Seven months after agreeing to a $2.4 million settlement in his wrongful death lawsuit against the city of Menlo Park, the husband of a woman killed while riding her bicycle on Sand Hill Road is speaking out to prevent a similar accident from happening to another cyclist.
Deborah Johnson, 54, was riding her bike with a friend on Sand Hill Road on a Sunday afternoon in July 2007 when she fell and struck her head. She was taken to Stanford University Medical Center, and pronounced dead two days later.
Her husband, John Gerrity, told The Daily News this week that Johnson's friend saw her fall from her bike after hitting an object in the bike lane -- the flat black octagonal rubber base of a "candlestick" delineator that had become separated from its plastic orange pole.
The lane divider should never have been there in the first place, he said.
Gerrity said the Menlo Park Public Works Department had finished its repaving of Sand Hill Road on Friday, July 20, two days before the accident. It put up the dividers to mark the bike lane of the heavily trafficked road and removed them shortly after the accident, Gerrity said.
According to the federal Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices, used by road managers nationwide, "posts or raised pavement markers should not be used to separate bicycle lanes from adjacent travel lanes." The same notation is made in the state's adaptation of the manual.
According to Section 9C.04 of the federal manual, using raised devices "creates a collision potential for bicyclists."
Kent Steffens, the public works director for Menlo Park, said he was not familiar with the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices directive on using raised devices, and noted that the department follows the Work Area Traffic Control Handbook, known as the WATCH Manual, for road construction projects. According to a description, the handbook is written to reflect the manual. But the handbook does not include the warning about not using raised devices to temporarily mark bike lanes.
Steffens said he does not know whether the dividers had been used before to mark bike lanes, or if they've been used since the July 22, 2007 incident.
With regards to the lawsuit, he said he couldn't comment on the specifics of the case but noted that "there was a settlement, so no verdict was reached in that matter."
Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition member Pat Baenen said the situation was a "disaster waiting to happen.
"A car hits the cone and gives it enough force to separate the two," Baenen said. "It's got a wide area, it may well have been that they didn't need anything. Putting barriers up does seem like overkill."
Gerrity, who said he has spent countless hours researching traffic safety codes and practices in the wake of his wife's death, said the standard practice for managing a bike lane after repaving is to leave it unmarked while the asphalt dries, then paint a temporary stripe or line until permanent markings can be made.
The settlement was reached with the city in November 2009, just before his lawsuit went to trial, Gerrity said; the whole experience of preparing for court had left him exhausted.
Weeks later, he read a New York Times article about how a multitude of hazards created during road-related construction are never addressed because of loosely enforced safety measures for temporary work zones -- and that when lawsuits are filed after the inevitable accident happens, a significant percentage of cases are settled so the potential liabilities are never aired in court.
"My situation is no different than thousands of people across the country. They reach a settlement and then nothing happens," Gerrity said. "Hopefully, I can help prevent this accident from happening again."
Continue reading "$2.4 million settlement reached in wrongful death suit over fatal bike accident on Menlo Park's Sand Hill Road" »
