Miami-Dade Transit Bus and Bike Accident, Now With Video

In the grainy video, a cyclist is casually riding up Biscayne Boulevard early on a January morning. He’s close to the curb. There are a few other cars on the road. Then suddenly, he disappears from view and a loud, metallic squeal is heard.

The video comes from the Miami-Dade Transit bus that was tailgating the cyclist, Pier Raccuglia, until it sidled next to him, and pushed him into a ditch.

Last week, we wrote about his story. The 42-year-old cyclist is suing Miami-Dade County over the accident. But now a local blog has uncovered video from that morning.

On the nearly four-minute video, the bus follows Raccuglia, who is sporting a helmet and a white-on-orange spandex uniform, all the way from 14th street, through the Arsht Center promenade, to Northeast 10th street.

At minute 1:36, Raccuglia disappears and the clanking noise is heard. The driver, a woman, is caught by the bus’ internal camera saying, “He came into the bus. I didn’t hit nobody. He did that shit on purpose.”

The driver then instructs the passengers to leave the bus and get into another one while she waits for police to come. “He’ll be alright,” she assures them. “I’m not nervous, and I’m not scared. They got cameras on this side and that side.

From Raccuglia’s point of view, things happened a lot differently. He’s charging in his lawsuit against the county that the driver acted recklessly when she bypassed the small biker beside the bus. The accident left him immobile for five months.

“What pissed me off — pardon my French — is that the driver didn’t get out of the bus to help me,” he told Riptide last week. “And she never apologized.”

The video can be found here.

[erik.maza@miaminewtimes.com | on twitter]