Biker Down

I was riding in this morning, coming out of Ft Snelling and transitioning into Minnehaha I noticed that traffic was unusually bad on Hiawatha heading into Minneapolis.  "Glad that's not me!" I thought.  As I got closer to the intersection of 54th and Hiawatha I could see why traffic was backed up, there was an accident.  I could see a fire truck, an ambulance and at least one squad car all in the middle of the intersection.  As I got closer to 54th I noticed that I could only see one car in the intersection and started to get a bad feeling.  I turned and rode over to the intersection and confirmed my fears.  A cyclist had been hit by a car.

 

I couldn't see the cyclists much from my vantage point because he was blocked by the ambulance.  The way the car was oriented it looked like the driver was travelling eastbound on 54th and trying to take a left turn onto northbound Hiawatha when the accident happened.  If I was forced to make a guess based on what I saw, I would guess that the cyclist was proceeding through the intersection and the car turned in front of him.  There could be many extenuating factors, such as the light changing from green to yellow or yellow to red, or the cyclist doing something boneheaded. But I'm inclined to think that it was the driver's fault.

 

I watched as they loaded the biker into the ambulance.  He was wearing a Team Postal jersey, but I didn't recognize him.  His knees were up and he was holding his right arm across his body and he didn't appear to be seriously injured.  But it's hard to tell. Be safe out there.

 

And if this wasn't a scary enough way to start the day, I saw Ray on the Greenway.

 

Date: August 16
Mileage: 26
Ride type/Bike: Commute/Premis
August mileage: 199
Year to date mileage: 2558