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Massachusetts Ave and Beacon bicycle fatality investigation
By bostonzest on Fri, 08/07/2015 - 7:26am
The intersection of Mass Ave and Beacons St. outbound is the scene of a police investigation of a fatal bike accident.
Police Dispatcher said " We got a bicyclist struck, full notes."
Update: Yellow tape set up and the police are allowing traffic by in one lane on Beacon outbound, west of Mass Ave. Fatality was confirmed to senior office. The Commercial Vehicle team has been called in because a truck was involved.
Three witnesses were transported to the homicide headquarters for interviews.
Update 8:29 am: Beacon Street is now being closed from Gloucester Street to the scene west of Mass Ave and no turns are being allowed onto Beacon from Mass Ave.
Update: 8:48 am: Police are looking for a vehicle of interest in this investigation. It is a flatbed trailer with a red sleeper cab and a broken front grill.
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Comments
I say this as an
..all-season cyclist who averages about 20 miles per day in commuting around the city, but I will be surprised if the cyclist was not at fault. People seem to have a fundamental lack of understanding of how trucks work and how to get around them.
What an incredibly helpful
What an incredibly helpful comment. A little presumptuous victim blaming never killed anyone, right?
It's easy to be aware...
It's easy to be aware of what's turning in front of you. It's much harder to be aware of those who right-hook you. Screw you and you victim blaming. I am a year-round cyclist as well and play it cautious. Yet I have close calls because there are many road-users who are assholes and don't pay attention or wantonly make decisions that put others in danger.
Your attitude is well
Your attitude is well-intentioned, but wrong. Cyclists get right hooked year after year because they don't understand how the accident happens and how to avoid it.
There are sensitive and insensitive ways of discussing this, and the OP saying that the cyclist is at fault is insensitive and incorrect. Nonetheless, the core idea in that statement - that cyclists can do things to reduce the risk of being right hooked is absolutely true.
Laws assigning fault to drivers for right hook accidents won't prevent cyclists from getting run over, make whole the ones who are injured, or bring the ones back who were killed. The only way to reduce the risk to cyclists is for them to know how to avoid getting themselves into situations where they can be right hooked.
Not all of these accidents can be prevented by cyclist education; there will always be some people driving so negligently that they manage to right hook a cyclist, but if the shot from the camera does indeed show the cyclist near the truck's mirror, this was probably a preventable one.
Being to the right of a vehicle turning right is a dangerous place to be, and taking the full lane and not riding straight through an intersection in a right turn lane are two excellent ways to avoid getting into that position.
And no, I don't know what the cyclist's intended direction of travel was, but the point stands.
Before you shout victim blaming, please remember that nobody was ever crushed beneath the wheels of words written on the internet.
-Also a nearly year-round cyclist.
I agree but lets add..
I agree with a lot of what you had to say minus the "The only way to reduce the risk to cyclists is for them to know how to avoid getting themselves into situations where they can be right hooked." That is a large part of it, but driver education is an extremely important part of the picture along with the most important piece, proper cycling infrastructure. Where cars and cyclist occupy the same same accidents are inevitable, where they are separate accidents are the exception.
Boston's infrastructure has been getting better and safer very quickly, hopefully it will continue to improve to the point where we never need to read about a cyclist getting hit again.
Consider motorcyclists
Do drivers get special training on not killing motorcyclists? Not that I know of. However, motorcycle training classes give much training on not getting killed by car, truck, and bus drivers. Motorcycle riders are just as unprotected as pedestrians and cyclists.
Amazingly, there is even a special license endorsement required to ride a motorcycle! Wow, what a concept. Imagine if bicycle riders were required to get some training to learn how to also stay alive.
Since there is nearly an order of magnitude more drivers on the road than bicyclists, its far more practical and cost effective to teach the much smaller number of cyclists what they need to know, besides the information having the most value to them and less to the drivers.
I agree but
many of these so sad accidents are caused by cyclist versus truck and usually the cyclist ends up dead. Tractor trailer drivers are, in general, good drivers but their trucks have blind spots. No amount of driver education is going to change the reality that if a cyclist is in the driver's blind spot, and that driver can't see you, you may be hit and if hit probably killed. Anon is spot on.
WTF jaypee
If you were really a member of the Boston bike community you wouldn't be so quick to make disparaging remarks against one of your dead sisters. Why is it your first impulse to victim blame? And why do you think anyone cares how many miles a day you ride? Do you think you are somehow superior to the departed, because that's what it sounds like. It wasn't her fault that Mass Ave is a POS road, with a long record of being the most dangerous for bicycling in the city. It wasn't her fault that the city puts more value on motorist commute times than the lives of its citizens.
Are you listening yet City Counselors and Mayor Walsh?! No more bullshit, no more dead cyclists - fix Mass Ave now!
can't you wait, you "cyclist"
can't you wait, you "cyclist" who is such an expert at dumping on other people
Victim blaming
I am a daily commuting cyclist, and I often ride on Beacon Street through this intersection.
If (God forbid) I am ever killed while cycling, and someone points out something I could have done differently that would have saved my life, DON'T YOU DARE CASTIGATE THAT PERSON FOR SO-CALLED "VICTIM BLAMING"!!
If someone else's life would be saved by learning from my mistakes, then my death will have had some meaning. But so often, when someone tries to point stuff like that out, people jump down their throats and yell "victim blaming". I'm sick of it!
Look, it's AWFUL that this cyclist died, and I sympathize with her family. That any lives are lost this way is a blow to all of us. I want to stop this from happening in the future just as much as the rest of us. There are many approaches that can be taken to prevent further deaths. Infrastructure improvements can certainly be one of them. We also have to show sensitivity to those who are affected by this terrible tragedy. But let's not cut of one of the ways we can prevent future deaths -- by learning what happened here and applying it to our lives.
Please see http://iamtraffic.org/resources/interactive-graphics/what-cyclists-need-... to learn about some of the dangers involved with trucks and what we cyclists can do to reduce them.
I have a great resource for drivers, while we're sharing:
https://malegislature.gov/Laws/SessionLaws/Acts/2008/Chapter525
"No person operating a vehicle that overtakes and passes a bicyclist proceeding in the same direction shall make a right turn at an intersection or driveway unless the turn can be made at a safe distance from the bicyclist at a speed that is reasonable and proper.
It shall not be a defense for a motorist causing an accident with a bicycle that the bicycle was to the right of vehicular traffic."
RIP. Hope they catch this driver and revoke his license.
Tragic
Thank you for the updates, Boston Zest. Terrible news at a spot we know so well.
Please be extra careful, everyone, whether you are driving, biking, or walking.
Preemptive STFU to YKW
n/t
BTW the truck left the scene.
What does "full notes" mean
What does "full notes" mean in this context (the quote from the dispatcher)?
Never a good thing
Short for "make full notifications," which, basically is BPDspeak for: Time to bring in the homicide unit (which investigates all sudden deaths like this) and, in this case, the fatal-accident reconstruction team. Doesn't necessarily mean the person has died (although that was the case here, obviously), but that there's a strong enough chance of that that they want the more specialized investigators to start working on the case.
Police lingo
It's short for "full notifications," which means contact the homicide detectives because the victim is either dead or likely to die.