(Image: KATU.com)
A Lewis & Clark student is recovering from traumatic injuries after being hit by a vehicle that left the scene of a collision on Southwest Barbur Boulevard early Friday morning.
Henry Schmidt, 20, had been biking home after working a late shift at Pok Pok restaurant, and either walking or riding his bike south. The driver, who remains unidentified, lacerated Schimidt’s spleen and broke his clavicle, cheekbone, three vertebrae, and his left leg in three places, according to The Oregonian. Doctors dug glass out of Schmidt’s face and mouth; his backpack and clothes were shredded from the impact, according to KATU.
Around 1 a.m., a TriMet bus driver saw Schmidt’s body and stopped to help. One passenger found Schmidt’s cell phone and notified his parents by calling the number labeled “Dad.”
This collision is awful news and we can only hope that people with knowledge of the incident have the decency to contact the police. But a driver’s choice to illegally leave the wounded man to his fate late at night is not the only factor in this crash. It happened on a stretch of road that the Oregon Department of Transportation has been refusing to consider promptly changing, despite numerous warnings that it is needlessly dangerous.
traffic patterns on Barbur Boulevard.
Image: Friends of Barbur.
Though the details and exact location of this collision weren’t clear as of Sunday night, KATU reported that the collision occurred at the edge of a bridge where, as the volunteer activist group Friends of Barbur showed our readers in a post just last week, Barbur’s bike lanes disappear, forcing bikes to merge with other traffic.
Barbur is designated as a major bike route in the Portland Bike Plan because it’s one of the few connections between southwest Portland and the rest of the city.
clear whether merged traffic across the Newbury Bridge was related to the collision.
(Image: ODOT.)
Friends of Barbur calls these two bridges, which are already due to receive road work by ODOT, an obvious place to improve the street. In June, the Bicycle Transportation Alliance made an upgraded Barbur one of its top 16 regional priorities. Even the City of Portland’s bike coordinator made the unusual offer, back in January, to design a possible restriping of Barbur, in exchange for just $2,000 to cover the staff time.
ODOT has proposed flashier signage but declined to redesign the street, saying it’s waiting for the subject to be resolved by the ongoing Southwest Corridor planning process. This process is expected to wrap up by the mid-2020s at the soonest.
A recent study by Metro of the results of removing a northbound lane from Barbur on this stretch concluded that it would delay morning rush hour traffic by an average of 20 to 25 seconds per car.
Last week, when Friends of Barbur’s new video seemed to show that the bridges are already often functioning during rush hour as if they had a single auto lane, we asked ODOT for an official response, but never heard one. I contacted ODOT spokesman Don Hamilton Sunday night and will let readers know if the agency responds with any new thoughts about the street.
“Those bridges are terrifying. It [a road diet] just seems like such a simple opportunity to improve conditions dramatically.”
— Roger Geller, City of Portland
In the meantime, here’s what various other people have been saying:
Portland bicycle coordinator Roger Geller, at a January public hearing: “Those bridges are terrifying. It [a road diet] just seems like such a simple opportunity to improve conditions dramatically.”
Kathi Sweet, Schmidt’s mother: “We’re so thankful for the care that he’s receiving and that he’s going to recover. I mean that’s really all that matters. But, the streets should be safe for everybody.”
Portland Tribune commenter Gaabriel Becket: “This is horrible! There are just way too many of these bikes hit by cars and crazy accidents on Barbur. I want to let my kids ride their bikes to school but I don’t because I’m afraid of idiot and psycho drivers. I wish I felt safe enough to ride my bike to the store four blocks down Barbur but I frankly don’t! This is the second person walking their bike off the road to be hit in I think only two years?” [Editor’s note: It’s been three years.]
Don Baack, SW Trails organizer: “Still awaiting the exact location on Barbur re Capitol Hwy and the Newbury Bridge, the northernmost bridge of the two … I am aware of at least one other bicycle collision on the bridges, that one apparently did not make it into the ODOT/DMV data base, but it did make it to court in a lawsuit.”
Damian Miller, Lewis & Clark administrative staffer, in an email to Lewis & Clark bike commuters: “This was not an ‘accident,’ or an astounding moment of ill fortune. This was a crash that could have and should have been prevented. Folks in SW have known for years that many segments of Barbur are unsafe, not to mention unwelcoming to cyclists and pedestrians. Groups including SWNI, SW Trails, and Friends of Barbur have been fighting for years for common-sense bicycle and pedestrian improvements.” More, from an email Miller sent to BikePortland: “The road is engineered for speeds unsafe on a shared roadway; drivers take up that invitiation; ODOT has fought tooth and nail to keep it thus. … Looking at the video that Kiel produced from the footage we gathered, it becomes clear that the bridges are stressful to reasonable drivers. No one’s sure where they should be, should they merge? Yes, no, maybe, oh well. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of the folk that drive the bridges every day wouldn’t prefer a clearly marked merge into a single northbound lane. Which means that ODOT, in fighting for the current arrangement, is protecting whom? Speeders.”
