BIKE: not-fatal accident on 360

[Kevin Lewis]

This post, from another list, involved a "sport" rider (expert-level) on a quick bike, on a nice Sunday, Jan. 16. It coulda been anyone. Fortunately not fatal, but multiple fractures is bad enough. Add to the ongoing questions of how best to ride a 65-mph road. I did not hear other reportage, but as far as I know, blame was not assessed.

Kevin


...Seriously, Tim's "lucky" to only have a seriously broken right leg and more road rash and bruises then he ever desired. He told me that he was heading north on 360 and was crossing the on-ramp from 2222. He looked and saw a car coming but felt he had plenty of gap to come across. The older lady driving the car apparently was intent on looking left / to her rear for oncoming traffic, and basically never saw Tim signaling as she accelerated to highway speed and ran him down from the rear.  Yeah - big ouch.

The impact point was at his rear wheel and he was soon one with the car's windshield and then 30m down the road.  As he looked at his formerly intact right leg he knew he was not having a good day on the bike, with compound fractures to the upper and lower leg bones.  Fortunately a physician saw him go down and was on the scene immediately, with Fire / Rescue just minutes away. 

Lessons learned: helmets are good, the car always wins so be super careful especially in the merging lanes where they are accelerating, and helmets are good.  All for now 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.bicycleaustin.info/private.cgi/forum-bicycleaustin.info/attachments/20050124/81b752b6/attachment.htm