(Photo: KPTV screen grab)
A 7th grade girl and a school bus operator collided yesterday as the bus left the parking lot of Beaverton Arts & Communications Magnet High School, which is about seven miles west of Portland. The wheel of the bus ran over the girl’s leg. She suffered a compound fracture and was admitted to the hospital in serious condition (she is reportedly already recovering and has been upgraded to fair).
Here’s what KPTV reported about the crash last night:
“A Beaverton police spokeswoman said the seventh grader was riding her bike the wrong way in the school’s parking lot and crashed into the bus. The bus driver was in the proper lane, officers said, and did not see the girl.”
From the photos it looks like the girls was riding in the bike lane on Center Street. I’ve got a call into the Beaverton PD to find out what let them to believe the girl was “riding the wrong way in the school’s parking lot.”
In their report this morning, KGW says it’s, “unknown who hit who” (also interesting to note that the KGW URL has the headline of “7th grade girl collides with bus…” but the headline now reads “Beaverton girl on bike run over by school bus.”
Here’s video coverage of the incident from KGW’s newscast:
I think the language used after crashes like this is extremely important.
You might recall that this is the same school that Austin Miller attended. Austin Miller is the 15 year-old who died after colliding with a TriMet bus as he rode home from school back in February 2008 (read our extensive coverage of that tragedy).
I’ve got calls into the Beaverton PD for an update on the investigation to learn more about how this crash occurred. I’ll keep you posted. Also check the discussion going on in our West Side forums.
Thanks for reading.
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My Prayers go out to the young girl for a Full and Fast Recovery.
God Bless
I second K’Tesh. I hope the healing process is quick and she is riding again soon.
This just shows how important it is to teach kids to ride safely. Parents teach them to ride against traffic, and other dumb things, thinking its safer. I’d like to know if she was actually riding the wrong direction. Story says she was riding in the parking lot, but the photo suggests otherwise.
The tire ran over her leg lengthwise and had to back over her foot to roll off.If you ever encounter a situation where someone is in excruciating pain, it’s best to cuff your hand above the point of injury and dig your fingersnails into their skin upstream of the pain. This causes other sensory nerves to fire thereby blocking the pain nerves coming from the injury to the brain. The body has an assortment of different nerve types.
You might recall that this is the same school that Austin Miller attended. Austin Miller is the 15 year-old who died after colliding with a TriMet bus as he rode home from school back in February 2008 (read our extensive coverage of that tragedy).
Is there some particular reason you chose to include this? The two incident have NOTHING to do with each other!
I’m happy to hear the girl is recovering.
It really doesn’t matter who is at fault, and it’s sort of a dumb argument when you have a professional on one hand and a seventh grader on the other. Let’s call it an accident.
As someone who knows a bus driver who has hit and killed a child, I know how *tremendously* devastating this can be for a driver. It’s every bus driver’s worst fear! My sincere condolences to the driver in this case. I hope he or she suffers no guilt in this case, and recovers emotionally from this.
AL M,
I included that information as information, nothing more. figured people might want to know. if i didn’t include it, i guarantee the first comment would have been…”isn’t this the same school austin miller went to?”
thanks. oh, and you forgot the trimet legal disclaimer ;-).
“Riding her bike the wrong way”… I assume this does not mean rear wheel first, or singing a Barry Manilow song. Maybe someone could explain the degree to which it is meaningful to talk about riding the wrong way in a parking lot. There are lots of things you can do in parking lots that you cannot do in the street. A great example is jaywalking. To what extent, and under what circs, do traffic laws apply in parking lots? Given that Oregon allows the notion of riding a bike on the sidewalk, to what extent can a bike in a parking lot be assumed to have the freedoms of a ped in a parking lot? Hope the girl’s recovery is fast and complete. Compound fractures are very dangerous.
I also noticed that the original KGW was more generic and seemed like a better choice when there was no obvious fault… I think that’s the kind of non-biased title more people would like to see here on this site…
the only way I think that the girl could have been riding the wrong direction in the parking lot and ended up right there is if she was passing the bus going the same direction as it on the left in the oncoming lane and then suddenly decided to turn right, in front of the bus, to get into the bike lane…
both were kids hit by a bus leaving the same school… the connection here might be that the road is dangerously designed… it’s a loosely connected fact that may have relevance…
The connection might also be that big news reporters, in a rush to beat small blog reporters, don’t check their facts either.
This is further compounded by poor choice of wording that implies blame on one party or the other before any material evidence is known.
But go ahead and blame the bus driver or the cycling child; the Balkanization of society insures that no matter how extreme, hostile or factually unsupported your opinion might be there will be someone who will back you up.
So, don’t wait for facts: make up your mind now and scream until you get the last word.
thanks. oh, and you forgot the trimet legal disclaimer ;-).
