Sunday, Sept. 24, 2012 was a beautiful fall day. Heather Barnett left her house a little later than usual. She had worked from her Phinney home for a couple of hours before heading to the UW campus. A bit sore from her first-ever cyclocross race the day before, she considered not biking into work but by 10:45 a.m. she was coasting down 8th Avenue NW on the new-to-her cyclocross bike she had just bought, a smile on her face.

Her commute went like any other morning until she arrived at the intersection of 8^th Avenue NW and NW 47^th Street. With no stop sign on the north-to-south arterial, she continued pedaling along until an SUV blew through a side street stop sign and t-boned her.

The driver stopped and jumped out. She looked at the blood gushing from Heather’s face and ran back to the car to grab Heather a paper napkin.

“I initially thanked her for stopping and bringing me a napkin,” recalled Heather. “Then another driver stopped and called an ambulance.”

The ambulance took Heather away before she even had a chance to talk to the police on scene.

Heather’s injuries were severe. In the collision, her left knee had been the main point of contact, leaving dents in both the front end of the car and the bike frame. The impact tore her MCL, chipped her femur and broke her tibia. She also broke both her wrists, her nose and split her lip.

“I spent five days in the hospital unable to move and going in and out of surgery,” said Heather, who at the time of our interview was still walking with a cane. “A screw now holds the femur together and a cadaver bone was used to fix the tibia.”

Once released from the hospital, Heather spent months in a wheelchair and her boyfriend, Josh, took two months off work to take care of her. They also temporarily moved in with friends because their home was inaccessible by wheelchair.

Since it was evident that medical bills would be piling up, Josh contacted cycling attorney John Duggan.

“My initial reaction was that this is serious,” said Duggan. “There are medical bills to be paid, loss of wages, reparation and unfortunately, we found out that this person [the driver] has no coverage.”

Moreover, it turned out that the driver had not been cited for anything at the scene. While Duggan started working to get the $100,000 of medical bills paid, they also started pushing law enforcement to cite the driver, specifically for a Vulnerable User charge.

“We were most interested in a citation to show proof of liability,” explained Heather. “Collisions like this just aren’t taken very seriously – the cyclist gets taken away in the ambulance, and the driver moves on with their lives. It’s just not right.”

Under the Vulnerable User Law, which Cascade worked to pass through the Washington Legislature in 2011, a driver committing a traffic infraction—such as speeding, texting while driving or running a stop sign—that results in the serious injury or death of a vulnerable roadway user will face an automatic fine of up to $5,000 and a 90-day suspension of driving privileges.

“In short, the point of this Vulnerable User Law is to increase the penalties so people realize there are consequences to not paying attention,” explained Duggan.

It took weeks before they were able to speak to the police officer on the case.

“The officer was less than receptive,” voiced Duggan with agitation. “Non-cooperative even.”

Once they were able to get a hold of the officer, they asked her about the lack of citation. The officer explained she was not familiar with the Vulnerable User Law but after revisiting the accident report, she was eventually willing to write a failure to yield citation.

“The [Vulnerable User] law is there but I’m under the impression that no one knows about it. It shouldn’t be up to the victim to enlighten law enforcement about this law.”

Now on a mission, Josh went up the chain of command and reached out to the City Attorney’s Office.

“We spoke to with Assistant City Attorney Mindy Longanecker who  felt it was a serious enough case that the police should turn it over to traffic investigations and wanted to go ahead with the Vulnerable User charge,” said Heather.

On Jan. 25, the City Attorney’s Office filed charges against the driver, including failure to yield, driving without insurance and a negligent driving in the second degree vulnerable user charge. Combined, the fines add up to $11,184.00.

“I don’t feel malignant toward the driver,” Heather said. “I’m just frustrated that there would have been no outcome, no consequence for the driver. If we hadn’t gone after it, there would have been no fee or consequence at all.”

“It’s been a really bizarre adventure,” continued Heather. “And it’s been a lot of effort on our – the victim’s – part. We wouldn’t be getting anywhere if he hadn’t pushed so hard. Josh went above and beyond to put pressure on to get some kind of outcome.”

All their work was undone on Feb. 20, when the court dismissed the vulnerable user charge based on procedural grounds.

While the city is currently in the process of appealing the court’s decision, Duggan believes efforts should be made to raise awareness and educate law enforcement.

