A cyclist was seriously injured in a collision with a car in Wallingford yesterday afternoon.
According to police, at about 12:45 p.m., officers responded to an accident in the 200 block of NE 45th Street after, police say, a cyclist collided with the passenger side of a car making a left turn.
Medics responded and transported the 26-year-old male cyclist to Harborview with life-threatening injuries. Police say the driver was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
SPD’s Traffic Collision Squad is investigating the incident.
Well, it’s interesting that you chose to report on this bike/car accident but not this one: http://www.myballard.com/2009/08/03/bicy….
It’s sorry to see only stories here that appear to promote a pro-bike, “cars are terrible!” agenda.
$4.43!?!
@1: fault isn’t mentioned in that article, or this one.
You left out the part about the cyclist blowing past the car that had stopped (on a street with one lane of travel in each direction) to let someone make a left turn in front of them. The turning car was then hit in the passenger side by the cyclist who was ignoring what was going on in front of him.
@ 2, that google image was probably taken last summer.
Oh so a car moving laterally didn’t yield to parallel traffic moving straight?
Then I’m sure you wouldn’t blame a cyclist turning left in front of a car passing on the left either.
@ 3, they might not mention fault, but I can’t imagine any other way that a cyclist would collide with the passenger of a left-turning car.
Sorry, make that “passenger SIDE” of a left turning car.
@4 You left out the part about the fact that you’re an asshole
@7 what if the cyclist “[blew] past the car that had stopped (on a street with one lane of travel in each direction) to let someone make a left turn in front of them.” as @ 4 comments??
I was almost knocked on my ass yesterday by a cyclist as I came up the stairs @ Montlake, they weren’t even paying attention as they were looking over their other shoulder so they could scoot out in front of cars getting on 520. The only reason they didn’t knock me on my ass is because I was paying attention. Yes it would have been them that was at fault for running into me (on a sidewalk where they technically shouldn’t be riding anyway) … but I would have been just as much the dumbass for allowing it to happen.
Left turns in front of cyclists are the most common car-bike accident, constituting something like 15% of total collisions (the second most common is the right turn in front of cyclist at an intersection). The damage from this type of accident is higher than in most others because the speeds are high. Imagine hitting a brick wall going 3-4x faster than you can go on a bike. In most cases, it is a left turning car trying to get through a yellow light. They simply do not see the cyclist.
I was hit by a car doing a left turn in front of me on Lake City Way last year. I hit the quarter panel at an equivalent of 45 mph and destroyed my shoulder, needing surgery. I consider myself *very* lucky.
Just last month, an experienced bike racer was hit in similar fashion on Lk Wa Blvd near Seward Park who suffered traumatic neck injuries. He passed away after 2 weeks in the hospital in a coma. One of my teammates went through a pickup truck window doing the same thing a few years back and luckily survived after a few days in the hospital.
Car drivers – PLEASE BE AWARE of this hazard. Look for oncoming cyclists before gunning it through an intersection. They have the right of way, but a mistake can cost them their life. We all need to share the road.
@1: Cars are not terrible, but the psychology of most drivers is that they own the road. In the Netherlands and in Germany, where the bike-car accident rate is dozens of times lower than here, there are simply more bikes on the road and therefore more awareness. Stories like this raise awareness for everyone. I drive and bike, and these stories cement the idea in my head that I am commandeering a 2 ton weapon and need to be alert all the time.
I hope the cyclist in Wallingford makes it through OK. Life-threatening injuries doesn’t sound good.
Hmm… I could have sworn that I made the first comment on this thread. Um, when I answered 3, I thought s/he was addressing me, because I thought I had posted that the car clearly didn’t yield to the bicycle. Sorry for any confusion I’m causing…
Left turns in front of cyclists are the most common car-bike accident, constituting something like 15% of total collisions (the second most common is the right turn in front of cyclist at an intersection). The damage from this type of accident is higher than in most others because the speeds are high. Imagine hitting a brick wall going 3-4x faster than you can go on a bike. In most cases, it is a left turning car trying to get through a yellow light. They simply do not see the cyclist.
I was hit by a car doing a left turn in front of me on Lake City Way last year. I hit the quarter panel at an equivalent of 45 mph and destroyed my shoulder, needing surgery. I consider myself *very* lucky.
Just last month, an experienced bike racer was hit in similar fashion on Lk Wa Blvd near Seward Park who suffered traumatic neck injuries. He passed away after 2 weeks in the hospital in a coma. One of my teammates went through a pickup truck window doing the same thing a few years back and luckily survived after a few days in the hospital.
