Tom Sweeney, Star Tribune
Minneapolis police officers investigated the wheel area of a commercial truck involved in the fatal bicycle accident today.
May 20, 2009 - 9:04 AM
Cyclist crushed near downtown Minneapolis
A bicyclist was killed early this morning near downtown Minneapolis when a truck driver turned into the cycling lane on Park Avenue, crushing the rider.
Police were questioning the driver about the accident, which occurred about 7:40 a.m. at the intersection of Park and E. 14th Street. They also blocked off the street as they tried to reconstruct the accident.
Police said both streets will remain closed until late this morning.
The one-way street has heavy bicycle traffic during the morning commute.
The identity of the rider and other details of the accident weren't immediately available.
-- BOB VON STERNBERG
I don't enjoy posting these stories, but it MUST be understood that this cyclist died not just because he was run over by a truck, and not just because he was in the truck's blind-spot and the cyclist and the truck driver both failed to show proper caution. No, this cyclist died because of a bad facility design, a design that defies the logical operation of road systems, one that set up the mechanics of this tragedy. The cyclist died because of the toy-vehicle mentality that believes magic paint segregation is the best protection for cyclists, as opposed to educated integration, as shown here.
Had the cyclist been in front of the truck making the left turn (controlling his lane), the truck would have simply slowed down, waited for the cyclists to clear the intersection, and then turned. Because the cyclist was next to the curb on the truck's right, he fell into the driver's left-side blind spot. By segregating cyclists from other traffic, cyclists are too often removed from the environment that other vehicle operators function in. We become like pedestrians on the sidewalk... an under-viewed sideshow.
Here's the collision location.
Conclusions:
- The truck driver should have been aware of where the cyclist was, and acted appropriately.
- The cyclist should have known he was in the truck's blind spot, and been prepared for the truck turning left by giving it extra leeway.
- The planners, engineers, and city officials who approved this bike lane should have rejected a traffic design with such obvious safety defects.
I am not blaming the cyclist. He was simply trusting in the design he had been told gave him priority and provided him with safety.
I do not know if Minnesota has a "Safe Passing/Vulnerable Users" law. It makes no difference. Not only would it not have prevented this collision, I can almost guarantee you that the truck driver will not be charged. Why not?
Because the cyclist failed to yield right of way to the turning truck.
You want to eliminate right-hook collisions (left-hook in this case on a one-way street with a left-hand bike lane)? Get rid of bike lanes and the gutter-riding mentality that promotes them. The illusions of safety that bike lanes and gutter riding present are just that, illusions. However, the dangers they present are all too real... and final.
Note:
The annual "Ride of Silence" in honor of cyclists who have lost their lives on roadways is being held at White Rock Lake tonight (ironically, on the trail and not the street). No doubt, there will be appeals made by some cyclists for (some/more) bike lanes to protect them from automobiles. Truly informed cyclists should instead be demanding that such designs be eliminated in the name of bicyclists' safety.
16 comments:
If the truck had just passed the cyclist and veered into him because he didn't notice him, he may have similarly run up the cyclist's butt and ran him over if the cyclist had taken the lane.
You really don't know.
It gets a little old when you pontificate. You are not the be-all end-all of font of bicycle knowledge, and your preachiness gets old.
On this one, I must respectfully disagree. I see no reason to shower special scorn on the facilities designers. They're merely one contributory factor.
Since the cyclist was to the LEFT of the truck, he most likely COULD have been seen by the driver, had the driver exercised due caution before initiating the turn. BAD driver!
The person on a bike certainly could have avoided the accident by not riding to the left of a truck that might turn left. KSTP TV video plants the suggestion he might have been blowing a red light to the left of a truck making a free LH turn. Who knows? Regardless, BAD person on a bike!
That bike lane is better than most I've seen - it's actually outside the door zone and has a second stripe to discourage riding really close to car doors. It's biggest sin is it does not mitigate turning conflicts - a LH-side bike lane is a little out of the mainstream, but not inherently crazy since it's a one-way street. BAD policy - but at least average.
The lawyers will be the ones that profit on this one, mostly at the expense of the trucker's insurance company. Especially since the person on a bike was safely wearing a helmet.
Few readers of this blog would have gotten caught by the truck, bike lane or no.
In my previous comment, please mentally replace the word "cyclist" in the second paragraph with "person on a bike."
I have a real hard time with dead cyclists. Kneeling beside a young man, holding his hand and telling him everything was going to be alright (when it obviously wasn't) as his life's blood ran into the gutter, sensitized me to this issue.
