Just saw this in the Boulder Camera:

BOULDER, Colo. — A 16-year-old Boulder girl is being treated for a brain injury after being hit by another cyclist on her way to the Thursday Night Cruisers Ride.

Police are looking for the male cyclist who ran into Tess Eckert at about 7:40 p.m., but hit-and-run statutes don't apply to bike accidents, Boulder police spokeswoman Sarah Huntley said.

Eckert, an incoming senior at New Vista High School, had dressed up for the spirited weekly ride with two friends and was riding to the event at Scott Carpenter Park along a bike path near Lashley Lane and South 36th Street.

One of the girls, Dakota Hindman, 17, said they reached the end of the path and were emerging onto Lashley Lane when two male cyclists, who were not associated with the cruisers, came around a blind corner. One of the men clipped Eckert's right pedal.

Eckert, who was not wearing a helmet, was thrown over the top of her handlebars and hit her head on a cement retaining wall, Hindman said.

As her friend lay unconscious in the street, Hindman called 911 and emergency operators talked her through first aid.

"I thought maybe she'd scraped her knee," Hindman said. "Then I realized what had happened."

Hindman said the men stopped and waited for the ambulance to arrive, but left when Boulder police showed up.

"The guys left," Hindman said. "I was more concerned with Tess."

Paramedics rushed Eckert to Boulder Community Hospital, where her mother, Bonnie Eckert, said she nearly died.

"We weren't sure she was going to make it last night," Bonnie Eckert said Friday. "But she's talking to us now. She's lucky to be alive."

Tess Eckert continued to be treated at the hospital's intensive-care unit on Friday. She suffered a fractured skull and bruised the left side of her brain, injuries her mother said might require months of rehabilitation and could lead to a lifetime of problems concentrating.

Sarah Huntley, a Boulder police spokeswoman, said officers are still investigating whether charges are warranted if police find the men, but it's a complicated legal issue.

Because Colorado state law doesn't consider a bike-on-bike incident to be a traffic accident, Huntley said, cyclists aren't required to exchange information, so hit-and-run statutes don't apply.

However, depending on the circumstances, police can issue tickets for careless or reckless driving, Huntley said.

She said it's also a "strange situation" because there was likely some responsibility on the girls to slow down at the crossing, but "on the other hand, if this was a classic vehicle accident the turning vehicle would be responsible for yielding."

It's not clear who was at fault in the Thursday wreck, Huntley said, but officers want to talk to the men -- both described as in their 30s, wearing Spandex outfits, one with a bald head and the other with brown hair. Police might also release composite sketches of the riders, Huntley said.

"We would like to get more information about what happened both from an enforcement perspective, and to see what could be done to make that a more safe junction" by working with city traffic engineers, Huntley said.

Bonnie Eckert said she isn't sure whether she wants the men responsible to face charges, but the family does want them to come forward and for people to be more aware of bicycle right-of-ways and blind corners.

"I would love to expose this corner -- this dangerous corner," she said.