The sense of safety and protection from drivers Portlanders usually associate with the annual Bridge Pedal ride was shattered this morning when a truck driver struck and injured a bicycle rider on the Morrison Bridge.
According to the police, just before 8:30 am this morning, driver of a four-door Toyota Tundra, “struck the bicyclist from behind, knocking him to the road. The driver of the pickup pulled alongside the driver, stopped briefly, then fled.”
BikePortland reader Shawne Martinez rolled by just after first responders arrived and shared the photos below…
Below is the full crash statement from the Portland Police Bureau:
“A hit-and-run driver is being sought after he struck and injured a bicyclist on the Morrison Bridge this morning. The bicyclist was believed to be on his way to the Providence Bridge Pedal event when the crash happened.
Portland Police officers from Central Precinct and the Traffic Division were in the area of the Bridge Pedal event when they were alerted to a crash involving a vehicle and a bicyclist midspan on the Morrison Bridge. They responded and found the adult male bicyclist with serious injuries. He was transported by ambulance to the hospital. His injuries are not believed to be life-threatening.
Officers learned that the suspect driver left the scene, and several officers from both Central Precinct and the Traffic Division searched the area for the suspect vehicle, but were unsuccessful in finding him.
Preliminary investigation suggests the adult male bicyclist was westbound on the Morrison Bridge in the left (center) westbound lane. At the time, the westbound lanes were open to all traffic (eastbound was closed for the Bridge Pedal). The suspect driver struck the bicyclist from behind, knocking him to the road. The driver of the pickup pulled alongside the driver, stopped briefly, then fled.
According to his family member, the bicyclist was on his way to the Bridge Pedal, but was not participating at the time of the crash.
The suspect vehicle is pictured. It is believed to be a white Toyota Tundra pickup 4-door crewcab, with black wheels, a black (or possibly missing) left side gas cap, and no license plates. It was described as “dirty” and had objects in the truck bed. The truck had and may have damage to the front grille. The driver is described as possibly a “middle aged” white or Hispanic man, described as “taller” and bald. This image is altered to obscure the bicyclist in the interest of the privacy of the victim.
If anyone has information about this vehicle, is a witness, or has evidence related to this crash, please e-mail crimetips@police.portlandoregon.gov attn: Central Precinct and reference case number 25-215805.”
Of you have more information about this collision, please contact me.
UPDATE, 4:01 pm: A reader has sent me the video below that shows the collision.
Thanks for reading.
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I am a bicyclist who occasionally works on the Morrison Bridge. The cyclists made a poor choice of routes — the Bridge Pedal often brings out inexperienced riders. The driver was (at minimum) grossly distracted and speeding. No license plates? That’s sketchy.
Then there’s the issue of the Morrison Bridge itself. Many have just come down off the freeway and haven’t always adjusted to city speeds yet. But the 5-lane layout (3 East-bound, 2 West) just invites motorists to speed. And they do. What the hell is that tangle of overpasses, viaducts, and local exits on the East side?
None of the bridges downtown are earthquake resistant. So the current plan is to tear down the Burnside and leave the Morrison. In my opinion that’s the wrong choice. Tear down the Morrison: It’s dangerous, ugly, confused, and a bigger maintenance headache for the County than Burnside Bridge.
Long-term, we should remove I-5 and 405 and route freeway traffic around the city. There’s no reason to send cars and trucks traveling between Washington and California through the center of Portland. This was misguided violence done to the city in the 60s and 70s. It was unnecessary, and a choice. Canada did not carve freeways through the center of all their cities.
There’s more causes to this crash than just one cyclist’s naïve route choice and a motorists negligent operation of a dangerous machine. Cars ruin cities.
Perhaps…but this pales in comparison to the driver illegally smashing into a human being, leaving them severely injured in the roadway, and running away.
Hit and run is not “negligence”, it’s a violent and profoundly immoral crime.
Agreed. I’m just focusing on what led to the crash happening. Not the criminal behavior of the motorist afterward. I had the same feeling of outrage about his actions.