——
Stay tuned for more on this collision.
Thanks for reading.
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Tragic but Damian Miller nails it: “This was not an ‘accident,’ or an astounding moment of ill fortune. This was a crash that could have and should have been prevented.” This carnage is on ODOT’s hands, let’s hope that it prompts them (finally) to action while our good thoughts go to his healing, the driver being turned in, and no more blood on this stretch or road. Thanks for continuing to cover these “accidents.”
Agreed. The man speaks lots of sensible things:
“Which means that ODOT, in fighting for the current arrangement, is protecting whom? Speeders.”
How effective are GoPro cameras at night to say, to catch a license plate, anyone know? Seems to me these might be the way to go at least for the comfort that theres a good chance if hit it will catch the plate numbers.
or police license plate readers to find out who was driving on this stretch during the time of the crash…
Even if riders don’t have GoPro cameras or similar devices, a couple of surveillance cameras permanently mounted would watch over this trouble spot.
Integrate photo-radar into a permanent device and watch how quickly manic drivers become good citizens.
Or maybe we should just provide safe infrastructure that accommodates all users? We shouldn’t need cameras, we should have ways to move about that are safe for all.
Big Brother is cheaper than Big Infrastructure.
Yes, photo radar everywhere! Or at least those devises which display your speed. I was in Colorado and Montana this summer and the”Your Speed Is” devices were placed on roads in small towns, larger towns, on highways etc. And they helped calm speeds. With the total lack of any interest in speed limit and traffic law enforcement by the PPB (except for isolated PR campaigns), something else needs to be done.
I wish they had a “Your Speed” reading on every speed limit sign…
All cars have speedometers. The speed feedback signs are designed to highlight the speed limit at a specific location where it might be unintuitive or has low compliance. Sadly, if we installed them everywhere the active signs would just become an expensive part of the scenery.
> Integrate photo-radar into a permanent device and watch how quickly manic drivers become good citizens.
I believe this is true. However, it wouldn’t be legal. A few notes related to photo radar:
1. The Oregonian article below indicates that you’re right; photo radar works.
2. ODOT used a permanent radar device to monitor speeds before, during, and after a construction project in which a photo radar van was used. That kind of a device might be useful for City or ODOT to install on Barbur to create a real time, round the clock speeding monitor (http://www.wavetronix.com/en/products/smartsensor/technology).
http://www.oregonlive.com/commuting/index.ssf/2013/07/odot_portland_police_to_use_ph.html
2. However, Oregon law requires photo radar to be operated out of a marked vehicle by a uniformed officer (http://www.oregonlaws.org/ors/810.439), and for no more than four hours per day (http://www.oregonlaws.org/ors/810.438).
3. Rep Chris Gorsek of Troutdale introduced a bill this session that would have allowed unmanned photo-radar for more than four hours (but limited to school zones during school hours). That bill was watered down to a Fairview-only pilot project ending in January 2015 by Senator Starr of Hillsboro with the help of the Senate Business and Transportation committee. Rep. Matthews of Gresham and the ACLU argued against the bill on the grounds that it would have removed officer discretion (http://portlandtribune.com/go/42-news/154613-house-rejects-senate-amendment-to-school-zone-photo-radar-bill and https://olis.leg.state.or.us/liz/2013R1/Downloads/CommitteeMeetingDocument/24617). In the end, Gorsek and the House agreed to the watered down bill and passed it (https://olis.leg.state.or.us/liz/2013R1/Measures/Overview/HB3438).
I suggest contacting the BTA or Oregon Walks if you’re interested in expanding the use of photo radar to reduce speeding. In the mean time, speed reader boards alone may help reduce speeding (http://www.informationdisplay.com/httpdocs/press_release_portland.php).
If they are planning to repave the bridge are they not required, by law, to at least add bike lanes?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Bicycle_Bill
It seems like another lawsuit is in order. I would like to know if ODOT has included that required 1% in the reconstruction project.