Car drivers – PLEASE BE AWARE of this hazard. Look for oncoming cyclists before gunning it through an intersection. They have the right of way, but a mistake can cost them their life. We all need to share the road.
@1: Cars are not terrible, but the psychology of most drivers is that they own the road. In the Netherlands and in Germany, where the bike-car accident rate is dozens of times lower than here, there are simply more bikes on the road and therefore more awareness. Stories like this raise awareness for everyone. I drive and bike, and these stories cement the idea in my head that I am commandeering a 2 ton weapon and need to be alert all the time.
I hope the cyclist in Wallingford makes it through OK. Life-threatening injuries doesn’t sound good.
@ 10, cars making left turns have to look out for all oncoming traffic, regardless of whether the driver or cyclist is doing something stupid.
Of course, the particular issue being raised here is, why was a car yielding to a left turn? If the stopped car had the right of way, that person is most clearly at fault.
I agree that drivers NEED to be more aware of cyclists (and pedestrians, but especially cyclists are they are moving much more quickly than pedestrians), but I also think that cyclists need to follow the same rules of the road. If the car IN FRONT OF YOU stops, figure out why before you just blow past them, that is JUST AS DANGEROUS as cars simply not paying attention to you. Always be on the wary and realize that no matter how much you plead there are just going to be a shit load of unaware drivers not thinking about you.
@ 15, agreed. We’ll have to see whether @ 4 is stating the truth about this collision or not. There’s no reason to take it at face value at this point.
@16 Totally, especially as the image shown in this post, now that I really think about it … does not support what @4 said …
@4,
So the bicyclist is supposed to be a mind reader? How was he supposed to know the stopped driver was an idiot? Drivers who are obsessively polite to each other (by letting a car that doesn’t have the right of way through) are at least as dangerous as the oblivious idiots out there. Bicyclists, pedestrians, and other drivers aren’t going to assume that a driver is stopped to let someone else go. I’ve almost been hit a couple of times as a pedestrian thanks to idiots like that.
@4 If that’s the case, we can chalk up yet another accident caused by an idiot Seattle driver trying to be polite while breaking the law and generally fucking up the expected behavior of traffic.
@18 because if a bicycle was truly following the rules of the road he would have yielded behind the stopped vehicle, as he is *supposed* to be another vehicle in traffic.
This is PRECISELY why bicycles shouldn’t be on the roads playing in traffic! There are too many “extra” rules to accomodate them, giving them extra lanes in some situations, other times they need to be in the middle of a lane acting like a motorized vehicle.
Seeing as how this road doesn’t have bike lanes, the bicyclist is clearly at fault for not paying attention, pulling an illegal manuever and going around a stopped car ahead of him, and not using extreme care & caution (READ: going around SLOWLY) to see why the vehicle ahead of him was yielding.
Either bicycles on downtown city streets need to declare themselves as full vehicles, and stay in amongst traffic and therefore follow all car rules, or they must get the fuck off the road. Enough is enough.
These convoluted bullshit “it depends on the situation” rules are completely worthless and lead to accidents. In this case the driver of the vehicle that the bicyclist impacted is now going to be partially at fault, have to fix his vehicle, and possibly see increased insurance rates, because some ASSHOLE bicyclist once AGAIN tried to assert his “rights” at the wrong moment.
Dumb ass.
@ 20, don’t blame the uninformed for not knowing the rules of the road. (For example, I’m pretty sure it’s alright for bikes to pass cars on the left when they’re stopped.)
Now, keep in mind that we don’t actually KNOW whether there was a stopped car or not. All we have is an anonymous post asserting this, not a news or police report. Let’s not debate this point unless we know it’s a fact.
Hmm. After re-reading @ 20, it’s clear that you’re making more assumptions than I thought. You don’t have any basis for calling the cyclist an asshole.
It would have been so cool if the stopped car had stopped to let someone in a wheelchair (i.e., short, slow and hard to see) cross the street in front of them, and the bicyclist had slammed into the “passenger side” of the wheelchair.
Or at least I *think* “cool” is the word I’m looking for…
@16 – I’m just stating the facts as they were reported on the Seattle Police Department’s blog in the post describing the incident.
My primary point was to highlight the fact that regardless of whether the eastbound car was polite/stupid/at fault for for stopping to let the westbound car (which was in the center turn lane waiting to turn left into a driveway) make his turn, IT WAS THE CYCLIST WHO IGNORED THE FACT THAT THE CAR IN FRONT OF HIM STOPPED FOR SOME REASON AND CHOSE TO PASS IT INSTEAD OF LOOKING TO SEE WHY.