But then my mind went to how much injury and death there is on our roads. The details of each case vary. But I think there’s things that can be done. Helsinki had zero bicycling deaths last year. How do we get there?
Asking for people to be better won’t get us there. I don’t think Finns are fundamentally better people than we are. People are gonna do what people do. I also don’t think criminal laws are much help. Cops aren’t the answer. So that leads me to think of a) the immediate details of the built environment that led to this and b) How we choose to structure our entire transportation system.
This sort of thing doesn’t happen on the Burnside because there’s a generous West bound bike lane on the right. It can’t happen on the the Tilikum because there’s no cars on it.
Yes, but it could very well be that Finnish drivers ARE better people than U.S. drivers
Finland is better at weeding out the bad ones, through things like traffic fines based on income (can result in $100K+ speeding tickets,) lower drunk driving threshold (.05) with high penalties if caught, etc. This isn’t to downplay the importance of infrastructure, town planning, etc. that Finland also does well.
See Soren, sometimes we’re in agreement.
it’s not that deep. that truck driver purposefully tried to kill a person (who happened to be riding a bike). end of story tbh
It is inevitable that if you ride a bike enough and attempt to get to new destinations, you end up riding on routes that are not ideal. Sometimes at the advice of apps. It looks like the coned-off Bridge Pedal route is just on the other side of the bridge. I wouldn’t assume that the people biking fully appreciated the risk. That said, they were riding appropriately by taking the full lane and being highly visible. If they were a stalled car or a pile of trash, the truck driver would have avoided them.
My kneejerk reaction was “That’s such a dangerous lane to bike in” and then I remembered the time Google maps told me to take the Morrison bridge and I ended up in about the same place on a dark rainy day.
Totally agree that the Morrison bridge is a confusing tangle, mixing local traffic and long-distance highway vibes. It looks like the driver had about 3 seconds either to brake or switch lanes, and they ran out time/space to brake when they couldn’t switch lanes. (Obviously, none of that excuses a hit and run!)
Sounds like you’re excusing unsafe driving. Please don’t.
Sounds like Becky is offering an analysis and is not excusing anything.
I’m guessing the idiot driver was looking at a device or was otherwise distracted for those 3 seconds which is why he stopped upon hitting the cyclist, panicked when he saw what he’d done and drove off.
Please note that I am not excusing unsafe or violent driving either. Intentional or not, the crime is the same and needs to be punished to send an example to other motorists to wake the frick up and pay attention!
I drove over the bridge today. He had way more than 3 seconds. Sight lines are not obscured by the hill.
PBOT could act immediately to help clarify the route to the cycle path coming from the East. Re-stripe the green crosswalk at Morrison/Grand, and put in a sign saying “Morrison Bridge Bike Path” with an arrow pointing to the bike lane on the right that goes down away from the viaduct.
The Morrison Bridge is a MultCo road, not a PBOT road. And MultCo has proven time and time again that they’re the most actively hostile to cyclists of any transportation agency in the region. I wouldn’t get your hopes up for this one…
Yeah, good point. Although I believe ODOT owns/maintains the highway ramps to the bridge which essentially negates any design improvements to allow access to the viaducts for peds/cycling. The biggest impediment to bridge safety (not to mention quality of life for the CEID) is the existence of an inter-state freeway in the middle of an urban area, something the US hasn’t yet learned is inherently poor transportation/land use.
Also, Mult Co isn’t necessarily more hostile to cycling than the city (judging by its mediocre ped/bike infra on all the bridges it owns). They are just as ambivalent and scared to do anything substantive as the Mayor/Council. Like, have we heard anything from the Mayor on these recent deaths/injuries??? So folding Mult Co into Portland might simplify local govt, but have negligible effect on road safety/mode share.
ODOT still has my vote! I wish BP would run a public survey so we could all vote on it.
Okay, well, whoever is in charge of it. Hell, an org like Strong Towns or BikeLoud could go out there and put up homemade signs directing cyclists to the westbound bike path. It really is a convoluted route.
Are you saying that’s what this driver did? How can they be in the left lane coming down off the Freeway here? The video starts too late, but its hard to imagine anyone making that many lane changes in such a short distance.
