Cyclist killed by driverless dump truck

At least that's what you're led to believe upon reading last night's Post-Intelligencer web story (today's print edition, B1) about the fatality accident at Eastlake & Fuhrman:

"A bicyclist was killed instantly and another was rushed to Harborview... after a dump truck turned into them Friday afternoon..."

This is typical journalism practice -- it's the motor vehicle that hits you; its driver is one degree of separation away from the accident. Or in the case of Casey McNerthney's story, all the way down in the eighth graf (out of of eleven), where the existence of a driver of the dump truck is finally acknowledged.

The driver "was not cited, police said."

Here's the biggest, screaming, maddening, backhanded smear in the story: "Neither was wearing a helmet". As though a helmet is going to help you survive being run over by a dump truck.

Imagine the reporter writing Neither was wearing a helmet, tsk tsk. Because that's what that little sentence means -- it's the automobile-dominant-society's check on whether the pedaling oddball was following the equipment rules, which is totally irrelevant to the matter of who committed the moving violation. In this case, the fatal collision.

The effect is to put some of the blame on the victims. Where it does not belong, because the facts are right there in the story:

The truck apparently turned right into the cyclists at the intersection [photos in Monica Guzman's bulletin]

I know that intersection, thousands of local riders know it. You approach from the south in a bike lane of less-than-ideal width. Then when you get to Fuhrman you're in a double danger zone: drivers from the University Bridge as well as Eastlake want to turn onto Fuhrman; they are in a hurry to get to Montlake, or on their way to Capitol Hill or eastbound 520. They are looking for gaps in car traffic, not for YOU on your two wheels. You are an inconvenience at the entrance to their shortcut.

Cyclists who look at Guzman's photos know what really happened yesterday. The northbound dump truck driver sped to the intersection. Two cyclists were in the bike lane in front of Romio's Pizza, and as the driver passed them we know they immediately disappeared from his/her memory, because he/she then turned into their path and drove the dump truck over them.

And yet, "the driver of the truck was not cited."


Addendum

To SDOT-- save the paint and leave out the sharrows! 99% of drivers don't know what they mean; if they did it would change nothing.

To all Seattle cyclists-- obey the freaking traffic laws; red means stop!