“It does not appear that any of the police agencies seem to know anything about the vulnerable user law. This needs to change,” said Duggan, who’s handling 60 more cases like Heather’s.

“In cases like this, where there are serious injuries, the law must be applied. There’s a serious lack of awareness of bicyclists on the road,” Duggan said. “If people are aware that if they were to hit a cyclist, they’re looking at a more severe penalty than just a ticket, hopefully it would get people to start paying attention.”

Cascade staff are currently working with Duggan and others to publicize the existence of the law.

On July 25 I, like many of you, was horrified by a bicycle fatality in Kirkland. And today, I arrived to the office to word of another tragic, avoidable death of a man biking to work in Kirkland. Early reports indicate suspicion of drunken driving, and the police have arrested the driver for investigation of DUI at this time.

Normally, Cascade avoids commenting on ongoing investigations, but I’m not sure if that’s always the right approach.

We listened and waited during the investigation of the collision that killed John Przychodzen. John was new to the area, and a new member of Cascade. He was an avid cyclist, was passionate about riding safely, and, on the day he was killed, was biking home from work like thousands do in our region daily.

John was biking on Juanita Drive in Kirkland when he was struck from behind by a truck being driven by Nick Natale.

At the time, Kirkland PD called it “a terrible accident.”

Today, the police have altered their tune, saying the cyclist who died in the wee hours of the morning in the 13200 block of NE 124th Street was “doing everything right.”

John Przychodzen, by all accounts, was also doing everything right, cycling 19mph on a clear afternoon, on a road with a speed limit of 35mph that is frequently used by bicyclists. For reasons that remain unclear, the driver swerved into John, killing him.

We’ve obtained the Kirkland Police Department reports detailing their investigation. Here is the timeline from the reports:

3:30 p.m: Mr. Natale left his workplace in the truck.

3:40 p.m: Mr. Natale made a cell phone call.

3:40 p.m: Mr. Natale sent a text from his cell phone.

3:45 p.m: Mr. Natale swerved his truck to the right into Mr. Przychodzen, striking him, before crashing into the ditch.

Witnesses stopped and called 911. They joined Mr. Natale in trying to help Mr. Przychodzen.

3:48 p.m: Emergency and police units dispatched.

Several things stand out from the reports:

Witness reports fail to corroborate Mr. Natale’s assertion that he moved left to pass John, then swerved to the right to avoid a fast, oncoming vehicle driving on the center line.

All witnesses stated that they saw no reason for the driver to swerve or move from his lane of travel, and no fast-moving oncoming vehicle was witnessed driving on the center line.

There appears to be no cell phone record investigation beyond looking at the phone at the scene. A call and a text were shown to have taken place at 3:40 p.m. presumably, when Mr. Natale was driving his vehicle since he departed in it at 3:30. But no records appear to have been obtained from the cell phone carrier. Why?

Based on the traffic investigation, the driver was speeding, travelling 39 mph in a 35 mph zone. Further, the report shows that if Mr. Natale was driving attentively, he should have been able to see John an excess of 10 seconds prior to the collision.

In the end, police closed the case and issued a $42 ticket for changing lanes unsafely. Do you think it’s shocking and wrong that you can kill someone and simply get a $42 fine? I do, and I’m sad that it took us three years of work to pass the Vulnerable User Bill through the Washington State Legislature. The law doesn’t go into effect until July 2012, and is not applicable in this case.

Back to today. While we await to hear more about the fatality overnight, we send our deep condolences to the man’s family and friends. But we’re not sitting back. We’ve reached out to Kirkland to let officials know we’re watching this case. We ask them to do better and to file charges akin to the unnecessary and preventable loss of someone’s life. And you can as well.

Based on initial news reporting and comments from the police, we’re hopeful that this investigation will be thorough and that charges will be in alignment with the seriousness of the incident. More so than they were in July.

[EDIT: Drrr... The bill passed its HOUSE floor vote. This is why I made the darn graphic below, and I still get tangled up trying to sort the process out. --mjk]

No sooner did I get the earlier post up than David Hiller phoned from Olympia. He called to report that SB 5326 had passed its house floor vote!

Needless to say, we’re thrilled. It’s been a long three years of work, and we could not have gotten here without your support and activism. Thank you… Thank you!!