Lisa Dougherty gave me permission to post this. Note, the BSC is the LANL Bicycle Safety Committee. I've redacted the name of the injured pending clarification on whether the family wants its privacy.
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I am writing this to you, the co-chairs of the BSC, as a concerned cyclist in Los Alamos. This is not specifically a Lab issue, but since this incident took place in Los Alamos on a route frequently ridden by LANL cyclist employees, I believe the BSC should at least be aware of what happened to determine if a communication should be sent out to the LANL cycling community.
This Saturday, my neighbor stopped by our home to tell us about a very serious accident that almost took the life of her husband. She was worried about the safety of local cyclists due to what her family has been coping with for the last few months. Her situation is extremely disturbing to me, and I wanted to bring it up to you and ask for discussion on how best to protect the local cycling community from increasingly aggressive driving that can and has led to cyclist injuries.
On Wednesday, March 27, my neighbor ( ) headed off on a morning ride of the Grand Loop, something he had been doing about 3 days a week back then. He would start around 6:30am and return to his home in Los Alamos around 9am. However, that Wednesday, 9am came and went and he hadn't returned home, so his worried wife started driving the loop the opposite direction he was riding. She encountered the clean-up of an accident just on the White Rock side of the Bandelier entrance (around mile marker 56), and learned that her husband was to be airlifted to Albuquerque due to the severity of injuries sustained in an accident. As events unfolded, she encountered increasingly concerning inconsistencies. The police told her that ( ) had called 911 to get picked up, yet he was unconscious with serious head injuries when they loaded him into the ambulance. ( ) was on an uphill stretch of the road, going about 10mph, yet the police said that he broke about 12 bones on the left side of his body, including his femur, bones in his face, and a number of ribs, and sustained 2 serious contusions in the brain (even though he was wearing a helmet) because he dropped his chain and fell over. ( )'s trauma doctors and primary care physician say that his injuries were much too severe to have been caused by anything but a high speed collision with a large vehicle.
My concerns are two-fold. First, I believe, due to my own experiences as a cyclist with increasing driver aggression on the road during these stressful times, that this was a deliberate act. Even more so, I fear this was an attempted vehicular homicide. ( ) is a very conscientious rider, so he was riding as far to the road edge as he could, and he was wearing a blinking red light on the back of his helmet. Even if this had been an accident or due to distracted driving, the driver did not stop and render aid to ( ) or at least call 911. ( ) was found, unconscious on one side of the road with his bicycle on the other, by other drivers. His route tracking cyclocomputer was and remains missing. Not only does it seem that many drivers, in general, are taking out their frustrations on cyclists, the most vulnerable of all road users, we know that this driver, who struck a cyclist on a popular route near Los Alamos and then deliberately left the scene with the rider incapacitated on the side of the road, has gotten away with a hit and run with injuries.
My other concern is that the local police are not taking this serious risk to cyclists seriously. And I fear that it goes beyond this event. In this case, the police have decided ( )'s crash was due to him dropping his chain, despite obvious evidence to the contrary, and have issued no accident report and are planning to conduct no investigations. They wouldn't even respond to ( )'s wife until she sent a report of all of ( )'s broken bones to them and asked how his injuries could possibly have been cause by a healthy guy falling over on his bicycle onto soft ground on an uphill stretch. In the same way, I was disturbed by the lack of due diligence of the local police when they worked the motorcycle accident that happened during a group ride I was in a little over a week ago. I was following the woman who hit the rail on the uphill slope out of Ancho Canyon, on the way towards White Rock, and vaulted over the rail and down the 60 foot embankment. I was the first on the scene. I was right behind her, but the police never talked to me. They also only directed traffic on one side of the blind curve. For two hours, I directed traffic on other side to prevent oblivious drivers from barreling onto the accident scene and causing another accident. The firemen were awesome at their jobs, extracting my new friend from her perch on the side of the embankment while protecting her injuries, but the single police officer perhaps did not have enough support to sufficiently handle his responsibilities in the situation.