Still, when you talk about people who hit-and-run at one in the morning, you basically have to assume that this person was drunk. And drunk people can and have killed/maimed people safely riding in bike lines in this city multiple times. I’m not discounting that Barbur sucks big time when it comes to providing a safe route for travel, but there’s also only so much you can do when it comes to dealing with the volume of people in this city who don’t think the law applies to them and who drink and drive as a matter of habit.
Perhaps. But it seems equally plausible that the driver was distracted or inattentive, and then, after running over Henry, realized that strategically it was safer (if also immoral) for him/her to skeddadle at that point than to hang around.
My son was killed by a hit-and-run driver while riding his bike 8-12-11. The driver was under age, drunk, and violating probation. In my research of hit-and-runs since then, I’ve found the people who run tend to be either drunk or high (they only tested my son for drugs, though, not the person who killed him), driving while suspended or revoked, have warrants or probation or some other criminal history that would affect consequences, or are otherwise distracted. There are some of us working on increasing awareness of hit-and-run with a goal also of increasing consequences. We believe hit-and-run should be considered at least as serious as impaired driving. I personally believe that there should be a presumption of guilt of some other bad behavior being committed that leads to hit-and-run; I just haven’t seen a situation where it appeared otherwise.
Should be grounds for instant and permanent confiscation of vehicle, just like driving suspended/revoked should be. Assuming a hit-and-run driver has insurance, I’m not sure what coverage there may be for offenders, but insurance payouts to replace wrecked cars that were damaged because their drivers hit and ran or drove suspended should be illegal, or else that amount which would have been paid to replace a hit-and-run driver’s vehicle should be payable to the victim(s).
I don’t know why we are so hesitant to literally take the cars out of the hands of these drivers.
Kristi-
I’m so sorry to hear about your son. Amazing how a single date on the calendar, a day like any other, can change your life forever. Congratulations on taking the work on hit-and-run prevention. It is the only and necessarcy thing left to do, after.
I am starting to feel like the institutionalized violence of our roads is mirroring the wanton disregard for the integrity of the human body that I see in my research on the early 20th Century logging industry.
Sigh.
As far as I’ve heard the law interpreted (like in Eugene with South Willamette St) all they have to do is CONSIDER adding bike amenities. They don’t have to actually do it.
I hope that’s not really true though.
Might be time to take a hint from Seattle and add in our own protected bike lanes if the city/state refuse to do it.
If this isn’t done by the end of the week we have a duty to do it ourselves.
this is totally tragic. I’ve ridden, raced, and messengered for 20+ years around the country and I find Barbur one of the worst roads I have ever ridden. Drivers haul ass around twisty corners and cyclists couldn’t be any more exposed. I’m not sure why more cyclists don’t take Terwilliger, which is essentially parallel to much of Barbur and much more protected. Sure, its a slight detour, but well, well worth it.
Matt-
I ride Barbur every day. People take Barbur because, as a former RR grade, it is level and direct. It is a long haul from Downtown to SW.
In my unscientific observation, people in SW fall into 3 camps with regard to bike routes:
1.) A small group who find the risks of Barbur unacceptable, tear into the hills on Terwilliger, and are able to make Terwilliger a part of their daily routine.
2.) A somewhat larger group who have figured out how to mitigate the insults of Barbur, and rely on its evident practicality, in spite of the risks. Because it is the only decent connection to Downtown, you see more than just the classic “strong & fearless” demographic. But making Barbur your daily route pretty much requires being confident taking the lane over the bridges, etc.
3.) A huge group, the remainder of the population, who don’t ride, or only make intra-SW trips.
Adversity has produced a liberal distribution of badass amongst SW cyclists. But I’d prefer that everybody and their kids, and their momma, were safe and comfortable riding in their neighborhoods.
Terwilliger, heck. There’s practically no traffic ever over Council Crest.
But seriously, Barbur has all the stuff to make a first-class bike route for SW. It just needs one less car lane.
I’m really interested to know exactly where the accident occurred. I thought it was the intersection of southbound Barbur and Capitol Hwy, which is notorious for right hooks (but did get some improvement last year with the green-painted bike line), not the bridge area.
Sorry, should have said “CRIME,” not “accident.”
I commuted this stretch from NW/ downtown for five years. These bridges are aweful….what other political preassure can Portland do TO ODOT to get them to listen?
My letter explaining how this road almost killed me is in “thier file” amungst many others I am sure….but as usual ODOT not care about what is needed locally….they are still controlled by comercial interests.
I’d like to see the law changed to discourage drunk drivers from getting any break by going home, sobering up, then turning themselves in. When this driver gets caught, throw everything at them (hopefully hard, and heavy).
Now as to that stretch of road… ODOT are you listening now?
