Northwestern student bicyclist killed this afternoon on Sheridan Road

Very sad and particularly upsetting to the Northwestern community:   details are still sketchy this evening, but the Northwestern student newspaper is reporting an 18-year student was killed in a accident this afternoon with a cement truck on Sheridan Road bordering campus.

http://dailynorthwestern.com/2016/09/22/campus/northwestern-student...

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Permalink Reply by Yasmeen on September 23, 2016 at 7:05am

Thank you Alex, I am so sorry for the loss. I can help you prepare the bike. Thank you for donating the bike. Do you have any contact with her friends? We try to do a dedication ceremony coordinated with friends of the cyclist. yasmeen@thechainlink.org

Permalink Reply by Mike Keating on September 23, 2016 at 7:42am

Contact Elizabeth Adamczyk at Ride of Silence - Chicago: rideofsilence.chicago@gmail.com

http://rideofsilencechicago.weebly.com/contact.html. She will help you. I'm sorry for your loss of your classmate, Alex. I lived in Evanston for years and know that area well and have run, walked or biked through it hundreds of times. 

Permalink Reply by jimbo on September 23, 2016 at 8:55am

Terribly sad to learn of this tragedy.  I have spray paint.  Can meet tomorrow am  

Permalink Reply by Alex on September 23, 2016 at 11:55am

Yasmeen has agreed to help me; thanks.

Permalink Reply by David P. on September 23, 2016 at 8:49am

I've read the linked article twice and I don't see anything that can be referred to as victim-blaming.

The Trib piece (IIRC) did not contain enough information to give any idea over who might have been at fault. This piece, which seems to have a bit more information, does not give any information that suggests there was reason for the truck driver to be cited for an infraction. According to the article, the truck driver was headed north on Sheridan with a green light through the intersection, and the cyclist was heading west on the cross street. This suggests that the cyclist did not yield to the traffic on Sheridan.

Permalink Reply by Skip Montanaro 0mi on September 23, 2016 at 9:03am

My email was sent to the Sun-Times in response to this article:

http://chicago.suntimes.com/news/police-bicyclist-killed-in-crash-w...

It clearly stated, "Investigators said it is believed that the woman was not wearing a helmet." That's a subtle case of victim blaming, implying that somehow wearing a helmet would have improved the outcome. There are plenty of cases where the use of a helmet would reduce or eliminate the chances of serious head trauma, but being run over by a cement truck is not one of those instances.

This happens all the time in news reports about cyclists' deaths. I thought the original Tribune article mentioned the lack of a helmet as well, but there was nothing when I checked this morning.

Permalink Reply by Skip Montanaro 0mi on September 23, 2016 at 11:06am

Here's another article which mentions the victim wasn't wearing a helmet:

http://evanstonnow.com/story/public-safety/bill-smith/2016-09-22/75...

Permalink Reply by Tom A.K. on September 23, 2016 at 11:38am
The earliest media reports (around 8:30pm) of this incident yesterday were eventually updated on their websites. Parts were rewritten (properly) with more details and the name of the victim was released.
Permalink Reply by Bradford Smith on September 23, 2016 at 11:59am

Has it been said which of the truck's wheels she came in contact with? In the photo of the truck in the Evanston Now link above, it looks very easy to wind up under the truck's rear wheels or those of its trailer. It looks like it would be very easy for someone to not notice the set of trailer wheels or get caught up in them.

Permalink Reply by Filka Bean on September 23, 2016 at 5:26pm
David, it seems to me that your own conclusion that the cyclist did not yield *is* victim-blaming. Do we know the cyclist did not yield? We know that Evanston Police Chief Know-it-all says that it appears that the cyclist "may not have yielded". And that's not even getting into the helment issue which others have dissected so well!
Permalink Reply by Jeremy Bloyd-Peshkin on September 26, 2016 at 2:58am

OK, I'll play scape goat. Feel free to pile on.

Leaving aside the helmet issue (it's already been covered so well), I'm having kind of a hard time not blaming the victim here. I know that intersection. It's not a stop sign, it's a light. There is no "yield to pedestrians" or anything the like. If the truck was proceeding on a green light and she ended up under the rear wheels... How is that the truck's fault? I don't think it's by any means right that a cyclist was killed, just as I don't think it's right that anyone is killed in any crash. But I've tried as hard as I can to come up with any way it isn't the victim's fault and I've come up dry. 

Permalink Reply by Skip Montanaro 0mi on September 26, 2016 at 3:30am

Given everything we know at this point, I don't believe anyone's suggesting the rider bears no fault here. In the absence of other evidence, I suspect you are correct in assuming it was her fault. There is, however, a difference between "actual fault" and "victim blaming," and it doesn't turn on whether or not the dead person was at fault.

My point is that no matter who was ultimately at fault, suggesting the outcome would have been different if she was wearing a helmet is pretty absurd. Getting hit and run over by a cement truck, no matter whose fault it was is likely to end badly for the bike rider. I was commenting on the by-now-standard "rider wasn't wearing a helmet" statement in at least the Sun-Times article. The statement of whether or not a dead cyclist was wearing a helmet turns up in many, if not most, such accounts. It is so common, that I have come to accept that statement as an implicit suggestion that either the article's author or the police the author quoted believed that had the cyclist been wearing a helmet, the cyclist's life would have been spared.

If, in fact, wearing a helmet improved outcomes for cyclists killed in collisions with motor vehicles, shouldn't we also note when pedestrians are killed in a similar fashion whether or not they were wearing a helmet? After all, in these situations, cyclists and pedestrians are just about as exposed to the kiss of a two-ton vehicle, and a cyclist getting left hooked isn't much different than a pedestrian getting hit in a similar manner.

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