Around 7:00 am on December 12th, a young Hillsboro man was involved in a traffic collision while riding his bike. The crash happened at or near the corner of NE Cornell Road and Orenco Station Parkway. According to a crowdfunding page set up by a friend, a twenty-something named Connor is the victim and he’s still in the hospital recovering from serious injuries.
Photos taken by KATU-TV at the scene show a white sedan (pulled over on NE 61st Ave, one block west of the intersection) with a significant damage to its upper driver-side windshield. The damaged bicycle Connor was riding was shown in a photo without its rear wheel and with a helmet and backpack strewn about the street about 100 feet west of the Cornell/Orenco intersection.
This is the second serious traffic crash at this same intersection in less than a month.
Around 8:00 pm on November 27th, a person died after being hit by a car user while walking across or near Orenco and NE Cornell. A cursory web search shows another person was hit by a driver and killed while walking on Cornell just a few blocks away in 2015.
Despite being a (relatively) dense commercial and residential area, this section of Cornell is known as a place where people drive dangerously. “People drive way to fast down Cornell in that stretch. I work right there and constantly hear what sounds like drag races up and down daily,” wrote one person in a social media comment. “People often forget to yield to the pedestrians in the crosswalk here,” wrote another.
The speed limit is 45 mph, the cross-section has 5-6 lanes for drivers and narrow, unprotected bike lanes. In the westbound direction there’s a straight, one-quarter mile stretch between NE Century and Orenco Station Parkway with no traffic signals.
The Gofundme page made for Connor says he’s lived in the Beaverton/Hillsboro area since 2007. According to his mom (via Gofundme) Connor was riding to work about two miles away when he was hit. “We have a long recovery ahead of us but Connor is strong!” she wrote. “He will be back on his bike before we know it!”