I would suggest that, periodically, police should publicly beat a phoning/drunk/aggressive driver. The mayor should do nothing to discipline the officers involved. Drivers have been at the top of the food chain too long–they need some collective fear introduced into their psyches to correct and direct their behavior.
I’d love to see equal treatment of scofflaw cyclists, too.
Despite the “direct” or “practical” nature of any route, I would think safety would matter first, so (always) take the safe and perhaps unpractical route because your life is worth more than being inconvenienced.
And please don’t take this as blaming the victim, clearly the driver of the motor vehicle is at fault. I am simply saying that folks should be encouraged to be safe. Most of us know that human beings are fallible, that the later at night it is the more likely people will be drunk on the road, that with new mobile devices people will be distracted (at all hours), and that taking chances (or risks) does not always work out in our favor.
Besides, the safe routes tend to be more enjoyable (less traffic noise, etc). Of course, I learned this lesson painfully, after being hit several times… getting hit made my decisions more sensible. Luckily, I lived through the bad experiences I had, but many others are clearly not so lucky.
So, how to encourage more people riding bicycles to take safer routes?
Are the maps not good enough? Are the online resources not visible enough? Why are riders taking these risks? Yes, ODOT, PBOT and other agencies should be told to change this situation on the road, but we all know how slow they move… and how unlikely it is that any change to the roads will come quickly.
Lastly – Michael, Jonathan – do you keep a running tally of the hit and run incidents involving pedestrians and bicyclists?
I ask because I feel it would be good to lead a story like this with the total number for the year, and maybe over the last 3-5 years. I feel like I read one of these hit and run stories (on average) once per month, but maybe the occurrence is less frequent?
And Henry — I hope you recover to full health and mobility.
Alain
Alain,
If you ride from SW PDX you know this already, but for others’ benefits I need to point out: For most westside riders (incl. suburbs) there are few alternatives to Barbur and they require some degree of macho hill mastery. It’s not as easy as avoiding Hawthorne for Salmon St
In 10 years I’ve only found four basic alternatives to Barbur from outer SW to downtown. Three of which have cat-4 climbs, unpaved trails, and/or stairs. All of which take you MILES out of your way. For a lot of commuters it’s like: ride Barbur or drive a car.
Paul et al,
I will admit my blind spot for SW (I live in North)… the few times I’ve had to travel to/from SW, I’ve sent myself through the hills, not easy routes to find or follow. But I have a granny gear, and I like the hills more than I like high speed traffic passing me within a few feet.
I will allow myself to be inconvenience because after getting hit a few times, and (amazingly) surviving each time, I’m just not interested in taking risks anymore. When I was in my 20s it was a different story.
Of course, I too think that Barbur *should* change, but in the meantime, what do people do… continue to ride Barbur? A person can make all the arguments for riding Barbur one wants, but what happens tomorrow, next month and next year while waiting for Barbur to get fixed?
If there are any other routes that are safer (hill or no hill), then maybe folks could circulate info one these routes?
The implication of your safety first standpoint makes the assumption that any other route is safer. Surely some are safer, some that may appear so are not – they may be the same or worse.
For example: if my personal experience on Barbur has been less harrowing than Terwilliger then should we assume that both are equally hazardous?
Obviously there are some blatantly deficient design failures on Barbur concerning bikes&peds. But there are also dangers on single lane twisty short line of site roads that drivers can speed on consistently because no police ever go there.
The reasons that encourage someone to bike on a road like Barbur are things like indirect, time wasting “safe” options, close calls on “safe” routes, pointless long term shutdowns of bike routes & MUPs that would be cleared in hours if automobiles drove there.
Further, a bike route is only as safe as it doesn’t share space with automobiles. Length doesn’t matter as much as the total number of vehicles that you encounter. While this would seem to indict Barbur’s high traffic flow lets not forget that a longer slower hilly climb puts you in a situation encounter just as many cars where the is no bike lane nor common expectation of encountering cyclists.
My experience with twisty mountain roads is exclusively drivers in sports cars trying to reenact the professional race driver’s maneuvers they saw in the commercial.
Given the importance of this connection (and the lack of alternatives) I wonder how the “work zone” for this section will be handled? (
Given the recent strong efforts by ODoT the work zone may be much safer than the existing conditions?!)
Wasn’t it That Hannah Scum who left the scene of a car bike crash on Macadam cause he was drunk, and got away with it?
