After a four-year career as an elite racer in road and track cycling, attorney Megan Hottman took up the cause of representing victims of crashes involving motorists. Last summer, she became one of them.
Hottman — who calls herself Colorado’s Cyclist Lawyer — was badly injured by a motorist in a crash last June. Now, she’s back riding and representing cyclists, but she also has a compelling story to tell, and it is being told in a feature-length documentary about cycling, “The Engine Inside,” currently touring the globe.
The film focuses on six cyclists with inspirational stories. Three are from the United States; Hottman is the only one from Colorado. The film will be shown Wednesday at the Dairy Arts Center in Boulder, with proceeds benefiting It Could Be Me, a non-profit devoted to improving relations between cyclists and other road users. The film is narrated by noted cycling television commentator Phil Liggett.
“I don’t want to spoil the film for anyone who hasn’t seen it,” said Hottman, who has represented more than 200 cyclists in her legal career. “It does show my struggles representing cyclists when it has also meant burying friends who’ve been hit and killed. It also captures a fresh post-crash story after I was hit and badly injured by a driver last June.”
It also shows Hottmann painting a white “ghost bike” for Gwen Inglis, a local cyclist who was killed in May 2021. The man who hit Inglis, Ryan Scott Montoya, was sentenced to eight years in prison last June. Hottman was hit two days before Montoya’s sentencing and attended the hearing in a wheelchair. She and co-counsel Richard Kaudy represented Inglis’ husband, Mike, in obtaining a record-setting $353 million verdict in the civil case against Montoya last December.
