About half of cycling deaths come when bikers are struck from behind

“Then for some reason I felt a little push,” he said. “After the push there was a conscious decision to relax, and then the force became enormous.

”The next thing Cox, 32, remembered was floating though the air and looking at his feet against a clear blue sky. He never saw the gray Ford Contour that hit him. The car passed underneath him and sped off. Cox landed on his left shoulder blade. Witnesses said he rolled like a rag doll and came to a stop on the asphalt.

Drivers stopped to help. Cox asked for a phone and called his mother. They told him not to move; the ambulance was on its way. At the emergency room of Methodist Hospital, doctors told Cox that nothing was broken. He sustained road rash and a gash across his shoulder, but he would be walking out of the hospital that night.

An average of 44 cyclists are killed each year in Texas. Twenty of those deaths are caused when bicyclists are hit, like Cox, by a vehicle going in the same direction, according to Bike Texas, a bicycle lobby and safety group. Cox, a film actor and model living near St. Mary's University, was struck July 5.

The weekend before, Michael Argall, 45, a bicycle and running coach from Austin, was killed when a motorist hit him from behind while he was riding on U.S. 290 near Fredericksburg. The driver told the Department of Public Safety she could not see Argall because of the rising sun.

The accident occurred at 8:13 a.m. No charges have been filed. The case is being prepared for a grand jury.

Unlike the woman who hit Argall, Milon Frith did not stop for Cox, police said. Looking through the spider web of cracks in the windshield left by Cox's body, he kept driving until officers caught up with him in Wilson County, police said. The crash report states he smelled of alcohol, had glassy, bloodshot eyes and had trouble walking in a straight line.

Witnesses called 911 to report Frith's erratic driving and watched him hit Cox. That part of U.S. 181, just inside Loop 1604, has a wide shoulder and a rumble strip that makes it popular with cyclists.

Frith is being held at the Bexar County Jail on a $37,000 bond on charges of intoxication assault, failure to stop and render aid and a warrant for assault from a previous incident.