Injured Cyclists Team Up to Fund Fix for Heavy Accident Area

An accident-prone section of bike path in Seattle has prompted dozens of lawsuits and resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments to injured cyclists. Now the cyclists themselves are trying to fix the infrastructural problem.

1 minute read

July 2, 2011, 7:00 AM PDT

By Nate Berg


A group of seven cyclists who have won rewards are pooling some money to pay a traffic engineer to address the problem.

"[A] bicyclist falls there daily. That's the estimate of Cliff Valentine, of AMC Cliffv's Marine Service, whose office looks out on the tracks. Bike wrecks are so constant he keeps a first-aid kit at his front door.

Most of the falls are minor. But lawyers suing the city found that 66 times in the past decade the injuries were bad enough to call out the Fire Department.

Still, the city hasn't done much beyond striping the pavement to encourage cyclists to cross the tracks at a right angle (the roadway meets them at a 20-degree angle.)"

Thursday, June 30, 2011 in The Seattle Times

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