Best bike race in Portland! FREE!

Event starts at 4:00pm & Racing begins at 6:30

North Park Blocks, Downtown Portland

Go to PortlandTwilight.com for more details.

Friday, August 13
Event starts at 4:00pm & Racing begins at 6:30

North Park Blocks, Downtown Portland

PortlandTwilight.com

The front page of the most recent edition of the Tribune includes a story about hit and runs in Oregon, including bicyclist Bonnie Ingersoll:

“Bonnie Ingersoll had no idea she would suffer such scars six weeks ago when she was hit by a car on Southeast 82nd Street.

Ingersoll had been riding her bicycle when a white GMC Suburban pulled out from a gas station, knocked her down and sped away.

It’s the driving-away part of the incident that has the 20-year-old Ingersoll most upset.

“There was no stopping, no hesitation,” she recalls. “You can clearly see I’m not moving. I could be paralyzed. I could be dead. And you see him back up. He left somebody in the road for dead, and that’s the problem.”

Ingersoll’s scars are psychological, not physical. In her mind, her sore back, her dented bike, even the accident itself isn’t the major problem. It’s the “running” part of hit and run.

“That’s really the true crime,” she says. “The leaving.””

Via the Oregonian.

TriMet General Manager Fred Hansen on Wednesday unleashed his most direct criticism of the bus driver who killed two pedestrians in April, saying her failure to follow several operating rules led to the tragedy.

“Had they been followed,” Hansen said, “this clearly would have been preventable.”

TriMet’s outgoing general manager rattled off a list of what he considers failures in judgment by driver Sandi Day – a questionable courtesy stop, the arcing illegal left turn, the higher-than-normal of speed of the turn – just before midnight April 24.

Day struck five pedestrians in a crosswalk at Northwest Broadway and Glisan Street in downtown Portland. Two — Danielle Sale, 22, of Vancouver and Jeneé Hammel, 26, of Gresham — died under the bus’s wheels. A third person was hospitalized and the other two suffered minor injuries.

Hansen’s comments came during a special TriMet board meeting to review the first report from a national consultant conducting a top-to-bottom safety review after the fatal crash.

In a 26-page memo, K&J Safety and Security Consulting Services of Cantonment, Fla., praised Oregon’s largest transit agency for having “better than industry standards” safety programs. But the consultant also called for possible improvements.
More
Read The Oregonian’s continuing coverage of the fatal TriMet bus accident.

Among other things, K&J said TriMet should further restrict bus drivers’ access to personal cell phones while on duty and require every bus driver to be evaluated on “observation rides” twice a year.

Hansen said TriMet is considering one announced and one unannounced evaluation ride of every driver annually. “It will require negotiations” with the union, he said.

The consultants also said TriMet should explore adding audible warning systems that would automatically warn pedestrians when a bus is about to make turns.

A Handful of Tickets
by Sarah Mirk

A MULTNOMAH COUNTY grand jury delivered a verdict last Wednesday, May 19, that shocked many Portlanders: A TriMet bus driver was responsible for a crash that killed two pedestrians, but will not be criminally charged.

Instead, she will likely be issued several traffic tickets and do 100-200 hours of community service.

Driver Sandi Day told the grand jury that, ironically, part of the cause of the crash was her attempt to watch out for the welfare of another passenger. An elderly man asked to be dropped off at the corner of NW Broadway and Glisan, which is not a real bus stop, just before midnight on Saturday, April 24. Day obliged, but then had to maneuver a difficult turn onto Broadway, illegally cutting across two lanes. Day did not see a group of five pedestrians in a crosswalk on Broadway until it was too late. The bus plowed into the group of friends, killing Danielle Sale, 22, and Jeneé Hammel, 26.

In response to the crash, TriMet announced this week that it will ban courtesy stops on blocks where buses must take left turns. Meanwhile, the grand jury weighed whether to charge Day with criminally negligent homicide.

“She is responsible for the crash,” explains Deputy District Attorney Chuck Sparks. “The question is did she commit the crime of criminally negligent homicide or did she commit a traffic violation?”

To be charged with homicide, the law says Day would have to “grossly deviate” from a regular standard of care while driving. In most cases, that means doing something like being drunk, asleep, or texting while driving, says Sparks. The grand jury voted not to charge Day, who is still open to being sued by the victims’ families.

“Having met her and talked to her, she’s going to live the rest of her life with this. And she is horrified,” says Sparks.

Attorney Ray Thomas, who specializes in bicycle and pedestrian cases, says the verdict did not surprise him at all.

“In Oregon, our law is not sufficient to protect people from drivers who kill just because of mistakes in judgment,” says Thomas. Criminally negligent homicide is too severe a charge for accidental vehicle deaths, but the alternative is just issuing a traffic ticket. What Oregon needs is the middle tier, says Thomas: vehicular homicide. In 2009, the state legislature debated and dropped a law defining a death caused by distracted or irresponsible driving as vehicular homicide. The Bicycle Transportation Alliance and Willamette Pedestrian Coalition will likely push the law again in 2011.

More info here.

An amazing project is underway in Eugene to memorialize victims of motor vehicles. Funds for the project were raised through the Eugene Neighborhood fund with volunteers, such as Tom Schneider, a member of the Eugene Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee and the Bailey Hill Road Safety Committee.

More information can be found here and here.

Joseph Rose makes some interesting points over at OregonLive.

Here is a great entry on BikePortland.org regarding Ray’s clinic for Portland journalists.

Ray Thomas will be presenting a free bicycle law clinic tonight. For more information click here.