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Bicyclist dies in crash involving cement truck in the Fenway
By adamg on Fri, 02/15/2019 - 1:51pm
Crash scene. Photo by Lynda Gail.
UPDATE: Victim identified.
State Police report a pedestrian suffered "serious injury" in the crash at Brookline Avenue and Park Drive. NECN reports the bicyclist, a woman, died.
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Comments
Who could ever foresee
Who could ever foresee someone getting injured at a horrible 50-lane, 5-way intersection that separates a mall from a park.
Paula Sharaga, 69, of Cambridge
https://www.facebook.com/100000513017534/posts/2570952406265168?sfns=mo
Cmon, Adam, this isn't that hard.
Cmon, Adam, this isn't that hard.
Should read: "Bicyclist hit by driver of cement truck in the Fenway"
No, sorry, not going to write that
In fact, I probably shouldn't have even written the headline I did. All we know (or I knew, when writing the post) was there was a crash involving a bicyclist and a truck. Yes, the driver could have run into her. But there are other possibilities for what might have happened, and until we get a better idea of what happened, I'm not going to assign blame.
OK I see what you mean
But if thats the case, then why mention the bicyclist? Wouldn't "Bicycle hit by cement truck" been more in line with your reasoning?
Well the cyclist could have hit the truck too...
What if the truck was stopped in traffic and the cyclist tried to pass it and hit the side mirror and got a head injury which resulted in death. How would you write that headline?
"Collision between Cyclist and Motorist results in death"
Of course the carefully worded scenario you conjured up ignores the main point of Adam's post, we don't know what happened.
Next.
No it wasn't in response to Adam...
It was in response to anyone who wants the headline to be written in a specific way without knowing the facts.
Cars and bikes don't operate themselves
Pretty obvious, even in a case when little facts are known, hence the call for a better headline.
Next.
Don't look now
Monkeys could fly out of your ass, too!
But that's not even remotely
But that's not even remotely what happened.
Let's stick with what we know
We know a person on a bicycle was seriously injured (well, unfortunately, we've since learned she died), so, yes, I will report that.
What we didn't know at the time, still don't really know now, is how exactly she was injured/died.
That's a dodge. It's not
That's a dodge. It's not about assigning blame without knowing facts. Of course you shouldn't do that. It's about treating one as a person (cyclist) but the other as an inanimate object (truck). Be consistent or change your wording.
Fair enough
But we do know that both the truck and bike didn't drive themselves, thats all I'm saying.
But the truck could have been parked.
So yea, there doesn’t always have to be drivers.
To what end do you want to keep playing this game?
The truck being parked or not is meaningless in the context of the initial headline, you're only conjuring it up to split hairs.
We don't know what happened but you keep parading out these scenarios.
wbz is reporting that the
wbz is reporting that the truck hit the cyclist.
Not nit picking
but the vehicle in the video is a concrete truck. Cement trucks have a trailer.
This. People never know the
This. People never know the difference. Cement is an ingredient in concrete. Thus this is a CONCRETE truck.
Good thing
that you weren't nit-picking.
WBUR just said the cyclist has died
No other reports I've seen.
NECN as well
And it's reporting the truck belonged to Boston Sand and Gravel.
Picture of truck
https://twitter.com/KimWBZ/status/1096501923941961728
This Intersection
This (five-way) intersection is such a mess. As a pedestrian, you seriously have to run across it on the walk sign if you want to cross from the northeast corner to the southeast corner in the crosswalk on one light cycle. And even when you do cross in the crosswalk on the walk sign, you still have to deal with cars that turn (illegally) through the crosswalk across your path (per MA law motorists need to yield the right of way on turns to pedestrians crossing legally). The construction in front of the Landmark Center and jersey barriers in the roads only make this worse.
Also, note that the vast majority of Boston/Cambridge bike fatalities (like, almost all of them) are with large trucks. This is evidence that that trucks are the problem, not the bikes.
Unfortunately DCR didn't
Unfortunately DCR didn't rebuild the gas station side of that intersection at all nor did they change the pedestrian lights to be something more modern than 1960s holdovers during the whole Muddy River reconstruction project. It's a huge gap in addition to the lack of bike lanes on Park Drive. Probably because that project took so long to go from design to construction that the standards were older and the scope of work limited to not address that side of the street. =(
All true
It’s also hard to reconcile the way this neighborhood used to look with it’s current state. It is so much busier and has so many more pedestrians—all of these new apartments, shops, restaurants— and yet few changes to safely accommodate them. I always walk by bike through this intersection but looking at the aerial shots it’s even scarier than I imagine it. I hope some real changes come out of this.
