his team for fairly prosecuting this case to achieve a measure of justice. We also gratefully acknowledge the efforts of South Carolina attorney Peter Wilborn in his pursuit of justice for Matt and the cycling community.”
For more information: contact Peter Wilborn at 843-723-9804 or peter@bikelaw.com
11 Comments
As an event promoter that has to deal with the worries that my people will be hit and some have in the past. I am so grateful that South Carolina is punishing this guy. I wish the Utah and Idaho would actually punish people that hit others.
Thank you, for helping to make the streets safer for everyone. I wish you many more successes in pinning driver’s responsibilities back onto them.
A big thank you to the South Carolina Highway Patrol’s M.A.I.T. unit. They obviously did an excellent job.
Peter, thank you for your efforts to keep cyclists safe and to keep law enforcement and the cycling community educated on the rights and responsibilities of road users.
It’s nice to hear that drivers can be accountable for their actions. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case in the death of my mother. http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2011111014063 All this driver received was a $188 fine.
Felony? $188 dollar fine? Wow now, I thought a cyclists life was only worth $42.
http://www.kirotv.com/news/29484165/detail.html
Prayers for the families involved but bikes should stay off of highways. If you want to ride a bicycle, get on a trail or stay in your yard. Drivers shouldn’t have to contend with bicycles on a road that was designed for vehicles and not bicycles, scooters, golf carts or pedestrians. If you want to ride a bicycle on pavement, build your own road to ride on and not one that my taxes paid for.
Steve Glenn, many highways have laws banning cyclists. However most other roads are perfectly legal to ride on. I encourage you to investigate how roads are designed and built- because many civil engineers take bicycles into account. You seem to be unaware of this.
I also think you may be forgetting that most bicycle riders pay taxes like yourself, not only locally but federally and through owning and registering their own cars. If people did not have the option to ride a bike, it could also increase the number of cars on the road. This would increase your own drive times and also the amount we would spend on maintaining those roads.
Steve Glenn, your ignorance is overwhelming.
In this country, the roads are mostly paid for by income and property taxes. The taxes and fee exclusive to motor vehicle owners rarely even touch the financial side of infrastructure for said vehicles.
Additionally, in much of the country, and pretty much all of the east, many of the roads were not originally designed for cars. Many of them originated as walk paths, horse paths, and rail ways. Roads that were built solely and exclusively for cars are almost always illegal to ride a bike on.
The roads that you allude to have paid for, are paid for by everyone, not just people in cars.
Finally, just like you don’t like people who ride bikes riding on roads that you pay for, I don’t like buffoons, like yourself, using the technological infrastructure I helped pay for. If you want to write ill-educated statements somewhere, build your own internet to spew garbage on–don’t use the one I paid for.
I ride a bike and I agree, the driver should be held responsible for accidentally causing the deaths of the people on bikes, but it should be no different than if he had accidentally killed people in cars or people on foot.
I have sympathy for the victims and their families, it’s a horrible thing that happened. But, if it was an accident, it should be treated as an accident, if it was intentional, it should be treated as murder. There should be no bias because a bike involved.
Like I said, I ride a bike, but I don’t understand the adversarial relationship between many bicyclists and drivers. Many in the biking community seem irrationally biased against drivers and want to immediately brand them a “murderer”, if they were involved in an accident with a bicyclist. Justice is supposed to be blind, not vindictive. I also keep encountering the unhealthy attitude that bicyclists safety is the responsibility of all drivers and none of their own. When I ride, I take my safety very seriously and consider protection of my life 100% my responsibility, since me and my bike are only in the 170 lb range vs cars weighing 2 tons, travel much faster than me and can’t stop on a dime.
http://fabb-bikes.blogspot.com/2011/08/cyclists-paved-way-for-roads_15.html
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[...] law blog BikeLaw.com is reporting that the driver responsible for killing cyclist Matthew Burke pled guilty to felony [...]
[...] are tragic consequences of reckless driving and lawless drivers,” Wilborn writes on his BikeLaw.com blog. “The driver’s felony conviction here proves to police, policymakers and drivers to take [...]