MacKenzie Elmer

melmer@dmreg.com

SIOUX CITY, IA. — Jared Fenstermacher spent his 32nd birthday in a Sioux City hospital bed unable to move anything below his waist.

The Pennsylvania cyclist's cross-country ride to raise money for a cancer foundation ended Aug. 11 when he was struck from behind by a distracted driver just 23 miles into Iowa.

Fenstermacher broke bones in both his arms. He suffered a concussion and sustained a serious spinal cord injury that has left him in a wheelchair.

The driver received a traffic citation for following too close to a bicycle and a fine for driving while uninsured. He faces a maximum penalty of $750.

Fenstermacher's family is outraged by Iowa's lack of rules protecting cyclists.

“He wasn’t following my son too closely, he ran him over,” Bob Fenstermacher said last week sitting near his son's hospital bed at Mercy Medical Center of Sioux City.

The Mohrsville, Pa., father said he was dumbfounded when the Plymouth County Sheriff's Office told him there were no other charges it could file against the driver who hit his son.

“Something else has to fit here," he said.

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Drivers in Iowa who hit bicyclists or even kill them rarely serve time behind bars.

A Des Moines Register review of crash data found 22 bicyclists were killed in collisions with cars from 2011 to April 2016. Only one of those drivers was sentenced to prison time.

Jonathan Leyva Rodriguez received 34 years in prison after being found guilty of vehicular homicide and five other charges stemming from the Des Moines collision that killed Wade Franck, 41, and injured two other cyclists in August 2015.

Thirteen of the 22 drivers were cited for traffic offenses — the most common being a $250 fine for operating too close to a bicyclist. Eight drivers walked away from those deadly crashes without any charges.

Bicycling advocates say that's not enough in a state where cycling is growing in popularity.

Ride's mission was to help others

It was almost 8:30 p.m. and Jared Fenstermacher was riding east on County Road C60 toward Hinton, about 10 miles north of Sioux City. He had just spent two hours waiting out a torrential rain in a farm shed and was happy to be riding again.

He hoped to reach Kingsley, 22 miles away, where he’d planned to spend the night.

Fenstermacher was about 1,800 miles and 17 days into his 3,000-mile trip from Astoria, Ore., to Ocean City, N.J. He planned to reach the Atlantic by Aug. 25.

The fit cyclist was averaging about 100 miles a day, if the weather was right. He carried just 10 pounds in gear and used internet sites to find lodging, or stayed with relatives along his route. He was coming from South Dakota, where he'd stayed with his dad's cousin, Vermillion Mayor Jack Powell. He planned to spend the night with another relative in Kingsley.

Fenstermacher was introduced to cycling by his grandfather, who took him on rides as a young boy in his native Pennsylvania. Earl Fenstermacher died from cancer in 2005. His grandson dedicated his cross-country ride to him.

"I have a livestrong bracelet that he wore during his battle and I will be wearing it with me during my trip," Jared Fenstermacher wrote on a fundraising page dedicated to the ride. "I'm dedicating the ride to his memory."

The page raised $11,000 for the nonprofit For Pete’s Sake Cancer Respite Foundation, which provides one-week vacations to cancer patients and their caregivers.

Driver distracted by child in backseat

In rural Plymouth County, the shoulder of County Road C60 is just over a foot-wide and gravel, but the road is flat. Fenstermacher was riding in the traffic lane.

Michael Vondrak, 29, of Merrill was driving a white Ford F-250 pickup east down the same stretch of road behind Fenstermacher's bicycle.

Vondrak told police that he took his eyes off the road for a moment as he turned to his son in the backseat. He turned back just in time to see his truck strike the cyclist.

He stayed at the scene as Fenstermacher was carted away to the hospital by the Hinton ambulance service.

“I think I let my guard down a little bit because of the RAGBRAI thing in Iowa,” Fenstermacher said. “If you would have asked me ahead of time … if there was a state I thought I’d get hit in, I wouldn’t have said Iowa.”

Vondrak declined to comment for this story.