Now is the westbound, left-turning driver at fault? Depends. If the cyclist was going fast enough to hit the car as hard as he did, then there’s a good chance the driver never had a chance to see him behind the car that stopped to let him turn. (Was the cyclist weaving in and out and around slower moving cars as I’ve seen so many do? Was the turning driver talking on his phone or otherwise distracted? The police are still investigating.)
Everyone needs to pay more fucking attention both for self preservation and the unintentional infliction of harm.
@23 I so totally almost said the same thing …
A lot of bicyclists don’t pay any more attention to pedestrians than a lot of motorist do to bicyclists.
Still sucks what happened to this person and I do hope that they are okay. I just wish that cyclists would learn defensive riding (I wish the same of drivers, but unfortunately we gotta learn to look out for ourselves, no one is doing it for us)
@ 21 “don’t blame the uninformed for not knowing the rules of the road.”
What?
Then who else is to blame? Seriously. If some dumb shit doesn’t know the rules of the road then they should stay off of it.
Hey, Matt in Denver, oh – sorry – I keep getting that wrong. It’s not Matt “in” Denver, is it? Dude, I’m sorry. Let me start over and see if I can get this right.
Hey, Fuck Face, what is it you do for a living that you can sit around all day on Slog posting hate and arguing with everyone? I’m considering a career change, preferably to a job where I can waste time trolling blogs from other cities all day.
Perhaps let’s acknowledge that a terrible accident occurred and the fact that someone has LIFE-threatening injuries, here, instead of playing the I’m-right-you’re-wrong game. Who cares whose fault it is, when we have no facts? Speculating only poisons investigations.
Sometimes no one is to blame; sometimes no one has to be right and another person HAS to be wrong. Sometimes condolences to the poor person, his friends and his family, as well as the driver, who most likely feels horrible, are the kindest response.
@ 24, thanks for the info. Here’s the link:
http://spdblotter.seattle.gov/2009/08/06…
Interesting. Probably because of the intersection photo I assumed that it happened at the intersection, but it says the turning vehicle was turning into a driveway in the middle of the block. That just makes me wonder why the other car was stopped even more.
@28 Totally agree. Thank you for the perspective.
@ 27, today I’m at home watching my kids and their cousins.
Better lobby SLOG to ban me because, you know, I’m from Denver and this is a Seattle blog… never mind my Seattle roots, I gave that up like I gave up getting to vote in Seattle elections… you poor, poor, pitiful too-scared-to-register turd…
@ 26, duh… I meant to say “BLAME the uninformed for not knowing the rules of the road.” But that’s not the point I meant to make… I MEANT to say that people need to understand the rules of the road, and that simplifying them (as Reality Check seems to propose) isn’t how you deal with that…
Way up @7, Matt from Denver… You “can’t imagine any other way that a cyclist would collide with the passenger [side] of a left-turning car.” And @ everyone else whose only experience with cyclists are the law-breakers.
When my husband collided with the passenger-side of a left-turning car, it was because he was riding about 30mph in a cycling-appropriate lane, and the left-turner gunned it through the intersection. According to the driver, he simply didn’t see my husband (in his bright red cycling jersey and bright red helmet) on his (bright white and blue) bike. According to witnesses, the car driver initiated his left turn just before my husband entered the intersection coming from the other direction. My husband saw the car, braked hard, tried to turn/skid to slow himself down, but at 30mph there was NO WAY to avoid the collision. He crashed into the passenger side door and mirror and destroyed his shoulder and clavicle. Luckily he was able to decrease speed enough to avoid actually getting hit by the FRONT of the car.
THAT is how a cyclist would collide with the passenger side of a left-turning car. Not trying to sneak past other traffic, not breaking any traffic laws at ALL, but cycling legally and defensively, and still get creamed by a driver who’s not paying attention.
@ 33, see my comments @ 12 and 14…
@33 that is really scary, I hope that your husband is okay.
@27 do you hate as much on Kim in Portland or Julie in Eugene or is just the people that you disagree with that you are such an asshole to? The opinion that matters is the one that matches up with yours?
This stretch of 45th regularly backs up, especially during lunch and rush hour. So, it’s perfectly reasonable that the hypothetical car that was stopped couldn’t go forward through the intersection which is why they were ‘yielding’ to the car turning left. Everyone stuck in traffic has let someone do this instead of sitting in the middle of the intersection, unless your an asshole, and everyone has watched as bicyclists blew through the intersection as well.
I think when negotiating the road through heavy traffic that everyone, bicyclist and pedestrians, need to be hyper-aware of intersections especially.
