Joseph Rose: Trying to make sense of Oregon's hit-and-run epidemic

By Joseph Rose, Oregonian

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"It really is a very selfish crime," Portland Police traffic Sgt. Todd Davis told me as he sifted through this week's two-inch stack of reported hit-and-runs.

Selfish. Immoral. Rampant.

In Portland alone, police take reports on more than 5,200 hit-and-run crashes, from fender benders to serious injuries and fatalities, each year. That's 100 a week; that's mind-boggling.

Without the resources to investigate them all, the police have to perform triage. Still, in a typical year, only about half of Oregon cases where a driver leaves the scene without rendering aid to an injured or dying person end in an arrest, court records show.

So, maybe it's time state lawmakers diverted some of their tough-on-traffic-crime efforts away from distracted driving to slow what is becoming a social epidemic.
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