I have a real hard time with lapses in logic when it comes to traffic engineering, like straight through lanes inside a turning movement, mandated by politics instead of engineering principles. The AASHTO guide calls for dashed lines on a bike lane at an intersection, to prepare cyclists for the possibility of turning vehicles. Those are non-existent at that location, signaling to the lane occupant that they have right-of-way priority.
I have a real hard time with subservient cyclists who can't be bothered to take responsibility for operating a vehicle, but who want an engineering wet-nurse solution that defies logic, proven traffic practices, centuries of right-of-way traditions, and the laws of physics.
I am not impressed that the straight-through design bike lane had sufficient door-zone clearance. “Well, other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”
Getting hit from the rear in an urban/suburban setting occurs with roughly the same frequency in or out of a bike lane (most of those types of collisions occur either on a rural road, or in the dark with an unilluminated cyclist). Right and left-hook collisions like this one usually occur because of bike lanes and gutter riding, which intentionally place a straight-through “vehicle” inside of a turning vehicle. Gutter riding can be dealt with through education. Bike lanes must be dealt with by removal.
You don't like being preached to? Fine. The young man under the truck probably didn't like it either.
It seems whether in the bike lane or controlling the standard traffic lane, cyclists need to understand how to ride safely. Both sides of the debate require knowledge and a behavior change on the part of the cyclist. Of course, we also hope for a change in behavior on the part of drivers of motor vehicles, but I'm guessing the they (other than those who happen to be cyclists) are probably not reading this.
Face it, cyclists are a small minority. Much smaller than people on bicycles. That's not gonna change in the next few years, and maybe not during our lifetimes. Cyclists' safety depends on our own actions, the rules of the road, and not on the goodwill of either the majority or the government. As Forester says, what the majority GIVES to a minority is not as good as they give to themselves.
Deal with it or don't ride. I don't like seeing people on bicycles get killed, but most times the dead guy did something really stupid, regardless of the traffic engineering. I've done stupid stuff myself. I try to do it less often as I get older and more mortal. I like to think blogs like this and Commute Orlando help that process along. I think I'm not alone in that regard.
I have no wish to be a dead cyclist. If I DO become a dead cyclist, I will not die as "road lice," but because either I or some motorist messed up royally - probably both. I can almost always see what idiocy the traffic engineers have wrought BEFORE I ride there. Traffic engineers may p*** me off, but they don't FORCE me to ride anywhere.
Blaming them is a victim's game...
Crashes happen when one or both parties make a bad decision. Crashes are avoided when one party compensates for another's bad decision.
In conflicts between motor vehicles and bicycles, the driver of a bicycle has the greater interest in avoiding crashes.
Sure, it would be great if we could teach all motorists to not make dumb mistakes AND to avoid the dumb mistakes that bicyclists make.
But this is the real world. We interact with 100s of cars every day. Motorists only see a few bicyclist in a day and maybe interact with one or 2 in a week.
So the most effective thing to do is teach bicyclists to make good decisions AND the skills to avoid crashing with motorists who make dumb mistakes.
Sadly many bicyclists don't want to learn. Or, "bike advocates" assume they don't want to learn. So they paint lines to entice people to ride and the lines they paint break the system, defy the rules of the road and increase the potential for conflict. Then they try to shift the burden of avoiding the resulting crashes onto motorists.
You don't need to be a rocket scientist to see that system is designed to fail. And when it does, the bicyclists are the ones who die.
It's so stupid.
It doesn't have to be that way. Bicycling is so safe and so easy. It only requires a few simple skills and an understanding of how traffic functions.
I said I don't like being preached to, and I meant it. I also think your tone is more arrogant than it needs to be. That said, I think this is an important blog in my blog list.
Almost all the other bike blogs out there (mine included) puts that positive spin on cycling. Yay! What fun!
Even if I don't like being preached to, I think it's important to get a sobering reminder from time to time about what happens when someone makes a bad decision. Our vulnerability means that not only do we have to avoid our own bad decisions, but we also have to anticipate the bad decisions other people may make.
From the facts presented, I can't really assign blame in this case. But we all have to remain vigilant to make sure we don't end up a post about a dead rider on someone else's blog.
Doohickie said:
"...he may have similarly run up the cyclist's butt and ran him over if the cyclist had taken the lane."
That's preposterous! Unless the driver is physical impaired, like a diabetic coma or a stroke, or chemical impaired, they simply don't run over things in their way.
A victim's game to demand professionalism from professionals? Hardly.
