Washington County Sheriff’s issued a statement this morning about two crashes involving bicycle riders. Both happened on roads that are popular cycling routes: NW Dairy Creek and NW Old Cornelius Pass Road.
Sheriff’s say the first crash happened Saturday night, but the rider was not discovered until Sunday morning around 7:15 am. According to their statement, deputies responded to a hit-and-run crash at the 22400 block of NW Dairy Creek Road where a woman on a bicycle was “struck overnight by a vehicle.” The road in this location is a typical, two-lane rural road. There is little to no shoulder space and there doesn’t appear to have been any cross-traffic.
The bicyclist, who has not yet been identified, suffered serious leg, facial and other injuries and authorities believe she spent the night alone, outside and in a ditch until being discovered alive Sunday morning by a passerby. She was transported to a local hospital. The driver fled the scene and remains on the loose.
Anyone with information on this crash is encouraged to call non-emergency dispatch at 503-629-0111 and reference case number 50-25-9657.
A few hours later, just before 11:00 am on Sunday, deputies responded to a bicycle crash at NW Old Cornelius Pass Road and NW Cornelius Pass Road. This location is about five miles southeast of where the woman was discovered on NW Dairy Creek Road. This intersection is part of a very popular route that connects NW Germantown to NW Philips Road.
The Sheriff’s office says an adult male on a bicycle was traveling north on NW Old Cornelius Pass Road. For some reason, deputies say the bicycle rider “suddenly crossed directly in the path of a vehicle traveling south on NW Cornelius Pass Road.”
The man is a 55-year-old from Northwest Portland. The Sheriff’s office says his family has requested privacy. He suffered serious injuries and is still in critical condition. The driver remained at the scene and is not suspected of any crimes.
Anyone with information is asked to call non-emergency dispatch at 503-629-0111 and reference case number 50-25-9663.
The main witness to this second collision has contacted BikePortland to share what they saw. The witness (who’s asked to remain anonymous), said he was on his bike at the same intersection (crossing in the opposite direction) and was watching the signal for his chance to go when he saw another rider coming in the opposite direction. When the victim began to pedal into the intersection northbound, the witness said he was hit by a westbound Tesla sedan. The witness recalled being surprised to see the other rider enter the intersection, since he clearly recalled the cross traffic on NW Cornelius Pass Road having a green light.
The witness who contacted BikePortland speculated that the bike rider might have gotten confused by the signals or perhaps another car at the light might have blocked his view of traffic.
Both of these collisions are incredibly unsettling. I’ve biked on these same roads many times over the years and I’m sure some of you have as well. My thoughts are with each of the riders and I hope they make full recoveries. If you have any information to share, please get in touch.
Thanks for reading.
BikePortland has served this community with independent community journalism since 2005. We rely on subscriptions from readers like you to survive. Your financial support is vital in keeping this valuable resource alive and well.
Please subscribe today to strengthen and expand our work.
“…but the rider’s body was not discovered until Sunday morning around 7:15 am….” really makes it sound like the rider died. They survived, right?
Yes she survived. Sorry will clarify.
That wording immediately struck me too. If it were me or I were a family member I would not appreciate being referred to as a body.
Thanks. I agree. Bad word choice. I deleted that and made the edit.
I hope both riders quickly recover. If folks are looking for a car that recently collided with the woman’s bicycle, assuming there’s scratches on the vehicle, do we know what color bike paint to look out for?
I’m so sorry to hear of more cyclist injuries/fatalities on our roads.
What if a road wasn’t wide enough for a motor vehicle to safely fit? They’d fix it or close it. Many of our roads are not wide enough to fit a cyclist. I dream of an Oregon where all roads have shoulders. I’m not asking for a buffered bike lane, a green box, those little plastic wands, I’m just asking for enough pavement so I can fit on the road on my bike without every single driver having to go around me or I get hit.
I think a shoulder is the only reasonable fix for a road like Old Cornelius Pass. But for me, riding in WaCo I actually prefer the narrower roads because riding on shoulders is sorta dirty & cars maintain (high) speeds when they pass. My preferred fix for lower-traffic roads like Dairy Creek (and Fairmount, Rock Creek, Skyline north of Germantown, etc) would be to remove the center lane striping. I think you’d get slower traffic speeds and more generous widths while passing.
I won’t ride on that road. Maybe 20 years ago, but not now. It’s just too dangerous.
This is very upsetting! I saw a social media post about these and the comments were mostly about how bikes do not belong on roads. I would love to the City and State team up on a campaign about bicycle awareness that emphasizes that if you encounter a bike, you slow down and wait to pass. The comments were too disturbing to read, but from the sample I reviewed, the driving public sees posted speed limits as minimums and anything not going that fast is unacceptable. It is frustrating, but sobering to realize that some large percentage of people driving literally do not know what the laws or expectations are, and that is extremely dangerous.
Can’t ride on the roads, cars will hit me.
Can’t ride on the paths, e-bikes will hit me.
It’s getting pretty miserable out there for those of us who prefer human-powered transportation.
Or peds, children, dogs etc are a threat on paths, or you are viewed as a threat to them.
It’s why I’m a huge fan of regular old bike lanes – a dedicated and (99.99%) safe place to ride.