As an advocate, I attended
As an advocate, I attended the public meeting years ago about this project, submitted comments to Army Corp of Engineers, DCR, and BTD that Brookline Ave needs to have bike lanes as part of this project, and even followed up with BTD when it seemed like they weren't really paying much attention. I was assured by BTD that they would look into it and make sure appropriate bicycle facilities were provided. Then, nothing happened and we ended up with an intersection that is terrible for bicycling. What a shame.
Area sucks
I've got no idea what happened but I do know it sucks to ride around there. With all the construction they are often closing lanes and redirecting traffic. There's a bunch of places were a cyclist needs to merge left and cross several lanes of traffic to make a legal turn.
It's also noteworthy it was a women killed. For all the talk of "crazy guys", it's been women who have been killed more on bikes in Boston. On my own commute I often see more women then men riding. Commuting cyclists of both genders are generally riding moderate speeds and responsibility, particularly adults who ride year-round for transportation.
BIkes
As an experienced urban biker, I find it much safer to walk the bike through a busy intersection. When on the bike you have to maintain a decent speed to keep balanced, and it's not like i can slam on the brakes like in a car if a truck was about to hit me.
Tricky either way
Honestly, I find myself more at risk on foot then on bike. There's been so many times when I've been walking on the sidewalk and needed to jump out of the way when a car making a turn didn't check the sidewalk before pulling forward. Or when I'm crossing in front of a car waiting to make a turn and they slam on the gas without turning their head to verify the intersection is still clear.
More at risk on foot? Any data to back up that claim?
It's hard to find reliable up-to-date stats on this, but googling news reports, it looks like over the last decade or so, the number of yearly bike fatalities in Boston have been very roughly half that of pedestrian deaths - but the variance is large, and the overall numbers of deaths is low, so the nerd in me says that for off-the-cuff statisitcal analysis one could consider them equal.
However, the number of daily pedestrians is far larger - at least an order of magnitude (x10), probably closer to two orders (x100) - so that would mean the injury risk per person is also much higher for someone riding a bike rather than walking.
But if you have reliable stats to counter this, please link them.
Ahem...
I know some will hate me for saying this, and that my comment might not even be published.
Your last sentence is a preposterous assertion that is demonstrably untrue. Spend five minutes at rush hour at the corner of Mass Ave and Boylston. And while you’re at it try crossing the street with the light as a pedestrian. Hope you practiced your dodge ball skills.
To clarify
The preposterous assertion is this one: “Commuting cyclists of both genders are generally riding moderate speeds and responsibility, particularly adults who ride year-round for transportation.”
That’s a totally untrue statement.
It's also noteworthy it was a
It's also noteworthy that this is the second (that I know of) female Brookline librarian who was struck while bicycling recently. Luckily the other one, although knocked unconscious and injured, survived.
Also, since I knew the woman who was killed this time... this is the third person I've known who was killed as a result of a highway accident; that's not counting others who were injured, their cars totalled, etc. I don't know the statistics but I suspect road accidents are far more common than other hazards which the news tends to focus more on. Perhaps we just get numb to some things eventually because they're so common.
not a highway accident. this
not a highway accident. this was a street and she was struck by a truck.
Globe reports driver hit and killed cyclist
Globe reports driver hit and killed cyclist
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/02/15/bicycle-rider-hit-cement-tr...
We have a real
fucking problem here
RIP, young lady
RIP
The intersection needs an overpass
To reduce the number of at grade conflicts.
After completed, end new construction in Boston to keep cement trucks out.
Nope
Either you are inconveniencing pedestrians and cyclists for the sake of cars if you build a sidewalk overpass. Or if you build a car overpass you're making a shadowed and noisy hellscape underneath. The best way to make the intersections around there safe is through enforcement. And not the kind of bullshit reverse enforcement NYPD does either, where a cyclist gets hit and killed by a truck so they start ticketing cyclists for things they're not even allowed to ticket them for.
1. Cede control of the road to the Boston Police as State Police have no business being there. It's not a highway.
2. Enforce Boston's 25mph speed limit. It's not a highway.
3. Ban anything larger than a van. It's not a highway.
These should be applied to every "Parkway" in the city, as those were intended for leisurely Sunday carriage rides. They're not highways.
I wish I could like this
I wish I could like this comment 5 million times