Was he riding a fixie?

Who cares if he rode fixie? What matters is if he has a pitbull. Or technically, what matters is his position on breed bans.

BTW, my first child, a socialist who will go to the Sorbonne, was born this past Bastille Day.

i live on this intersection and i ride a bike.

people really need to slow the fuck down. what's the hurry, anyway?

The more you drive, the less intelligent you are.

i think the bike was going up eastlake and so was the car - the car turned just like the dump truck but in this case the bike hit the side of the car instead of going under and being crushed by the wheel

Living by this intersection, I saw a cyclist (an older woman riding a very nice road bike on a work day in the late afternoon) get hit and carted away in an ambulance with obvious injuries. All I have to say is that nothing's changed since this accident, much less Bryce's. Drivers will keep being the fucking maniacs they are on that road until the city comes up with a solution to keep people from being hit.

@5:

That makes a little more sense than what Erica describes, unless either the car or the bike were in the wrong lane at the point of impact. The bike lane on Eastlake connecting with the U. bridge seems to be a perenneal blindspot for cars crossing the bridge going northbound.

Jesus Maria. When can we stop pretending that having cars and bikes in the same lanes is anything other than a stupid idea?

Bikes are awesome, but riding your bike in a lane with cars is not smart. I know you really, really want bikes to rule the world, but in bike vs. car, car will always win.

That is why in civilized countries, bike lanes are separate paved trails, separated from the car road by a physical barrier, and bikes have separate signals just like pedestrians.

Quit blaming drivers for the fact that cars are big and hard and bikes are soft and small, and start agitating for an actual bike lane system.

Gads. I was at this intersection at about 7 pm last night and saw a biker come *this close* to getting creamed. The young woman in front of me turned left directly in front of the biker, and if his reflexes hadn't been quick, he'd be in the hospital or worse. WATCH FOR BIKERS, PEOPLE.

Thisbe, quit being such a fucking pussy. People need to drive less, fuck more and ride bikes all the time.

This is the answer to all of our problems.

I ride this route a handful of times of month. Coming off the burke while heading downtown, it's really the best way to go. I'd like to see them do on Eastlake what they did on Stone Way. There needs to be separate lanes.

Well, I give kudos to Mayor Nickels and his forward thinking Bike Plan for Seattle!!! Wow, it looks so damn good on paper, I feel better everday I bike down Eastlake around Lake Union (sharing lanes not only with cars but that fucking stupid street car). I am so happy we have a plan on paper. I would NEVER want Seattle to fucking implement any sort of transportation plan like the Bike Plan or the Monorail or anything. Just keep it on paper.

Who is running against Nickels next year anyway?

Until Thisbe's utopia: ride in the center of the lane! Far fewer bikes are killed intentionally by angry drivers than accidentally by stupid evil drivers.

i thought bryce hit the truck, not the other way around?

Use that intersection as a test intersection to paint the bike lane a color (like they do on some pdx bike lanes) from the flower lady area to just across the north side of the intersection.

Put up a sign back at the harvard/eastlake intersection (on eastlake) that mentions something about the upcoming intersection.

The description of this accident doesn't make sense.

Thisbe is right. You can't have a 3 foot wide fictional bike lane that overlaps with a car lane on one of the most heavily travelled routes in Seattle and not expect accidents.

We need separation.

In addition to giving bikes one whole lane, we could also route them north and south on side streets. For example, here, they could go northbound on streets to the east of Eastlake and then come to the bridge from the east.

A few blocks longer but isn't it worth it to not die?

You can also have a lighting system that when it turns green at the bridge, it only allows bikes to go first for a few seconds, clearing them out. Like when they go first getting offa ferry.

Finally, you simply can't have vehicles turning right across a bike lane where people are not turning. We would never allow that for motor vehicles. It seems like designed risk. They should sue the city when they sue the drivers and make them both pay. And beef up the penalties for these drivers, there really are very few "accidents" when you have repeat collisions at the same intersection. Drivers should know the intersection is so poorly designed they have to be 100X more careful.

To Thisbe's argument, the problem here is that there is a bike lane, which is poorly designed, and that cars don't realize they must merge lanes before making the turn. On a two lane (in each direction) road you wouldn't make a right turn from the center lane, would you? That's what all of these vehicles are doing.

If the bikes and the cars were just in the same lane the car would be forced to see the cyclist since they're right in front of them instead of in a "blind spot" to their right.

Also, in civilized countries everyone has a bike, including drivers, so the drivers watch for bikers knowing it could just as easily be them. What, you don't think grade seperated bike paths ever cross a road with cars on it?

Your description of the accident doesn't make any sense. If the cyclist was riding on Fuhrman towards the bridge, and the motorist was traveling north on Eastlake, the motorist would have passed in front of the cyclist at the intersection, not turned in front of him. Or was the motorist also traveling on Fuhrman?

@8: "That is why in civilized countries, bike lanes are separate paved trails, separated from the car road by a physical barrier"

Is Denmark civilized? Because here's a video of what they have:

http://www.copenhagencyclechic.com/2007/12/cyclopornography-film-copenhagen-bike.html

You're all acting as if one less biker is a bad thing

The people advocating lane separation don't know what they're talking about. Lane separation is a primary cause of these incidents. At an intersection, safe cyclists always take the lane. It is impossible to be hit by a right-turning car at an intersection if you're in line behind the cars like you should be.

European-style bike lanes are often designed to avoid these kind of problems, but Seattle doesn't have a single inch of those kind of lanes. If we're not willing to go full Amsterdam on separated facilities, cyclists just need to learn to take the fucking lane.