Please don’t conflate cars and e-bikes. Both are piloted by fallible humans with a range of behaviors from pointless excess false courtesy to entitled rage but the physics of the machines are different by one hundred times. That’s not a hundred percent, it’s ten thousand percent.
I’ve worn out a lot of bike parts and a few frames. I’ve sworn at lots of car drivers and some bike riders. I’ve seen bad behavior by e-bikers and now I own one which I try to operate with the sensibility you’d like to see in a motor vehicle operator…if e-bikes are keeping you at home you may be in the wrong country.
COTW (tl;dr: means of conveyance is not a way of determining whether someone is a sociopath or not).
Is this actually a thing that happens? I don’t think it’s a thing that happens with any regularity.
It’s those gangs of illegal undocumented homeless A.I.-trained ebikes, on the run from evading tariffs, lurking in the woods, sneaking up on unsuspecting wholesome American users of acoustic bicycles, punching them in the face with non-standard proprietary part mixes, reverse-threaded hubs and cranks, and 635mm tires with Wood/Dunlop valves, a menace to us all!
one example
https://old.reddit.com/r/PortlandOR/comments/1m01mnp/my_brand_new_bike_was_killed_by_a_reckless_ebiker/
Motorcycles should be operated in the street
Collisions at least do happen:
https://bikeportland.org/2023/01/10/bike-on-bike-collision-on-sellwood-bridge-path-leads-to-serious-injury-369086
Here’s another another anecdote: the only bike-on-bike crash I’ve seen was when a roadie passed a car driver stopped to yield to a pedestrian in a zebra crossing and t boned the guy on a mountain bike crossing parallel to the crosswalk. Does that mean road bikes are bad?
A: Only if you do crimes with them.
It isn’t. It’s one of those things people psych themselves up about when they are passed by someone on an e-bike. Like they saw a rude thing and immediately jump to “they might have hit me” and then to “I might have been killed”.
Like, technically possible, and collisions must have happened at some point. And maybe some people need to learn some courtesy or norms. But people blow it way out of proportion.
I’ve never once been afraid of being hit by an e-bike. The (justified) stress about being hit by a car is basically constant in some places.
Was the witness who contacted you about the second crash also interviewed by police? We’ve seen gaslighting about bike crashes before, as in “I was there and I saw the rider behave erratically,” when there is no evidence the witness actually saw it or was even there.
yes. he has been in contact with police.
Four factors probably cause most injuries to bicyclists: distracted drivers, impaired drivers, lack of adequate segregation of bike and vehicular traffic, and errors by bicyclists! I somehow survived 10 years of bike commuting and recreational riding in the Portland area (2006-17)! Although we can be fairly sure what likely caused these two accidents, this country has a miserable record in segregating bike and vehicular traffic! (Wow, the first post I have made on social media in a long time that wasn’t political, or was it!)
It was.
It’s weird that you mention errors by bicyclists but not the ubiquitous errors by cage drivers that injure and kill.
Two of the four causes pointed out are pointing at drivers making errors, distracted and impaired.
Cyclists can choose to engage in a variety of self protective risk mitigating behaviors. I definitely make different choices than others in riding behavior, being visible, evidence based lighting configuration, etc.
Until now I’d never thought about enabling some sort of location sharing with trusted friends/family when riding alone in suburban/rural areas but I have always have left detailed routes/itineraries and instructions about what to do if I didn’t check back in when I went hiking or boating. It’s probably a good idea to have some sort of location sharing set up on your phone these days if you’re going to ride alone or in a small group so someone you can trust can try keep you from spending a night injured and alone in a ditch.
Somewhat related, I know lots of people (mostly volunteers) have spent several days searching unsuccessfully for the mountain biker who left their phone in the car while they went riding on Mt. Hood.
What is an axample of an “evidence based lighting configuration,” please?
TLDR: flashing lights alert others to your presence while steady lights allow others to effectively track your motion and location.
Attention getting strobes alone are not a good solution for collision avoidance on a bike or getting rescued from the water. Any flashing lights used for conspicuity should supplement a steady (not flashing) light and are ideally a pulsing/modulated flash pattern. This is true for cycling in traffic or being rescued from the water by SAR (or ideally the boat you fell off) at night because our physiology and vision processing struggle to track the motion of flashing lights.
The motion tracking issue is huge for cyclists interacting with other vehicle operators who may not even anticipate the presence of a bicycle. It doesn’t do you any good to be seen if you still get hit due to issues related motion tracking physiology.
At some level of driver distraction/impairment a cyclist’s behavior and visibility cease to matter for collision avoidance but might become relevant to any related litigation. Strobing bicycle headlights are also illegal in Washington State.
I also witnessed the 2nd crash. Hit by a red Tesla driving 55mpg. The cyclist crossed a red light. He was impatiently waiting for the left coming traffic to clear and then headed directly into the road. Lots of blood on the ground.
Please stop the fear mongering in the comments, or take it to NextDoor. We get it – most of the people in these comments ride greenways, protected bike lanes, and dedicated side paths. Don’t make it worse for the roadies out on the thousands of miles of rural oregon roadways. We’ve spent millions of hours spent riding them without incident, thanks to positive attitudes, bike clubs, education, safety in numbers, and this website.