The thoughts, opinions, ideas, and body odor are of me; they do not reflect the thoughts, opinions, ideas, and/or body odor of my company, my friends, my neighbors, my fish, my roses, my dog, or my trash. All rights reserved, all lefts reserved.
Thanks for reminding me and I see your point!
hehehehe….
Get Well, hope you heal fast and recover.
what I heard was that there is 1 driveway going in and 1 driveway going out, that the bus was going out the “out” driveway and the girl was going out the “in” driveway, and then turned in front of the bus where the driver could not see her.
I also heard that there have been a lot of issues with where to drive or park to pick up the kids….
Where was the adult responsiblr for the girl?
perhaps as bad as this is they can learn something here and make all of the schools a little bit safer.
has the bus driver been executed and their family tarred and feathered? Bikeportland.org expects nothing less.
Red Five,
i totally disagree with the tone of your comment. can you explain or clarify what in my story makes you think I am rushing to blame the bus driver. thanks.
Jonathan, I’m not picking on you personally, but rather the attitude of a lot of posters here that every bike/non-bike encounter is automatically not the fault of the cyclist. Sorry.
Jim #15, seventh graders are 12-13 years old and take themselves to and from school all the time, by bike, foot and bus. I did it when I was a kid, my daughter does it now. The “responsible adult” was by no means irresponsible for not being on the scene.
Hmmm….maybe riding the “wrong” way because parents still teach their kids to ride against traffic?
Disregard that. Unless she was rolling backwards she was riding the right way, that is, on the right side of the road.
“I didn’t see her” now an excuse for running over children,not just adult on bicycles (and motorcycles).
The responsible adult would not necessarily be her guardian. How about a crossing guard, as there are at all regular Beaverton middle schools (a 7th grader is a middle schooler). How about staff in the parking lot to ensure pedestrians, bicyclists, and automobiles all observe safe practices. We’re dealing with children here.
Even if she was riding the wrong way in the bike lane, she’s just a child. Children have imperfect judgement and make mistakes. I hope she makes a swift full recovery. Also, it’s incidents like this that make me wish our culture placed similar emphasis on teaching children how to ride safely from a young age, as was shown in that recent Copenhagen video.
Based on the picture, there is no way she could have been biking the “wrong way” unless she was hit after passing the lane the bus was in (front of bus hits rear of bike). In that case, the bus driver would be at fault for not coming to a stop.
Chris #17
most people agree 12- 13 yr olds are children and are lacking in experiance and judgement. A responsible adult cares about what can happen to their child and does not leave them alone in dangerous situations. Don’t let your child become a statistic
So Jim, you’re saying we shouldn’t let our kids ride to school? I rode my bike to school alone when I was 8 years old. No one EVER questioned that at the time (early 1980’s). Even without helmets 🙂
First I wish a speedy recovery to the girl and the school bus driver. I agree with Caroline, as a school bus driver it is my worst nightmare to collide with a person. This is a collision that all bus drivers prepare and train to prevent. School bus drivers have safety training to prevent collisions such as this, yet who trains the children and are they completely capable of understanding exactly how serious riding in the uncontrolled environment of the public streets? How about the relationship of their vulnerable bodies and school buses or other motor vehicles? It is one thing to ride in your neighborhood, but once you have left the familiarity of that semi closed community and are out in the general public, it gets much trickier.
“… both were kids hit by a bus leaving the same school… the connection here might be that the road is dangerously designed… it’s a loosely connected fact that may have relevance…” spiffy #9
Assuming that, in addition to this most recently injured girl, it’s Austin Miller you’re referring to, though he was a student of Arts & Communications Magnet High School, the collision in which he was fatally injured did not take place near the school(it happened several miles away near the intersection of Murray Rd and Farmington…an area that has far more traffic than does the area around the school.)
Also, the bus involved in Austin Miller’s death was not a school bus. It was a Trimet bus.
I hope whoever was in the wrong gets the appropriate citations or charges for this accident.
To the bikeportland forums thread about this collision, I just finished posting a new comment that includes a google earth snapshot view of the relevant parts of the school grounds and the streets that border it.
You’ll note that it is a dated photo that doesn’t fully represent recent additions made to the west side of the school. The driveway that the bus was attempting to exit from is shown in the photo though.
So is the road on school property across the south front of the school; look carefully to see westward pointing white arrows on it. The arrows placement also suggests it’s a two lane road. I don’t know that cars generally park on it during school days to the extent that it’s an authorized parking lot.
Paul-
No- It’s ok for kids to ride to school. There is just a lot more creepy stuff now than in the 80’s. When I was a kid I was all over town…. people didn’t even lock their doors back then. Riding around a congested school zone with extra cars and buses is a hazardous place to be. our bike access for our school was on a whole diff street than the buses, i think that helped some
Re: Red Five
A story about a little girl getting her leg broken in a collision with a bus is probably not the best time/place to try to make your point.
