I got a phone call last night from my parents—my dad had been in a bad bike crash. This is something I’ve been worried would happen for a long time. Ever since my 59-year-old dad started biking 15 miles to work a couple years ago, in the back of my mind I’ve dreaded the day that I would get a call saying he’d been hit by a car on his commute. Well, when the news came, it wasn’t a car’s fault at all: someone had dropped a large pile of asphalt chunks in the middle of the bike lane, around a sharp corner. My dad came around the turn, hit the small mountain of debris, and landed so hard that a homeless guy who lives near the path came up and told him to stay put. “Dude,” the guy said. “You look pretty bad.”

In the end, my dad is “fine.” His nose is broken. He has two black eyes. Something is wrong with his back. But with a crash like that, he’s lucky to be alive and walking. The police officer who responded to the scene was “livid” about the asphalt pile and it mysteriously disappeared a few hours later (according to the world’s most reliable witness, my mom).

This is relevant beyond parents, their medical bills, and my dad’s likely-deceased bicycle because this is exactly the type of crash that OHSU researchers found account for 20 percent of bike crashes among Portland cyclists. I reported on their year-long study this week in the news section, but I didn’t think the facts about five percent of bikers sustaining a hospital-worthy injury every year would hit home quite so literally. My dad was biking on an off-street path (like the Springwater Corridor, but in Southern California), pretty much the safest place you could possibly ride a bicycle. But as the OHSU study found, it doesn’t matter how good a cyclist you are, 20 percent of crashes are caused by “environmental hazards”, i.e. a pile of fucking concrete dropped in the bike lane.

The easiest way to make biking safer for everyone, including old people like my dad*, is to build safe bike routes and actively maintain them, keeping them free of tracks, cracks, parked cars, and random construction materials.

So in conclusion, be nice to your parents and please think about the safety of all road users when considering an appropriate storage location for your blunt objects.

*sorry

Sarah Shay Mirk reported on transportation, sex and gender issues, and politics at the Mercury from 2008-2013. They have gone on to make many things, including countless comics and several books.

11 replies on “Please Don’t Store Your Concrete in the Bike Lane (You Will Hurt My Dad)”

  1. Here in Portland the most commonly stored item seems to be giant piles of wet leaves filling the bike lane. If you must put your leaves in the street please shove them all the way out into the car lane where they won’t hurt anyone…

  4. Echoing econoline: Don’t forget those piles of unmarked dirt people leave on streets, hoping one day they will finally get to put said dirt into those raised beds they never can seem to finish building.

    I only say this because biking home through SE one night, I found myself unexpectedly airborne. My biked stopped and I went over the handlebars. My headlight was no match against that black compost, unmarked, hiding underneath a giant tree, on an unlit street.

    I got cuts and bruises, some other jerk got tomatoes and kale.

  6. Sarah,

    Any way to possibly trace the concrete? Perhaps to a business nearby?

    It’d be worth his time to investigate and talk to a lawyer, if anything to get medical bills covered.

    Bummer. Sorry for his accident. Hope he recovers quickly.

  8. OH, that pisses me off. I’m with the cop, I get pretty livid about that kinda shit, it’s that and Taxis/UPS trucks in the bike lane. Biking will turn you into a rage-aholic.

  9. i’ve been felled by both types of hazards: a car ignoring my right-of-way thru an intersection (busted ribs, punctured lung) and gravel the city didn’t bother to clean up after Snowpocalypse 2008 (busted shoulder). the leaves in the street right now scare me spitless, esp at night. i’ll keep riding, but Pdx still has a long way to go be a true bicycle paradise.

    which makes me wonder about those cities rated lower than us as “bike cities” – just how bad are they?

  10. Having lived on a bike/ped college campus for many years, I’d have to say that there is no such thing as a true bike paradise. Even if there are no cars, clueless pedestrians, cyclists, and sometimes even landscapers will find a way to fuck with your flow. That’s just the way of the world.

  11. Sarah, I feel your pain. My dad has been commuting and recreating by bike since the late 60s (he’ll be 77 on Thanksgiving) and has had many nasty incidents. The one I am most angry about happened in Corbett. Corbett HATES bicyclists and someone who lives there routinely throws tacks on one of the hilly roads into the town.

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