We are constantly ignored in the SW for even a modicum of pedestrian and bike safety space on our roads. Barbur is just one of many through-ways with high bike and pedestrian traffic with no bike lane or sidewalk. Vemont Street from Gabriel Park to Oleson is another hit-and-run waiting to happen. You can’t even stand safely at a bus stop along here without being nearly plowed over by Alpenrose trucks and speeding drivers – and this is essentially a residential street with the ridiculous speed limit of 35 miles per hour, and not even a soft shoulder. Shattuck is even worse. It’s not even safe for my kid to walk his bike across the street to a cut-through to a so-called “Greenway.”
I second that, Emily. The SW is like the red headed stepchild. We are constantly ignored when it comes to nonmotorized improvements. It’s really frustrating.
One of my high school classmates was struck by a car and killed in front of Gabriel Park on Vermont. SW is really bad in some areas.
This ugly section of state highway is begging for a concrete barrier separated bikeway by the simple function of putting the concrete barriers centered on top of the stripe delineating the current bike lane from the auto lane.
Also, on the topic of video cameras, I think that if we have a save and broadcast feature tied to cameras, triggered by the sounds of rending metal or screams of agony, monitoring the conflict areas it would reduce the concern of constant monitoring. If this works for gunshot microphones in LA audiologists should be able to isolate specific frequencies and patterns that indicate something vehicularly illegal has just happened.
I am so thankful that Henry is expected to fully recover… except from the trauma! My heart goes out to him and his family.
I agree with above comm enters, this was absolutely no accident! This points to a callous decision-making process within the city (and apparently the State) where opportunities to make huge safety increases for modest costs (both in capital and performance) are ignored unless/until fatalities or crash data demonstrate need. Why these institutions cannot simply pro-actively protect vulnerable road users remains a mystery. @ other spots in town this reminds me of:
1. St John’s bridge. There are bottlenecks at either end, yet instead of closing one or 2 traffic lanes to promote slower, safer driving, ODOT adds sharrows, but lets cars and trucks battle it out on 4 skinny lanes with zero speed enforcement while bikes are “protected” with a sign.
2. Interstate Ave: major bike collector between Downtown and North Portland with only a 5-foot bike lane. South-bound, under the Larrabee overpass, the bike lane shrinks to to less than 2.5′ (!!) with no warning, and the adjacent lane shrinks to 10.5′. This means that a bus or full-size truck (which there are plenty of on this road) will be a minimum of 6 inches INSIDE the bike lane! Again, there is no warning for automobiles/trucks or bikes, the lanes just suddenly shrink! When asked, PBOT simply says there isn’t crash data to support doing anything; in other words, we know it is dangerous, but we are going to wait until someone gets killed to fix it. The auto lane width varies wildly along Interstate, but the bike lane remains crammed into the tiniest 5-feet of gutter. This striping pattern, combined with few intersections and absolutely not traffic enforcement, yields people routinely driving 45-50 mph. I believe that if PBOT would stripe the auto lane at 11 feet off the curb for the MAX, while leaving the 5-foot gutter for the bikes, the remaining space would simply serve as buffer. It would be a double, solid white line with a varying gap between them. This would enable autos and bikes to look ahead and see a disappearing buffer, and it would encourage autos to stay in their lane and slow down.
I see this tragedy as a major shortcoming on the part of PBOT and ODOT. These people need to do a better job with our infrastructure. A lot of what is needed is simply paint
35 mph speed limits in fron of houses is ridiculously fast
In Texas 35 MPH through a residential area is a low speed limit. Our arterials are 40-45 limit (60-65 actual) with houses on either side and commercial development next to it. I don’t think y’all know just how good you have it there in PDX.
I just want to wish Henry a fast and full recovery.
As for hit and runs…I’d like to see them prosecuted at least the same as man slaughter charges, or at the very least upgraded to a class B felony rather than a class C. Especially considering that dealing drugs is a class B felony and that is a crime in which usually occurs with 2 consenting parties.
To leave someone bleeding and injured on the side of the road without calling for help is the moral equivalent of voluntary man slaughter, though honestly I don’t see why it can’t be tried as any number of class A’s. I”m sure I’m not alone in thinking it rivals attempted murder or assault with a deadly weapon.
I had a thought (I know, did it get lonely?) about hit-and-run, specifically the fatal ones. Has anyone ever been prosecuted for illegal disposal of body for not cleaning up the aftermath of a fatal hit-and-run? I don’t know what the penalties are in OR but in TX they are pretty steep, easily twice what gets handed out for your garden variety of hit-and-run.
get well dude…. sad how some just treat life as if it doesn’t mean anything.. stop the car and do the right thing.. we need better laws to protect riders.