I hope she continues to recover well.
Re: Slowneasy
It seems like you’re suggesting kids shouldn’t ride their bikes outside their neighborhoods because the roads aren’t safe enough and rather than trying to make the roads safer you think the kids should stay closer to home. I completely disagree. Rather than locking kids in their homes, let’s try to make our communities safer.
Jim –
I think you just have a rosy view of what life was like in the 80s. Crime has dropped since then. http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2010/09/crime_rate_in_oregon_drops_to.html
Chris-
If its that safe then why is this article here?
I’ve not read anything about circumstances surrounding this collision that suggests criminal activity was a contributing factor.
The location itself, roads bordering the school, and intersections of driveways and sidewalks on school grounds aren’t particularly hazardous, especially compared to school grounds located near high traffic areas, which this one isn’t. I’d say it’s a safe location, but that doesn’t apply to situations where someone isn’t watching what’s going on around them.
Move the bike route, racks… away from where the buses are
“Move the bike route, racks… away from where the buses are” jim #36
Have you been there to see where they are? Any particular reason you feel their location may have contributed to this collision?
I haven’t been there. Does anyone know if the bikes are seperated from the buses at all? why was this girl riding close to the buses? in the parking lot? Are there teachers monitoring outside after school? or do they just tell them to go home now…?
The one thing that connects the fact that two kids from one school got hit while bike commuting is that there is obviously not an effective effort going on in Washington County to make conditions safe for kids biking to/from school. There needs to be more in the way of advocacy from individuals, organizations, the school, and the government (anyone know if there is a SR2S program at Arts&Comm. school?).
@jim: It’s not a dangerous street to ride on. That being said, any street is a deathtrap if you’re operating against traffic.
@Peter, I don’t think the problem is that of advocacy, Washington County has a surprisingly comprehensive network of bike routes and bike lanes, of which Center Street in front of CE Mason is a part of. Note, though, that these only work properly when everybody’s playing by the rules. Beaverton School District has fairly consistently failed at educating it’s students about safe bicycle operation, despite being the publisher of the Oregon Bicyclist Handbook back in the 90s prior to ODOT DMV taking over on it.
jim…this is a high school. The students are young adults, not children.
I’m skeptical of the accuracy of the KPTV news story excerpt maus used in his story about this collision. The still picture with the bus and the bike on the ramp to the street shows a driveway leading to the school, not a parking lot.
Just guessing, I’d say the girl on the bike rode west on the two-lane one way driveway that runs across the front of the school and T’s with the descending driveway seen in the still pic with the bus and the bike. Continuing with this line of thinking, when arriving at the intersection with the driveway(may not be a stop sign there), she continued to ride, turning left, diagonally across the incoming lane of the driveway, towards the street, which is approximately 50′ away.
At some point, I’m hoping we’ll hear a more detailed, official explanation of how this collision came about.
I’d encourage people to not draw conclusions that Beaverton somehow isn’t committed to providing for safe use of bikes on its roadways. The city has a transportation plan, and within that, a bicycle master plan(lots of info at the city’s website…click the Transportation tab). The city works to make upgrades(such as the finally approved bike lanes on Lombard that will eventually come), but all this stuff takes time. Here…check out some links if you want:
Comprehensive Plan Volume I, City of Beaverton
Beaverton Bike Master Plan
If this is a high school then why was there a 7th grader there? (not quite young adult)
She was passing the HS in the bike lane on the way home?
I pass a HS on my commute, and I am not in high school.
ACMA is a middle/high school. Grades 6-12.
@jim: I take it you don’t pass any 7-Elevens you don’t work at on the way to work?
Robin Rullman #45 …thanks for the clarification on grades attending ACMA, and for leading us to know what the actual name of the school is: Arts & Communications Magnet Academy.
An excerpt from jim’s comment #38 that led to questions about the age of students attending the school was:
“… why was this girl riding close to the buses? … Are there teachers monitoring outside after school? or do they just tell them to go home now…?
Is the school giving the younger of its students adequate guidance and supervision as they depart from and arrive at the school grounds?
The accident happened on the third day of school. During those first three days there were no adult supervisors (that I could see) monitoring the intersection in question. Since that day there has been an adult present during dismissal time.
Robin Rullman …thanks again, for additional info.
When you say that during dismissal time adults are present at the intersection in question, are you saying they’re present at the intersection of the school driveway with Center Street? The intersection of the school driveway with the two lane one way road that runs along the front of the school? Or the overall area in general?
Thanks Robin for the added info
Paul- I never said I don’t stop for 7-11 on the way to work
I hope there is an increased safety awareness ay the rest of the schools now also- keep the bikes away from the buses… That works downtown in the bus mall too