Cyclist Accident
On Monday there was an accident between a bicyclist and minivan on 4th ave and Lincoln. I was stunned by the amount of vitriolic comments and the fact this story made it to the In Brief section. Shallow Cogitations posted on the incident and at Cycling Blogspot, John Speare spoke with the cyclist's sister, Katherine, this morning.
Image courtesy of Shallow Cogitations.
His name is Matthew. She had spent the last 40 hours in ICU and he reported that it's "unlikely that Matthew will recover from his injuries. He's got extensive spinal and brain damage. Katherine has been instructed to gather family quickly."
This is from his post "More info on cyclist accident":
-Matthew worked at the new Apple store. He was on his way to work.
- According to a witness Matthew was "flying down the hill." Based on Katherine's discussions with the "investigators," this is the single piece of evidence that makes this a closed case. (I can't stand it; I have to editorialize a bit here: to most car-people, I would submit that a cyclist going 25 MPH is "flying." But of course I wasn't there.)
- The driver, who had an expired license, was not ticketed. He stopped. Then he pulled in front of Matthew, who was unable to stop in time to avoid a collision.
- There are bicycle tire skid marks that indicate Matthew tried to stop.
- According to Katherine, Matthew was a "real" cyclist: he always wore a helmet, he was not a "sidewalk rider." He followed the rules.
- Katherine made the mistake of looking on the Spokesman-Review for information on the event.The poorly described accident scene (which implies it was rider error) coupled with the typical vitriolic, uninformed remarks of the SR commenters made the horrific event even worse.
- She mentioned that the investigating officer said that there were some "bike advocates at the scene who were doing their own investigation" and who were going to "put up a white bike." If this is you or your buddies, please contact me. She's very interested in learning anything new, especially finding other witnesses.
I still don't understand: How was the cyclist at fault?
