If you have been involved in a bicycle accident, you need an attorney who understands how insurance companies operate, how to overcome the defenses they use against cyclists, knows the problems of streets such as Spruce and Pine and is local to Center City. Contact us right away after any bicycle accident.
If you’re not ready to talk yet, note that you do not speak to the insurance company of the at-fault driver. You do not have to sign any medical authorizations. You should wait repair your bicycle. Be sure you do not destroy any evidence.
A bicycle accident on Pine Street
If you’re a cyclist in Center City you are well aware of the problems on Pine Street and Spruce Street. Just weeks after the Spruce Street accident involving a garbage truck, there’s now been a new accident on Pine. In this accident, the cyclist was hit by a box truck on the 1200 block of Pine Street. And again, the driver was taking a right hand turn.
In this case, the driver of the truck didn’t even realize they had hit a cyclist. According to Philly.com, the cyclist is now being treated at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital for a fractured pelvis, shattered hips, scrapes and bruises.
The Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia pushes petition
Philadelphia rates well on most lists of Bicycle-friendly Cities in the U.S. The Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, which is Philadelphia’s leading advocacy organization for bicyclists, is advocating for upgrade the infrastructure of the City of Brotherly Love to be more bike-friendly, and they have proposed a petition for citizens to support this effort.
In some areas of the city and suburbs, there are protected bike lanes, bike sharing programs, and safe routes to ride. The Coalition is petitioning for protected bike lanes to be created along both Spruce and Pine streets. These two streets are the highest traveled routes in Philadephia with 500 to 1,000 bicyclists riding these two streets daily. The petition calls for the redesigning of intersections on Spruce & Pine, where the right turn lane merges with the bike lane and replace them with curbing to separate bicyclists. Since the crash involving the garbage truck, Philadelphia did repaint the bike lane.
At the time of this article, the petition needs more signatures. Please take a moment and sign the petition here.
City Council members agree that more protected lanes are required in a city the size of Philadelphia, and would like to see all of the bike paths protected, which means more bike lanes are separated from the car lanes with plastic tubing, planters, flexible poles or parked cars to protect the cyclists riding on bike lanes.
Today, the city has about 200 miles of bike lanes, but only about 2.5 miles are protected. Perhaps, if there had been a barrier on the biking lanes on Spruce St. on Nov. 24th, the garbage truck might not have been able to slip into the path that killed 24-year-old Emily Fredricks.
City Council agrees with the Bicycle Coalition and has $550,000 in grants already ear-marked for adding protected bike lanes, and this is only a beginning. The council is also establishing a city-wide master plan to oversee the execution of these protected bike paths all around the city. This action should decrease the number of serious injuries considerably by making the streets safer for bikers.
