Sunday, April 8, 2007

A3: "Accident at Highway 89/Rosser Street injures bicyclist"

The victim in this story (sub req) is a friend of ours, and just to follow up, he's in ICU at John C Lincoln with a closed head injury, a slight fracture in his back and a bad case of road rash. Not nice, but it could have been much worse.

I don't expect the Courier had much time before deadline to do more than take down the police report on this and the page slot is small, so no blame for this story being a bit thin. I would like to see a followup, however.

The northbound pickup truck apparently ran the red light as our boy was legally turning north onto 89. This incident raises issues worthy of analysis. What's it like for non-drivers to get to work in Prescott? We can talk about bike lanes, mass transit, red-light runners, speed on 89, etc. His injuries are not slight but not massive either -- why couldn't YRMC handle him? What are the cumulative costs of medevac to Phoenix for all the patients we ought to be able to treat here? We can talk about the holes in our health-care system. You get the picture.

Update, 1:18pm: Link fixed.

2 comments:

leftturnclyde said...

right on steve this is a perfect example of a lot of whats wrong with they way we as a country and community view getting to work .riding a bike in traffic is the most danferous thing that most of us will ever do even if theres a bike lane . Law of gross tonnage,human operated 2000 pound vehicles, you on a bike being passed by often at a distance of less than 4 feet while for the most part by drivers who see you as a nuisance. which is why I dont ride my bike much here.
In Boulder it was faster to use the bike path to get across town than it was car....
how bout a soulution/suggestion courier?

Steven Ayres said...

Some years ago there was a fair amount of talk about a crosstown trail system connecting old rail beds, the parks and other off-street resources with bike lanes and marked routes on streets. Little of that's got done, but good people are working on it: check http://prescottbikeped.org/.