Articles Posted in Bicycle Accidents

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In what can only be considered a bit of depressing irony, OregonLive recently reported on a bicyclist struck and injured… while on his way to a rally “to demand safer streets” for bicyclists and pedestrians. This bicyclist’s injuries were, thankfully, not severe. They nevertheless highlight that much work needs to be done to ensure that everyone using Portland’s streets and roads can do so safely. Part of that process often involves holding accountable those responsible for unsafe conditions. That is also where an experienced Portland bicycle accident lawyer can provide you with invaluable assistance.

According to the OregonLive report, a van driver ran a red light and slammed into the bicyclist as the bicyclist crossed the street inside a marked crosswalk.

As this accident reflects, some crashes involve significant driver negligence or recklessness, and safety improvements can only do so much to protect bicyclists and pedestrians from those drivers. For those injured bicyclists and pedestrians, the law allows them to recoup economic and non-economic damages from the at-fault driver. If the driver was driving recklessly, the injured bicyclist or pedestrian may also be entitled to recover punitive damages.

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Oregon is home to some of the finest opportunities to enjoy the outdoors on a bicycle. What that also means, though, is that Oregon is also a place where bicyclists who live far from here run the risk of suffering injuries in a crash. When that happens, it’s reasonable not to know where to turn. You should start by getting in touch with an experienced Oregon bicycle accident lawyer who can help you with the correct next steps.

When you suffer injuries in an accident close to home, it may seem easy to know what to do — call your regular local attorney and seek advice. When you’re far from home, that same attorney may be unable to represent you. Knowing what to do and doing it in a timely fashion is very important because you only have a limited time before the statute of limitations runs out.

Fortunately for a Canadian couple who were injured while bicycling in Oregon, they recognized what to do and did so within the deadline period.

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A locally renowned chef lost her life recently in a gruesome bicycle accident in a notoriously dangerous intersection southeast of downtown Portland. The chef’s death has sparked protests and a call from one city commissioner to transfer control of the area from the state to the City of Portland, according to Oregonlive.com. As Oregon accident lawyers representing bicyclists and others harmed or killed in dangerous intersection crashes, we heartily endorse options that will that create or expedite the changes necessary to make Portland’s roads safer for all users.

The fatal collision, which occurred at the intersection of Southeast Powell Boulevard and Southeast 26th Avenue saw a semi-truck hit a bicycle. The bicyclist, 50-year-old Sarah Pliner, died at the scene. According to BikePortland, the collision occurred as the driver of the 53-foot semi-truck attempted a right-hand turn from northbound 26th Avenue to eastbound Powell Boulevard.

The accident that claimed the chef’s life was far from the first for this dangerous intersection. A 2014 Powell Boulevard safety audit that the Oregon Department of Transportation commissioned listed “heavy north/south bike traffic” as one of the primary safety issues at the intersection of Powell and 26th.

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Getting everything that you’re owed after you’ve been seriously injured (or a loved one has been killed) in a vehicle accident can involve a long list of battles. Some of those battles may involve taking on your own auto insurer when they seek to avoid paying what they should. Whether you’re taking on an at-fault driver’s legal team or you’re taking on your insurance company, it pays to have an experienced Oregon auto accident lawyer on your side fighting these battles with you.

These battles can be especially important — and especially challenging — when your accident presents a need for a large sum in compensation.

A recent case involving several people injured in auto accidents — Batten v. State Farm Mutual Auto Insurance — makes for a good example of what we mean. One of those injured people, T.B., was severely hurt in a head-on crash. A different driver hit J.C. while he rode his bicycle, causing injuries that eventually killed him. Another driver hit the car in which L.C. was a passenger, causing severe injuries, and C.R. was a pedestrian severely injured when a fourth driver hit him.

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The horrific death of a cyclist in New York City earlier this month – a moment captured on video – has brought attention to the way police there and in many other parts of the country treat fatalities brought about by reckless driving.

The New York Times reports that an 18-year-old man has been arrested and charged with manslaughter in the death of a 52-year-old cyclist in Brooklyn earlier this month. Barreling through a red light at high speed, the driver slammed into an SUV that was passing legally through the intersection. The force of the impact flung the SUV caddy-corner across the intersection directly into a cyclist who was patiently waiting for the red light to change on the opposite corner. The entire incident was captured on a dashcam video by another car waiting at the corner where the bike rider died. (Note: the first paragraph of The New York Times story below includes a link to the video. Be warned that it is extremely graphic and unsettling)

The newspaper reports that “bicycle advocates want stronger laws, as well as a cultural change similar to the one around drunken driving.” The question, at its root, is when reckless or negligent behavior crosses the line into criminality. The paper notes that “drivers who cause fatalities are almost never criminally charged, unless there are aggravating circumstances… running a red light is almost never considered reckless driving” even in a case like this where doing so leads to someone’s death.

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One might have thought that buses – some of the largest vehicles navigating Portland’s streets on a day-to-day basis – are fairly hard to miss. TriMet, however, is experimenting with bright rooftop lights designed to make them easier to see, according to The Oregonian. “The transit agency quietly rolled out the ‘amber safety lights’ in April and, so far, 30 buses are equipped with the light bar. It’s considering installing the devices on all its buses,” the newspaper reports.

The Oregonian, citing TriMet data, writes that “buses log roughly 73,300 miles on a daily basis. In April, TriMet registered 49 collisions involving buses, 25 of which were non-injury crashes involving cars or trucks.” Put another way, that means that TriMet is averaging almost one injury crash per day systemwide. Portland is a large city and there is always going to be a human element involved, but a system in which someone gets hurt every day clearly has more safety work to do.

