Now we know what a cyclist’s life is worth in Colorado.

If you’re a driver and you lawyer up early and there are no witnesses, it seems you can hit a cyclist, leave him dying on the roadside and get just a year of jail time. With work release privileges.

Those are the maddening conclusions from the sentencing earlier this month of Theresa Marie O’Connor, who struck a respected Fort Collins scientist one evening last January and drove off.

Most people would treat a dog better than the way O’Connor treated 46-year-old Ernesto Wiedenbrug.

Yet, she resolved the case with the aforementioned jail time and four years of probation.

Her explanation, dutifully trotted out during her sentencing earlier this month in a Larimer County courtroom, was that she had a “dizzy spell” and panicked after hitting Wiedenbrug on a road near Windsor.

The panic was so intense, apparently, that she didn’t turn herself in for days, and only after she hired a lawyer.

Cliff Riedel, district attorney in Larimer County, told me the facts made this a difficult case.

Without her confession, figuring out who hit Wiedenbrug, a motor scientist who spoke four languages and held several patents, was going to be tough.

Sometimes accident investigators can determine what sort of car was involved in a hit-and-run by examining debris left at the scene.

Riedel said all they had was a 1-inch piece of plastic that was not identifiable as belonging to her car, a 2003 Toyota Camry.

Also, the physical evidence as to how the accident happened was “inconclusive” and apparently no one saw it happen.

Did Wiedenbrug weave into the roadway? Did O’Connor swerve into him?

“The evidence on that is not as clear as a lot of people think,” Riedel said.

Furthermore, O’Connor does have a documented history of dizzy spells, Riedel said.

Did she have one of those episodes as she was driving home that evening?

“I don’t think we would have been able to disprove it beyond a reasonable doubt,” Riedel said.

I asked the district attorney whether Wiedenbrug could have survived his injuries had O’Connor called 911 immediately and stayed at the scene.

“It wouldn’t have made any difference,” Riedel said.

Except that it would have been the decent and moral thing to do. And she would not have been charged with a felony, as Riedel noted.

Assuredly this is not as simple a case as it might first appear, and it’s understandable why the district attorney went for a plea deal. But even so, the punishment seems not to fit the crime.

O’Connor could have gotten up to 12 years of community corrections, a prison alternative served in a halfway house, according to pre-sentence recommendations.

So, how do you get from that to a year of jail and probation?

Riedel said Wiedenbrug’s brothers, who live in Germany, did not favor prison time for O’Connor, who has a young daughter. They felt it would punish the child for the mother’s crimes.

Their compassion was a factor along with O’Connor’s lack of a criminal background.

All in all, Theresa O’Connor should consider herself a lucky woman — except for the fact that she’ll have to live with the knowledge that she hit a man and left him dying alone.

And while that is a burden for her to bear, the implications of her sentence are potentially even more unnerving.

With each day, it seems the animosity between cyclists and drivers intensifies. A light punishment for killing a cyclist devalues their lives.

And that’s the wrong message to send when these encounters so quickly can turn into a matter of life or death.

E-mail Alicia Caldwell at acaldwell@denverpost.com or follow her on Twitter: @AliciaMCaldwell