That’s a bit of an overreaction.
Outrage is an overreaction? What is a middle-of-the-road moderated and appropriate feeling to express in response to a blatant disregard for human safety and well-being?
Thanks covering this. It was painful but I watched the video from IG 20+ times. Driver may have been trying to get ahead of the cyclists and move ahead of the sedan in the middle lane and misjudged. Either that, or it was attempted murder, assault, and felony hit and run. Why did he stop next to the crash and open his door momentarily?
I wish Morrison Bridge wasn’t such a drag strip. I’ve been punish-passed on it twice in that exact lane.
Hoping for a quick recovery!!
I think your first scenario is probably what he will claim happened, if he’s caught. It would still be grossly negligent though, and I don’t see anyway he can argue out of a hit-and-run charge.
Like Chuck McDowell I’m not a lawyer, but it’s clear to me that both the collision and, especially, the failure to stop are clearly criminal. I hope the driver faces legal repercussions for such a despicable and violent act. Even if hitting the cyclist was unintentional.
The video is sickening to watch — and scary AF. The actions of the driver are completely inexplicable. (Was the collision intentional? Why was the truck steered partially into the middle lane before hitting the cyclist?) I wish the struck cyclist a full and speedy recovery.
All of the other vehicles were able to stop easily without even coming close to hitting the stopped cars and trucks. No excuses.
Hit and run drivers are the lowest of the low. It’s absolutely unconscionable to harm someone else and leave them.
Also a great example of why we need stringent enforcement of vehicles without plates or current registration.
Those vehicles should be booted and towed.
“no license plates” this needs to end, any car with no plates should be impounded
We used to impound any vehicle being driven without insurance; of course to get to that point we’d need to stop people for traffic infractions.
Also any car with tinted license plate covers. These illegal covers are designed to obscure license plates and prevent identification in a hit and run and other crimes. Despite this, they enjoy widespread use in Portland. Both of these should be grounds for immediate police stops. Come on PPB, they are out there driving around right in front of your face, go get them!
Hopefully the cyclist will fully recover. Even if s/he gets back to 100%, the process will be awful.
Even without plates, I’m hopeful they catch the driver. There are a lot of other ways to identify that truck.
On the photo at the top, the other biker looks younger. A daughter maybe? Either way, in the video she looks completely traumatized. What a nightmare.
The truck has an automatic side step on driver’s door – you can see the shadow below truck swing out and back in when driver opens/closes door, One more thing to look for to ID right truck.
This is such a scary video! To me, this really highlights the shortcomings of PBOT’s “bike network” The Morrison bridge shows up on bike maps as having bike facilities in both directions, and PBOT is happy to include this in the self-touted claims about miles of bike lanes, etc. But in fact, the connections to and from this bridge are abysmal. The facilities are not there, Signage ranges from terrible to non-existent. Without safe, direct connections, the meager facilities they have are closer to being an “attractive nuisance” than useful infrastructure. The design of the bridge is horrible: too many driving lanes, lanes too wide, highway-style ramps on the west end, zero enforcement of speed limit. PBOT (and Mult. Co and ODOT) are stuck in a 1950′ mentality. Those ramps on the west ed should be removed immediately. Those blocks could be housing or parks- even surface parking lots would be better. The speed limit should be 30 mph at the fastest with cameras. I think the ramps to and from I-5 should be closed. The bridge needs sidewalks on each side that connect all the way from SW 2nd to SE Grand. The ramp to Water may be valuable to keep, but I would remove the ramps on the east side, too.
If ODOT is successful as widening I-5 at the Rose Quarter, it is pretty obvious that this the next area that will “need” to be widened and seismically upgraded. The ramps to and from the Morrison and all the horrible highway spaghetti connecting to I-84 and south across the river is going to be ODOT’s next “choke point” along with the stretch north of the RQ to the IBR. IMO, it is critical to stop the widening at the RQ and the IBR, but also to advocate hard to safe, connected bridges that are suitable for pedestrians and bikes. The terrible, disconnected sidewalk next to driving lanes that are functionally freeway ramps is not safe, or sustainable.