So, at a basic level, we should all welcome any effort by TriMet to cut its accident rate. The newspaper’s article reports that the lights on the busses are extremely hard to miss, and notes that the cost of installing then is relatively slight – less than $500 per vehicle. Considering the number of bus accidents I have reported on in this blog over the years we can probably all agree that anything which improves safety is a good thing.

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An annual report compiled by Allstate insurance on driving safety across the nation has good and bad news for Portland, according to The Oregonian. The good news is that Portland jumped nine spots in the company’s ranking of driving safety in 200 American cities. The bad news is that still left us in 181stplace.

The newspaper notes that this also puts Portland “dead last among the largest cities in the Pacific Northwest based on the insurance agency’s analysis of crash frequency based on claims submitted. According to the rankings, the average Portland driver is involved in a crash every seven years, the average Seattle driver experiences a crash every 7.7 years. The average driver in Boise, which ranked second overall in the nation for safest drivers, was involved in a crash every 13.7 years. The national average is one crash every 10.6 years.” The survey identified Brownsville, Texas as the safest American city for drivers. Baltimore occupied last-place on the Allstate table.

The two other cities in the survey received notably better rankings than Portland. Eugene is number 34 on the list. Salem is number 102. Interestingly, Vancouver, Washington – just across the river from Portland – has a substantially better, if still less than stellar, ranking of 114.

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As many of us prepared for this July 4 holiday week the Oregon legislature passed a key bike safety measure and sent it to Governor Kate Brown. As outlined by The Oregonian, Senate Bill 998 will “allow bicyclists to legally treat stop signs or intersections with flashing red signals as a yield sign, meaning they would not be required to come to a complete stop.”

The paper notes that similar legislation has been effect in Idaho for more than three decades and that that the measure has long been pushed by bike advocates in our state. By allowing cyclists to maintain momentum in situations where it is safe to do so it will improve the general flow of traffic on our roads and bike paths, and reduce the risk of falls at intersections for riders using clip-in pedals.

Crucially, SB 998 is not a license for riders to ignore stop signs. As The Oregonian reports, the bill says cyclists need not come to a complete stop only “as long as they slow to a safe speed, yield the right of way to pedestrians, and yield to traffic that is already in the intersection or approaching so close as to constitute an immediate hazard.”

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A bike safety measure that The Oregonian describes as the “top priority in the 2019 legislative session” for cycling advocates has passed both houses of the legislature and is headed to Governor Kate Brown for her approval. Its core is a deceptively simple statement: “A bicycle lane exists in an intersection if the bicycle lane is marked on opposite sides of the intersection in the same direction of travel.”

That might sound like common sense, but a judge in Bend shocked the biking community last fall by ruling otherwise (click here for the blog I wrote on this case at the time). As a matter of law that case turned on ORS 811.415, a statute that defines unsafe passing on the right. In the Bend case a commercial truck driver struck and killed a bike rider in an intersection as the cyclist was following a bike lane through an intersection. The truck was turning. The court held that bike lanes do not exist in places where they are not striped or painted as they pass through intersections, therefore the obligation the truck driver would have had to signal and take due care when turning across another traffic lane did not apply (the newspaper notes that a Multnomah County court issued a similar ruling in a 2009 case). This was a dubious bit of legal reasoning at the time. The legislature has now clarified the question, and deserves credit for moving swiftly to do so.

Under Oregon law a bike lane is just as much a ‘lane’ as one dedicated to cars. ORS 814.400 is titled “Application of vehicle laws to bicycles.” It gives cyclists rights, and just as it requires them to respect the rules of the road in their interactions with cars it requires motorists to respect the rights of cyclists. Indeed, a related law, ORS 814.420, requires that cyclists use bike lanes where they are available. Taking those as a starting point why would one not assume that a bike lane extends across an intersection? To believe it does not would imply that cars need not keep to their lane or turn only in a legal manner when they cross intersections. No one who has passed a driving test would ever believe that is the case.

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Portland rightly enjoys a reputation as one of the most bike-friendly cities in the country. But fatal accidents still take place, drivers still are not as aware of cyclists as they should be. Even when drivers are trying to do the right thing (as many in Portland are) riders often find themselves struggling through nearly impossible situations.

Take, for example, NW 10thStreet. As a recent article posted on the BikePortland website demonstrates, it is hard for a rider in this part of downtown Portland not to feel endangered. A photo accompanying the article shows a narrow thoroughfare that contains on-street parking, a traffic lane and a streetcar track (with the streetcar and the cars moving in opposite directions). Any cyclist following the law and riding with auto traffic is immediately placed in a highly dangerous situation (as BikePortland notes, the law does allow cyclists to use the streetcar lane, but for obvious reasons many hesitate to do so). The gap between the traffic lane and the parked cars is uncomfortably narrow leaving riders dangerously exposed to drivers who might pull out or open car doors abruptly. There is more space on the opposite side, beyond the streetcar, but that is an area reserved for pedestrians and, in any case, there would usually be no safe place for a cyclist to go in the face of an oncoming tram.

Oregon law is quite explicit about the rights and responsibilities of bike riders. ORS 814.400 begins: “Every person riding a bicycle upon a public way is subject to the provisions applicable to and has the same rights and duties as the driver of any other vehicle.”

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