Walk, ride at your peril

After four pedestrian and bicyclist deaths in 12 days, city takes stock

By Jacob Quinn Sanders

The Portland Tribune, Jul 29, 2005, Updated Oct 30, 2009

There are nine names on the list so far this year, each belonging to a pedestrian or bicyclist killed on a Portland street.

John Willard Wolfe Jr.

Barbara Tucker

Timothy Allen Barrow

Ruzica Jovinovic

Noah Jacob Madison Cardamon

Dianna Avery

Kristine Okins

Kirk McGuire

Robert Beloof

The list is only one name longer than it was at this time last year, though it can seem like more: Four of them died in the 12 days between June 23 and July 5. Of the nine, seven were pedestrians and two were on bicycles. The stories of others who survived such crashes Ñ including that of a deaf, mute, pregnant 39-year-old bicyclist hit in May Ñ add more faces to the gallery of victims.

City commissioners, bureaucrats, civil servants and cops all largely support efforts to increase the ranks of walkers and riders who work and play in Portland and to keep them safe when they do. Some who work in the city credit those attitudes for creating an environment that embraces, for example, recent distribution ofwalking and biking neighborhood maps and public events that preach safety practices.

It also raises the stakes when something goes wrong.

“If you were to come in here on a day when a pedestrian or cyclist dies, it’s like we lost a family member,” Mary Volm, the city’s communications director, said recently. “Seriously, people are crying in here when it happens.”

For Jacque Authier, Cardamon’s death May 30 at age 23 hit even closer to home. Her children went to school with him and she has ridden on and off with Critical Mass, the group of bicycle activists. She no longer owns a car, though she is not militant toward them and drives a family car in an emergency.

Last month, she helped organize a “memorial ride” that drew about 200 people who biked together to three spots where cyclists died in recent years.

They rode to Southeast 37th Avenue and Taylor Street, where Matt Schekel died in 1998. Then to Southeast 40th Avenue and Belmont Street, where Orion Satushek and Angela Leazenby died in 2003. And finally to Southeast 49th Avenue and Stark Street, where Cardamon died.

“My consciousness has changed because of my experiences with Critical Mass and now after Noah has died,” Authier, 50, said. “When I drive now, I really feel like I’m in a machine that can kill people.”

Rarely do these crashes result in criminal charges.

“A lot of times we have fatalities out here without prosecutions,” said Portland police Lt. Vince Jarmer of the Traffic Division. “The reason for that a lot of times is that the person determined to be at fault, for lack of a better term, is the person who died.”

Police Bureau numbers this year though show a different picture.

So far, two of the seven pedestrian fatalities were the fault of the pedestrians, according to police.

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