The "victim's game" is to accept these designs. They are pushed by two sectors: cyclists who are afraid to ride with traffic in a style that is in their best interests, and... motorists who don't believe bicycles should be in the road in the first place.
You can say you'll "ride where you want" all day long, but as more of these illogical designs are deployed by the "subservient-inferior cyclists" believers, the more you will be taking un-planned rest stops talking to a police officer. Once installed, they are not optional (in the eyes of law enforcement officers).
Doohickie, I'm not arrogant, I'm angry (well, maybe a little arrogant). You should be too (angry). The cyclist in Minnesota is dead because he trusted in a design that put him at an increased exposure to serious injury in a very common accident type (vehicles turning across), in an attempt to prevent an incredibly rare accident type (cyclist overtaken from rear).
The underlying theme is that "bicycles are not real vehicles, they are toy vehicles and need toy traffic lanes to operate in". The fact that reality sets in with terminal judgment doesn't dissuade the planners, advocates, and politicians. Your MPO is making it clear right now that they want to see more bike lanes, more bike paths, and more inferiority-cycling.
Here's Keri's excellent piece on trucks and blind spots. The situation in Minneapolis is a little unusual, because the cyclist was to the LEFT of the truck (a little better visibility, but a big blind-zone regardless).
http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/2008/11/30/what-cyclists-need-to-know-about-trucks/
Legally turning vehicles (cars or trucks, or bicycles) can not be expected to make sure there isn't a straight-through vehicle inside of them. Why not? Because the universally accepted understanding is that vehicles are not allowed to make 90 degree turns across the path of same direction traffic. It's very simple, and very, very basic to traffic operations.
To suspend traffic reality for cyclists for turning movements would be almost like saying "up is down, black is white, and stop signs and red lights are really yield signs". Oh, wait... some cycling "advocates" are saying just that, aren't they?
For the record, the Ride of Silence only used the trail from Winfrey Point down to Winsted. The majority of it was on the street.
We now return to your regularly scheduled debate.
Blogger Ignatius J. Reilly said...
"For the record, the Ride of Silence only used the trail from Winfrey Point down to Winsted." -
So I noticed when I was there last night, yesterday's post was based on what Gail Spann was saying. I also noticed the police set up an intersection control so safety conscious cyclists could ignore a stop sign.
I see. I just wanted to clarify for those not in attendance to whom this bit "(ironically, on the trail and not the street)" would have been a little disingenuous.
Intersection controls or no, I thought that ride was a nice tribute. I wish rides like that and Tour Dallas could garner a little more than a 15 second mention at the end of a newscast, however. Awareness/education like that could go a long way toward eliminating the perceived "need" for bike lanes in the first place. In my very humble opinion, anyway.
Blogger Ignatius J. Reilly said...
"Intersection controls or no, I thought that ride was a nice tribute." -
Ghost bikes.
http://www.ghostbikes.org/
More details:
Cyclist killed by truck in downtown Minneapolis
by Elizabeth Baier, Minnesota Public Radio
May 20, 2009
St. Paul — A bicyclist was killed early Wednesday morning near downtown Minneapolis after being crushed by a tractor trailer hauling concrete and asphalt, police said.
The accident occurred around 7:40 a.m. at the intersection of 14th Street East and Park Avenue South, according to Minneapolis Police Sgt. Bill Palmer.
Both vehicles were traveling north on Park Avenue when the accident occurred. The truck driver hit the bicyclist while trying to make a left turn onto 14th Street, Palmer said.
The bicyclist was crushed by the truck and died at the scene, officials said.
Police said the victim was an adult male. They did not release his identity or other details of the accident.
Earlier this morning, police blocked the area to reconstruct the accident and question the truck driver, who was later released without a citation, Palmer said. Both streets reopened by midmorning.
Park Avenue South is a one-way, northbound street frequently used by early morning bicycle commuters. Officials are urging motorists to drive carefully as the weather warms up and more bicyclists return to the roads.
In 2008, 13 bicyclists were killed on Minnesota roads --- the most since 14 bicyclists were killed in 2000, and a significant increase over the four killed in 2007.
State transportation officials say the increase in bicycle commuters was a factor in the increase in deaths last year.Officials advise both motorists and bicyclists to bear responsibility for safety on the roads -- bicyclists are responsible for paying attention to traffic control devices like stoplights and stop signs, while motorists must not drive inattentively and fail to see bicyclists.
Officials say the biggest factor in bicyclist-motorist crashes is failure to yield the right of way.
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