Bike Crashes

In an effort to understand what might have motivated the judge's ruling, last week I viewed security-camera footage of the crash and analyzed the transcript of the January 26 sentencing hearing.

Andrew Berg, a McKinley Park resident who commutes year-round with his two small children from their home to Hyde Park via cargo bike, is trying to recover damages after being struck by a right-turning driver within a gap in one of the 31st Street protected bike lanes last spring.

There were at least four media-reported bike fatalities and three serious injury crashes in the Chicago area during the 12-day stretch from September 19-30. During that same period, on September 20, Chicago Fire Department lieutenant Danny Carbol, 56, sustained serious brain damage in a bike-SUV crash in suburban Evergreen Park.

On September 23, Danielle “Dee” Palagi, 26, was biking home from her job as a special education teacher when she was struck by a northbound semi driver who turned east at the intersection of Roosevelt and Wood near the Illinois Medical Campus. Danielle survived, but her foot had to be amputated, and she also suffered a broken pelvis and fractured elbow.

It’s almost starting to feel like Bicycling magazine naming Chicago as the nation’s best bike city last week has turned into a curse. In the two weeks since that announcement on Monday, September 19, the region has seen the following bike fatalities and crashes with injuries requiring hospitalization:

Four years of data on reported dooring crashes in Chicago show a decrease from 2011, when the data started being collected by the state, to 2014, the most recent year for which crash data has been released. A dooring crash occurs when someone in a car opens their door into moving traffic without looking, resulting in a collision with a bicyclist.

Tragically, last week’s epidemic of bike fatalities and serious injury crashes in the Chicago region, has continued into this week. This morning a young woman was fatally struck by a flatbed truck driver in Roscoe Village. She was the sixth person to be struck and killed by a commercial vehicle driver while biking in Chicago and Evanston since June, and the third to be run over by a right-turning flatbed truck driver.

[Last year the Chicago Reader launched a weekly transportation column written by Streetsblog Chicago editor John Greenfield. This partnership allows Streetsblog to extend the reach of our livable streets advocacy. We syndicate a portion of the column after it comes out online; you can read the remainder on the Reader’s website or in print. The paper hits the streets on Thursdays.]

A 20-year-old man is in critical condition after a motorist opened a car door in his path while he was biking in Portage Park, throwing the man into traffic, where the bike rider was then struck and dragged by an SUV driver.