Criminal charges are pending and a five-week-old child is healing after being critically injured when a pickup truck collided with his Amish buggy in Cattaraugus County, N.Y., Monday.

According to police, a pickup truck operated by Peter O. Riley, 33, of Conewango, was traveling south on State Route 62 in the town of Leon when it rear-ended an Amish buggy carrying a mother, Marie J. Miller, and her two children.

Miller and her children were ejected from the buggy which Cattaraugus County Sheriff’s Office Capt. Robert Buchhardt said was not equipped with safety belts. 

While Miller was reportedly uninjured, her one-year-old son sustained a laceration to the eye and her five-week-old son suffered multiple skull fractures. 

The youngest child was flown to Woman & Children’s Hospital in Buffalo, N.Y., where he remained in treatment Wednesday.  

Buchhardt said criminal charges are pending against Riley, who a law enforcement investigation determined was at fault, while the nature and extent of those charges depend on the outcome of the child’s injuries.

“The child was in tough shape and we’re getting reports that his condition is improving, but before we do anything I need to know the child is going to survive,” Buchhardt said.

The captain said he expected to know by the end of the week, or early next week, what the child’s long-term prognosis and whether charges would be forthcoming.

A 34-year veteran of the sheriff’s office, Buchhardt said a clash of cultures is taking place in Cattaraugus County as its Amish population booms and motorists adapt to the growing presence of slow-moving Amish buggies on the road.

“We have a large Amish community in Cattaraugus County, on the west side of the county, and now a separate sect has moved in from Ohio and into the northeast part of the county,” he said. “Now we’re starting to see buggies in places people are not used to seeing them.”

This, Buchhardt said, has resulted in a surge in the number of motor-vehicle accidents involving buggies.

Monday’s crash, he said, marks the third serious incident in the area this summer, pointing to recent buggy-and-motor vehicle collisions in Olean and West Valley, N.Y.

“This is the second one I’ve had in two weeks,” he said.

There are obvious safety issues with comparatively fragile and slow-moving buggies sharing the road with far-heavier, far-faster automobiles.

“A lot of times drivers come up so fast they’re not aware of what it is,” Buchhardt said, adding that “99 percent of the time it’s the fault of the motor vehicle that strikes the buggy.” 

While all the buggies involved in this summer’s crashes have had slow-moving vehicle emblems, lights and reflective materials, as well as signs along the roadside are in place warning motorists, Buchhardt is interested in doing more.

A meeting between members of the Amish community, estimated at several thousand large, and law enforcement and government is planned for next Wednesday at the Farmersville (N.Y.) Town Hall.

The point he says is to “see if we can work out how to make their travel and motor vehicle travel safer.”