Horrible News: Cyclist Killed by Driver in Midway District

October 8, 2014

Twitter user “@pauloantonio” alerted us to the latest horrible fatality:

@BikeSD “@10News: NEW OVERNIGHT: Person on bike killed after being hit by vehicle in Midway District. pic.twitter.com/RuMjHyPjjG”

— No Buffer Zone (@pauloantonio) October 8, 2014

The U-T is reporting:

The cyclist was going west on Hancock Street and ran the light at Camino del Rio West about 11:15 p.m., said Officer Dino Delimitros.

hancockCDRW — Intersection where our fellow rider was killed by a driver. Arrow marks the direction the cyclist was crossing shortly after 11 PM.

This particular intersection had the rider crossing a road where the vehicle speeds regularly exceed 50mph as drivers exit the freeway. Many of us at BikeSD have crossed that exact intersection and have had a hard time triggering the traffic light. As advocates we like to give the unnamed cyclist the benefit of the doubt in that the rider didn’t cross six lanes of traffic without being careful.

Regardless, this horrible and needless death certainly brings home the point that collisions between bicycles and vehicles are a zero-sum game: the cyclist will always lose.

But this fatality raises the question, what if there had been a reasonable alternative, giving the rider an alternate where crossing a street designed like a freeway was no longer an option?

At the end of the day, we are all human beings. Whether we are in cars, in trucks, on bikes or on foot. We all make mistakes. And our reality that we live with every single day is that when we make a mistake on our streets, we stand a good chance of getting killed or injured. It simply doesn’t have to be like this.