Two weeks after the last fatal bicycle crash, DC just had another one.
Police said the incident occurred about 2:15 p.m. at New Hampshire Avenue and M Street in Northwest, midway between DuPont and Washington circles. Jeffrey Hammond Long, 36, of Northwest, died at a hospital on Sunday, police said.
Long and the truck driver were both traveling west on M Street. The truck driver tried to turn right onto New Hampshire Avenue and struck the bicyclist, police said.
Police said Long was trapped under the truck and rescued by firefighters.
Not a lot of details here, but that intersection is bizarre. Not only does it have a diagonal, but M also turns in the block before then making a right turn more like a 160 degree turn.
Home turf, go through there 3x a day.
It is a difficult intersection. Visibility when you are in a car turning right is pretty good, because of the angles you have to go forward quite a bit to make a legal turn.
Some bicyclists do the same (I guess that is the correct move) or will cut beforehand. If you do the cut you won't be as visible.
On the few times I use sidewalk -- much easier to cut up on 21st then turn on NH.
I don't think it was in play here, but length of the intersection is also a big problem. From where the light control (on M, before NH) to where you actually get back on M after the angle is way too long and the light cycles encourage people to stay in the box (triangle) or run the light.
It was all much safer before they made the south part of NH two way.
Posted by: charlie | July 10, 2018 at 01:39 PM
Awful. Trucks operating in cities need side guards and lower cab windows sources: http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2016/03/17/truck-side-guards-to-protect-cyclists & https://lcc.org.uk/pages/direct-vision-lorries.
Posted by: Dewey | July 11, 2018 at 08:57 AM
I bike through this intersection daily -- a huge problem here, and elsewhere along the M St cycle track, is that there's a lane of parking that blocks automotive traffic from seeing cyclists until it's too late. Given that M St is one way, I never understood why DDOT put the cycle track on the right, rather than the left, as NYC does on one ways
Posted by: Nik Philipsen | July 11, 2018 at 10:51 AM
About a year ago a pedestrian was killed there. It is a bad intersection.
There are two parking spaces on M on that block. I suppose they "protect" the bike lane but what they really do is screen cyclists as they approach the intersection. Get rid of them. Then put a red light camera at M & 22nd to catch all those drivers that violate the red right turn arrow and threaten the thru cyclists.
Posted by: markbikes | July 11, 2018 at 12:49 PM