A man crossing a Dania Beach street in his wheelchair was rammed by a driver who then fled the scene, and now he is demanding justice for what happened to him. The collision was captured on video, showing the moment the vehicle struck him as he tried to cross.
The footage, first reported by CBS News Miami, shows the driver ramming into the man before speeding away without stopping to check on him or render aid. The station's report centers on the victim's call for accountability following the crash.
Florida law leaves little ambiguity about what a driver is supposed to do in a moment like this. Under Florida Statute § 316.027, leaving the scene of a crash that causes personal injury is a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in state prison, with fleeing a crash involving serious bodily injury carrying even steeper felony penalties, according to Online Sunshine, the state's official statutes portal.
A Heightened Duty of Care for Wheelchair Users
State law also spells out a specific obligation drivers owe to mobility-impaired pedestrians. Florida Statute § 316.1303 mandates that drivers approaching an intersection come to a full stop and take the necessary precautions to avoid injuring someone using a wheelchair, walker, crutch, or orthopedic cane, per the same statutory text published by Online Sunshine. That heightened duty exists precisely because wheelchair users often cannot move out of harm's way as quickly as an able-bodied pedestrian.
Florida also toughened penalties for fleeing drivers more than a decade ago. The Aaron Cohen Life Protection Act, passed in 2014, amended the state's hit-and-run statutes to impose stricter criminal penalties and mandatory minimum prison sentences for drivers who flee crashes involving severe injuries or deaths, according to the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. The law was named for a South Florida cyclist killed by an impaired driver who left the scene, the department notes.
A Persistent Pattern Across the State
The Dania Beach case fits into a much larger and troubling statewide picture. Hit-and-run incidents consistently account for roughly 25% of all motor vehicle crashes across Florida each year, according to state traffic safety records cited by Michles & Booth. Florida recorded 92,381 hit-and-run crashes in 2025 alone, resulting in 180 fatalities and 18,107 injuries statewide, per data reported by Swope, Rodante P.A.
Broward County, where Dania Beach sits, is no stranger to this danger. The county logged 36,871 total traffic crashes in 2025, averaging more than 100 collisions every single day, according to the same Swope, Rodante P.A. analysis of state figures. Pedestrians bear an outsized share of that toll: Broward documented 1,114 pedestrian crashes and 67 pedestrian fatalities in a single year, among the highest totals in South Florida, per Blakeley Law.
Pedestrians Face Outsized Risk
Statewide, the danger to people outside of vehicles is stark. Pedestrian collisions accounted for more than 20% of all Florida traffic deaths in 2025 — 622 fatalities out of 2,930 total traffic deaths — despite representing less than 3% of overall vehicular crashes, according to USA Today. Low visibility appears to play a major role in the deadliest of these incidents: more than 81% of fatal hit-and-run crashes in Florida occur during nighttime, dawn, or dusk conditions, and pedestrians and bicyclists make up 76% of all hit-and-run fatalities statewide, according to Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles data.
Dania Beach Boulevard itself has seen deadly traffic violence in recent months. In a separate crash last month along that corridor, Broward Sheriff's Office deputies arrested a driver on DUI manslaughter and vehicular homicide charges after a multi-vehicle collision killed two people and hospitalized five others, according to Local 10 News. That driver reportedly had a blood-alcohol level of .197%.
Part of a Wider Local Pattern
This is not the first time a hit-and-run has left a South Florida road user fighting for answers. Hoodline previously reported on a motorcyclist critically hurt in a Dania Beach hit-and-run, and more recently covered a case where a fleeing driver was tracked down in Dania Beach after a Marina Mile DUI crash elsewhere in Broward County. Other South Florida vulnerable road users, including an elderly Miami pedestrian and a scooter rider killed on New Year's Eve in Pompano Beach, have been struck by drivers who did not stop.
As of now, it remains unclear whether investigators have identified the vehicle or driver involved in the Dania Beach wheelchair crash, or what the victim's current condition is. The video obtained by CBS News Miami shows only the moment of impact and the driver's flight from the scene, leaving the man now publicly demanding justice for what he says was done to him.