The bicyclist was at fault. The EB car in front of him stopped. It doesn’t matter that the EB car didn’t have to stop. If I’m waiting to make a left WB and an EB car stops and I make my turn the EB car behind the stopped car can’t come into my lane to pass the stopped car.
However I’m a biker and I play in the roads in traffic and people who have problems with cyclists suck.
I don’t, however, blow through traffic or past cars at high speed.
@ 36, see the police report link @ 29. It was in the middle of the block, not an intersection.
This could have been avoided by all parties. I’m not sure who’s legally at fault, but I’d guess the guy who was making the turn.
In any case, the cyclist could have been much more careful about why cars were stopped.
The stopped car could have not been a jackass and just kept moving.
The left-turning car could have been paying more attention to the right-of-way traffic.
Though I have to ask those people blaming the cyclist for passing slower moving traffic on a one lane street: do you ever pass slow-moving or stopped cyclists in your car on a one lane street? How is it any different? In your world, cars are allowed to pass bikes, but bikes can’t pass cars?
“do you ever pass slow-moving or stopped cyclists in your car on a one lane street?”
Carefully? Checking for oncoming traffic first?
@40: quit trolling. To get there you must have read the sentence “In any case, the cyclist could have been much more careful about why cars were stopped.”
None of you were there to witness the accident. What the fuck can you possibly be arguing about?
Shit happens. Car and bikes need to look for each other.
My brother got killed riding when he just 15 years old. He made a mistake , the driver made a mistake. It was really both their fault. I think that’s how it usually goes in this type of situation. How many accidents have we seen were it is clearly one persons fault?
I’m not trolling. I’m disagreeing. The bicyclist was at fault. Stopping to let someone turn when you don’t have to is lame but it doesn’t rise to the level of negligence. Passing a stopped car and running into a car coming the opposite way and/or turning is a deadly mistake.
Bicyclists are sadly far too unlikely to STOP and evaluate a position and then pass if that’s the right thing to do. Your momentum is not worth your life.
@43: “Bicyclists are sadly far too unlikely to STOP and evaluate a position and then pass if that’s the right thing to do. Your momentum is not worth your life.”
I agree that your momentum is not worth your life, but I disagree with that first generality. Bicyclists in general are likely to slow down enough that they can stop if need be. Your exposure is apparently mostly to the highly visible minority of cyclists who have very little survival instinct, and who can blame you? They’re the ones who are almost getting into accidents all the time.
I maintain that anyone involved could have prevented this accident by driving legally. If traffic in front of the driveway was stopped and the stopped car was just giving space to the guy trying to make the turn, it’s hard to blame him. Did the cyclist make the right decision in going around the car? Guess not, he got pegged. Did the turning car make the right decision to turn? Guess not, he pegged a guy in the oncoming lane.
Heaping the blame on one party here just doesn’t work.
At least the cyclists don’t have their bicycles light on fire like the drivers of cars, trucks, semis and camper vans do so frequently in this city.
At the risk of distracting from a tragic accident, is gas really $4.43 a gallon in Seattle???
@45: that gives me an idea for next year’s Fremont solstice parade.
@44 Wrong Doceb.
Everyone involved could not have prevented the accident. The car is at the mercy of the quicker more nimble bicyclist.
The bicyclist is indeed at fault if it went around the stopped vehicle ahead of it.
The car making the turn is not at fault. He did not peg the car stopped (you know…the legal one in the oncoming lane)… rather he pegged the illegal bicyclist who swung around the legal car and into the curb, thereby creating an “illegal” extra lane.
I can easily envision a scenario (I’ve actually witnessed this scenario MANY times personally), whereby the bicyclist swings around the stopped vehicle so fast, that the turning car has already committed to turning and is entering the turn lane, only to suddenly be confronted with a nimble fast moving bicycle trying to pull a manuever and illegally go around the stopped vehicle.
It happens all the time. The police need to start nailing bicyclists for a “Care Required” mega ticket that affects their insurance and driver’s license. Only until such time that we start sticking bicyclists with HARSH penalties, will the dumbasses start behaving like the motoring public that they are.
They don’t get to play both sides of the fence. Either they are vehicle traffic that has to comply with all vehicle laws, or they don’t, and they can get the fuck off the roads, and out of the way.
@48: I don’t see you complaining about cars creating “illegal extra lanes” when they pass bikes who are riding to the right of one-lane roads.
And _cyclists_ are the ones playing both sides of the fence?
@33: At the risk of blaming the victim here (and I do hope your husband fully recovers) I don’t think flying through an intersection at 30 mph, when you can see a car coming the other way that just might make a quick left turn, is a smart idea — whether on a bike or in a car. Defensive driving suggests you slow down, just in case.