Drivers who kill cyclists rarely serve jail time

Vondrak pleaded not guilty to following too close to a bicycle. His court date has not been set.

Biking advocates lobbied the Legislature to enhance the state's bicycle safety laws during the last session. They pushed a bill that would have required drivers to fully change lanes when passing a cyclist and instituted a $1,000 penalty for a driver who kills a cyclist.

The bill died in the Republican-controlled House after passing the Senate 38-12.

The main reason the penalties are so low in these instances is Iowa’s tightly worded reckless driving law.

Reckless driving is one of the toughest things to prove under Iowa law, said Pete Grady, an attorney with the Iowa Attorney General’s Office. But it’s one of the few ways prosecutors can secure a vehicular homicide indictment that might result in more serious punishment.

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In July, the Iowa Bicycle Coalition, the state's largest bicycling advocacy group, called for stiffer penalties and changes to Iowa's reckless driving rules to curb cyclist deaths. It launched a petition that has more than 5,000 signatures.

"Serious injury or death to others is a real possibility for others in the path of a distracted driver," said Mark Wyatt, the Bicycle Coalition's executive director. "A reasonable person would call that behavior reckless, but the Iowa Code doesn't seem to be in sync with what a reasonable person thinks."

Little recourse for family facing medical bills

The Fenstermachers have hired attorneys both in Iowa and Pennsylvania to explore their options.

They considered a civil lawsuit against Vondrak, but since the driver did not have insurance, there is little chance of recouping much money to pay for medical bills, Bob Fenstermacher said.

“It would give us more closure if it would have been considered reckless driving," Bob Fenstermacher said. "If you take your eyes off the road and you hit someone you’re being reckless. That’s my opinion.”

The Fenstermachers turned to the Iowa Crime Victim Compensation Program for financial support. The program, funded by fines and penalties paid by criminals, helps victims with out-of-pocket expenses related to injuries from violent crimes. But since there were no reckless driving charges filed, Fenstermacher did not qualify for aid.

“There are very specific crimes we can cover,” said Janelle Melohn, director of the crime victim assistance division with the Iowa Attorney General’s Office.

Fenstermacher’s crash amounts to a traffic accident, she said. It’s not viewed as a criminal act.

The program pays about $6 million annually in compensation claims. It covers things like lost wages, counseling services and other crime-related costs like residential crime-scene cleanup.

“If we covered every traffic accident where people didn’t have insurance, we’d be out of money in a day,” Melohn said.

'Iowa has not been good to us'

Fenstermacher has thousands of dollars in medical bills. His sister set up a GoFundMe page with a $50,000 goal.

Bob Fenstermacher said no one in Iowa is advocating for his son. He badgered the Plymouth County Sheriff’s Office for weeks to subpoena Vondrak’s cellphone records. He wants to know if the man who hit his son was texting at the time of the crash.

Plymouth County Attorney Darin Raymond said he could not comment on whether his office is seeking those records.

Sgt. Rick Singer with the Plymouth County Sheriff's Office said the charges reflect what the driver said happened. Fenstermacher cannot remember the accident.

"There were no other witnesses. It didn’t appear speed was a factor or that he was on his phone. Even if he was ... he could legally be using his phone," Singer said.

Singer said Iowa's distracted driving laws are horribly written and hard to enforce. In Iowa, officers can issue tickets to drivers for texting, but only if they have pulled over the car for another offense.

"How do I know if you’re texting or looking at directions on Google maps, which is legal," Singer said.

State lawmakers considered changing the state's rules on texting while driving in 2015. The measure would have made texting a primary offense, meaning police could pull over a driver just for texting. But it failed to gain the needed support.

When a driver admitted she was texting when she hit and killed a 21-year-old cyclist in Mitchell County on July 29, 2015, the stiffest penalty available was a $1,000 fine and a suspended driver's license.

“Iowa has not been good to us,” Bob Fenstermacher said. “…You can literally run a guy over from behind (and) get this minimal charge. You get to go on with your life, and my son is potentially changed forever.”

Fenstermacher left Sioux City on Friday for the Magee Rehabilitation hospital in Philadelphia.