A Portlander suffered a nasty fall on Monday while biking westbound on the Hawthorne Bridge. Shane Dixon Kavanaugh (yes, that Shane Dixon Kavanaugh) took a trip to the emergency room after his front tire slipped on on a piece of yellow tactile warning bumps and he was flung face first into the guardrail. Thankfully he’ll make a full recovery; but he’s sustained a welt on his head, a black eye, scrapes and bruises on his leg, and his brand new Cannondale was badly damaged.
After learning about Kavanaugh’s crash, I talked to him about how and where it happened and I feel it’s worth sharing this incident more broadly to raise awareness of this to help prevent anyone else from suffering the same fate.
Kavanaugh, a veteran bike commuter, said he was in the bike lane and riding down hill, about 300 feet west of where the bikeway splits and riders can choose to go down to Waterfront Park/Naito Parkway, or continue into downtown to SW 1st/Main. Just before he came to the intersection with SW 1st and navigated a slight bend, his wheel veered onto the yellow strips and down he went. The ground was slightly damp due to recent rain.
Multnomah County made several significant design changes to the bikeway at this section of the Hawthorne Bridge viaduct late last year. As I reported at the time, the County raised the bike lane to be at equal level with the sidewalk. To more clearly delineate space used by walkers and bikers, they made the bikeway green and added a wide strip of plastic, tactile warning bumps between the sidewalk and bike lane. In my coverage (both on BikePortland and in an Instagram video), I mentioned the potential for slipping, but didn’t share an outright warning. There was a bit of chatter about this in the comment section, with someone asking out loud: “I wonder how long until someone on a bike slips on the linear tactile?”
The county has used these same yellow warning strips on other parts of the bridge and viaduct, but other sections are either on uphills and/or straight and flat, which might make folks less likely slip on them. Perhaps there could be a yellow caution sign near the split similar to bike-specific warnings near streetcar tracks. Or maybe these type of plastic bumps pose unnecessary risks to bike users on downhills?
Keep all this in mind as you ride on this section of the Hawthorne. And if you’ve experience a fall or bobble here, or know of anyone who has, please let us know so we can get a better sense for how big of an issue this might be.
