- Ryan Meuleman was in a bike accident with Premier Dan Andrews’ car in 2013
- He claims car hit him but premier insists teenager T-boned into the family SUV
- Teen suffered a punctured lung, broken ribs and lost 90 per cent of his spleen
- He said he was told he had to stay silent if he accepted an $80,000 payout
- Mr Andrews said incident was ‘most sickening, awful’ things he’s experienced
A teenage cyclist who was seriously injured in a crash with Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews‘ car has broken his nine-year silence about the devastating accident.
Ryan Meuleman, who was 15 at the time, suffered a punctured lung, broken ribs, internal bleeding and lost 90 per cent of his spleen after the horrific smash in 2013.
Mr Meuleman now claims he was told never to discuss the crash if he accepted an $80,000 payout from the Transport Accident Commission when he turned 18.
‘I feel that I never really got any justice. [I’ve] never been able to tell my side of the story properly,’ he said.
On Thursday, Premier Dan Andrews refused to answer a lengthy series of questions about the accident when he was grilled by the media about the incident.
The renewed row comes just weeks before the November 26 state election.
Mr Meuleman had been riding between the homes of his father Peter and mother Sonia Johnson in Blairgowrie in Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula at the time.
As he rode down a gravel path, he says he checked in both directions before slowly cycling across a road when he says the premier’s ‘speeding’ car ‘suddenly came out of nowhere’.
‘All of a sudden I was struck to my left-hand side by a car that seemed to come out of nowhere,’ he told the Herald Sun in an interview.
‘Although I did not see where the car had come from, it must have been travelling fast.
‘I know that it is about 20m from the stop sign. The car that struck me full-on did not apply brakes. There was no screeching of tyres. I did not see it coming.
‘It was a massive loud impact. I remember spinning in the air. I remember hitting the windscreen of the car.
But he said he clearly remembers the premier and his wife yelling at each other before then standing over him as he lay crumpled on the tarmac.
Ms Andrews said she was driving their Ford Territory SUV at the time of the accident but the premier then left the scene to take their distraught children to the family’s nearby rental home.
Police did not breathalyse anyone at the scene and Mr Meuleman has now revealed he never gave officers a statement about the accident.
When police initially asked him for a statement, he said he was unable to speak because of the tube that had been in his throat during his 11 days in hospital, and he claims the police never returned.
However he signed a series of documents in the wake of the crash in 2013 in exchange for the $80,000 payout – but has been legally forbidden from seeing them.
He claims he was told he could sign the papers and get the money – but would then need to ‘keep quiet’ about it.
‘I basically had to keep my mouth shut,’ he said. ‘It sort of scared me into signing straight away and just agreeing with it. It’s something you don’t forget.’
His mother told the newspaper: ‘It was just, ‘If you do decide to speak, then you won’t get the money’.’
The premier has previously said the cyclist ploughed into the side of their vehicle as they drove along the road.
He said said his family had been at the beach and were returning to the holiday home when his wife turned right into the road just after 1pm on January 7, 2013.
‘He was moving at speed, he absolutely T-boned the car, hit it at such force he was literally inside the car,’ said the Premier in 2017.
‘He flew up over the car and hit the road. [It was] one of the most sickening, awful things that I have ever experienced.
‘The sound of him hitting the car, the sound of the children screaming in the back of the car, will never leave me or Catherine.’
Mr Meuleman said he was wearing a helmet and backpack, with a heavy bag of tools on the back of the bike, preventing him from going fast.
On Thursday, the Premier refused to discuss the incident any further. Daily Mail Australia has contacted his office for comment.
But he told a press conference: ‘As I’ve said to you before, I’ve got into great detail on numerous occasions about an incident that occurred now 10 years ago and I’ve got nothing further to say.’
Mr Meuleman and his family have now hired lawyer George Defteros to chase up their legal options.
The documents from 2013 have now been released to the family under the Freedom of Information Act but allegedly still cannot be published.
Mr Meuleman claimed he has suffered severe mental health issues, substance abuse and depression in the wake of the crash, but is now studying mechanics at TAFE and working with his father on racing cars.
The police response to the accident was probed by Victoria’s Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission but it did not investigate the Premier or his wife.