This bicycle accident has me a little freaked out. I've had more and more drivers going into the bicycle lane to buzz me while I'm hugging the curb. I've had more and more drivers yelling obscenities and threats at me while I'm following the laws and riding around town. I haven't been riding the loop much due to health issues, but this accident and the lack of police follow-through is making me wonder if now isn't a good time to ride on open roads. ( )'s wife suggested that we reach out to local cyclists and ask them to, please, wear cameras recording both forward and backward when they ride, but I worry about how much even this would help since ( ) was knocked unconscious and nobody can find his route recorder computer. Can you please speak about this as a committee and let me know your thoughts? I have a list of ( )'s injuries and can get a statement from his physician about the probability of the injuries being due to a collision with a large vehicle, if that helps.
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Hmmm. I've dropped chains more often than I would like to admit and know of others who have as well. Never ended up in a Medivac helicopter. Be careful out there. And, maybe it is a good idea to get one of those onboard cameras.
5 comments:
Was this circulated to the cycling community when this happened? It is so much easier to track things when the information is timely. My college boyfriend was killed in a hit and run on a training ride outside of Flagstaff on the road to the Grand Canyon on a sunny February day. Even 40 years ago, the police found paint flecks on his bike and in his shorts that were analyzed and found to be a Champagne Beige that was a rare Cadillac color. How hard would it have been to track those by VIN? Why bother to analyze the paint, then not follow through?
When I got hit myself here in SF in 2007, the only place police interviewed me was when I was lying on the ground, in delirious pain, being treated by EMTs. The report was flawed when I finally got my hands on it. Same for another friend who was hit by a left turning driver who crossed in her straight path. She was thrown into the air and it broke her pelvis. Where did the police interview her? At the site during trauma. Again, the report was highly inaccurate.
Police need to be required to that a specialized Smart Cycling course and the Bike Friendly Driver course that LCIs can teach. All police. Not the ones that ride bikes, the ones in cars who respond to accidents.
All drivers should be required to take the Bike Friendly Driver course. It is 1.25 hours and Fort Collins finds it's making a difference.
Was this circulated to the cycling community when this happened? It is so much easier to track things when the information is timely. My college boyfriend was killed in a hit and run on a training ride outside of Flagstaff on the road to the Grand Canyon on a sunny February day. Even 40 years ago, the police found paint flecks on his bike and in his shorts that were analyzed and found to be a Champagne Beige that was a rare Cadillac color. How hard would it have been to track those by VIN? Why bother to analyze the paint, then not follow through?
When I got hit myself here in SF in 2007, the only place police interviewed me was when I was lying on the ground, in delirious pain, being treated by EMTs. The report was flawed when I finally got my hands on it. Same for another friend who was hit by a left turning driver who crossed in her straight path. She was thrown into the air and it broke her pelvis. Where did the police interview her? At the site during trauma. Again, the report was highly inaccurate.
Police need to be required to that a specialized Smart Cycling course and the Bike Friendly Driver course that LCIs can teach. All police. Not the ones that ride bikes, the ones in cars who respond to accidents.
All drivers should be required to take the Bike Friendly Driver course. It is 1.25 hours and Fort Collins finds it's making a difference.
I don't think it was. But this is the first I heard about it.
The recent LADP article stating the LA Police are now investigating this incident as a possible hit and run states the incident occurred on June 27th, which is a Saturday. The write-up you have, which is a second hand description states it happened on Wednesday, March 27th. March 27th was actually a Friday. Makes me wonder about the accuracy of the rest of the info. My wife recently read this and now wants me to get front/rear cameras. Turns out there aren't many good options to do this and they are very expensive. Cameras also do not help prevent accidents. Seems to me it's better to spend your money and efforts toward avoidance. I also can't honestly say I've seen more than normal aggression from drivers. Mostly just the normal careless and stupid behavior.
I posted the LAPD story to the pajarito-riders list and several people responded saying the police and/or the paper got the date wrong and it was in March. But since I moved to Fanta Se, I am pretty much out of the loop up there. Best to check with the P.D. and the Pajarito Riders.
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