It's all right, Ma. I'm only bleeding.

From Bike Portland.

Major injury right-hook crash at 9th and Lovejoy

Posted by Jonathan Maus (Editor) on March 2nd, 2009 at 10:12 am

This is the northeast corner of
NW 9th and Lovejoy.
(Photos by Marion Rice)

This morning around 8:45 a woman riding her bike in the bike lane down NW Lovejoy was right-hooked as she attempted to cross NW 9th.

According to Marion Rice, who was on the scene just minutes after the collision took place, the woman was pinned under the car and dragged across the intersection. The car and the bike came to rest near the northwest corner of the intersection (in front of Subway).

Police and ambulance responded to the scene and the woman was taken to the hospital with serious injuries. An officer on the scene told Rice that the woman was conscious (but unable to speak) and has likely suffered a broken leg and pelvis, a broken jaw, and has suffered serious facial lacerations.

This intersection is no stranger to
right hooks. I took this photo in 2006.
(Photo © J. Maus)

End of Bike Portland's report.

What's going on here? It's simple. The universal understanding that a vehicle in the right lane may turn right has been suspended, by creating a "segregated" right lane that may continue straight across the path of right turning vehicles. Such a concept requires the suspension of logic, and results in "right hook" collisions like this, when a straight through bicyclist enters a right turning motorist's blind zone.

Such encounters are often fatal, and in this case, are purely the result of politically-based traffic engineering decisions.