The late Matt Glover with his road bike sporting a headlight friends said he always used when riding in the dark/Recompose
A death quickly dismissed
Forty-eight-year-old Matt Glover from North Pole, Alaska, was, according to his many Fairbanks-area friends, among the safest and most responsible cyclists in the 49th state.
A wildland firefighter by training, he moved north from California in 1999. Riding his various bikes at the time kept him in shape for the arduous job, and even after left the firefighting business to go to work as an engineer for the Alaska Railroad, he kept riding.
“There was no place Matt was more happy than on two wheels” his 2022 obituary would eventually recount. He was an active member of the Fairbanks Cycle Club and was regularly seen by many on the roads around the Golden Heart City.
“He was a machine! I was able to judge where I was on my own commute south in my car to (the) Base by where I would see him along the way. Was I early? Late? On time? Well, where is Matt?
“On the day he was hit, I like many others had received the Nixle alert of police activity in the area and I assumed someone had hit a moose. As I passed the scene, I saw a crumpled bicycle on the shoulder and my heart immediately sank to the pit of my stomach. I very much did not want to believe that it could be such an intrepid rider. After all, Matt was doing everything right; he had reflective gear/clothing, bike lights and headlamps, and he rode the shoulder.”
After his death, however, the Fairbanks Police Department (FPD) wouldn’t see it this way.
FPD reports obtained by craigmedred.news portray Glover as an unlit cyclist “who appeared out of nowhere” at the Badger Road on ramp to the Richardson Highway before colliding with a 2015 GMC Sierra pickup truck driven by 66-year-old Fred Ruskin Aker from North Pole at 5:34 a.m. on Oct. 13, 2022.
“I found the bicycle had no light attached either to the front or the rear,” Detective Ace Adams would write in his investigation of the accident. “I did see what appeared to be a mounting bracket for a light on the back rack of the bicycle, but no light was on the bicycle or at the scene.”
The reports offer no indication of how much time and effort FPD put into looking for a tail light or any lights that might have been on Glover’s body or attached to the bike before he was struck.
Fairbanks authorities conducted a cursory investigation after the collision and decided no charges were warranted against Aker.
But there are problems with the APD reports and that brief investigation, according to Marc Grober, a long-time road safety advocate and Anchorage attorney. He offered this opinion after being a copy of the FPD reports for review:
“Assuming that what you received is what (legal) counsel would receive as discovery, the word (for the reports) would be incompetent and the Department of Justice should be called in to determine to what degree (the Alaska) Department of Public Safety and (the) Department of Transportation have been instructing local law enforcement agencies in how to avoid prosecuting motorists for murder.”
Overlooked fatality
The events leading up to Glover’s 2022 death have never been publicly reported in any detail, and they might have remained that way if not for the state Senate in February unanimously agreeing in a rare, non-partisan act of virtue signaling to name a proposed, five-mile bike trail connecting North Pole and Fairbanks the “Matt Glover Bike Path.”
The online publication provided no information as to how Glover died. No Alaska media has done so.
Those two dead were 72-year-old Frank Guertin, who was run down by a taxi in Anchorage on Oct. 21 – eight days after Glover was hit – and 72-year-old Josef Kopecky, who was struck while on an on-ramp leading to the Seward Highway in Anchorage on Nov. 1.
Both of those deaths were reported by the Anchorage Police Department and publicly echoed by Anchorage media. The Fairbanks Police Department briefly mentioned Glover’s death on Facebook, but then quickly removed it at the request of his wife after commenters began attacking Glover and other Fairbanks area cyclists.
No Fairbanks media reported on Glover’s death until the issue of naming a trail for him came up this year.
In an email, DOT spokeswoman Jill Reese the state did not record his death due to his surviving for 35 days after the collision. “Because Mr. Glover did not pass within 30 days of the crash, his death is not recorded in the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) count,” she wrote in an email.
“It is our understanding that once an individual enters the hospital system there is a custodial change of hands from law enforcement to the medical establishment and law enforcement would no longer have any further information on the individual.”
How many traffic fatalities go uncounted in Alaska because of how this system works is unknown. The Anchorage Police Department has in the past refused to provide information on vulnerable road users hit by motor vehicles in the state’s largest city with the explanation that it has no access to records of what happens to those who are hospitalized.
Lacking the names of victimsmakes their fates are impossible to track. The day before Glover was hit in Fairbanks in 2002, APD reported an “adult male bicyclist was transported to a local hospital with life-threatening injuries” suffered in an Anchorage collision. Whether that cyclist lived or died is unknown.
According to an email from Shannon McCarthy, DOT’s communications director, APD “coded” that collision “as a suspected serious injury, so that is what DOT&PF records reflect. DOT&PF is not in receipt of further information about this particular incident to say for certain if the person in the crash survived or passed.”
Alaska has historically ranked among the safer states for cycling with a per capita death rate hovering around two, according to the League of American Bicyclists. For the five years from 2017 to 2021, Alaskan ranked a respectable 14th lowest among the 50 states in per capita deaths of cyclists.
If, however, it was only reporting half of its fatalities, the rate would make it the fifth deadliest state in the nation behind Florida, Louisiana, Delaware and Arizona in that order.
FARS is a national, computer-based system for reporting traffic fatalities. Whether other states do a better job of tracking people who die more than 30 days after a collision and correcting the data for accuracy is unknown.
McCarthy indicated traffic fatalities may be underreported nationwide because of the 30-day cutoff.
“This is a known gap for both vulnerable road users and those injured in motor vehicles due to the custodial change from law enforcement into the medical system,” she wrote. “It is not unique to Alaska. There have been attempts in the past to link injury data from the medical system with crash data that were unsuccessful.
“That said, one of the Alaska Highway Safety Office’s fiscal year 24 grants was awarded to the Center for Safe Alaskans in collaboration with the Municipality of Anchorage (MOA) to revisit and refine potential linkages between the MOA crash data and the Alaska Trauma Registry. If successful, we will seek to expand to other areas across the state.”
It would be fair to add that the deaths of vulnerable road users are among those most easily missed. Glover’s death was treated like that of most of them in Alaska. A cursory report was written about what happened and then his death was dismissed as an accident.
Big questions
As Grober pointed out, however, there are issues both with what Aker said to authorities after the collision and with the FPD investigation.
The “Reporting Officer Narrative” from Fairbanks police officer Andrew Wixon, the first patrolman on the scene of the crash in the early morning dark recorded that Aker said “he must have been going around 30 to 40 miles per hour (on the ramp) and that he didn’t see the person until the last minute and hit his brakes as soon as he saw the person.”
The bike Glover was riding had studded tires, and marks the studs left on the pavement later allowed Adams to identify the point of impact between the bike and the truck.
“I found a small series of marks in the asphalt just to the right of the middle of the on ramp lane,” he wrote in his report. “From past experience, I noted these small gouges were consistent with the marks left by the studs of studded tires gouging into the roadway. However, the marks were too narrow to have been caused by a (motor) vehicle tire.”
Adams concluded the gouges were the marks of Glover’s bike tire studs, and Adams said he was able to track them to where Glover’s body and the truck had come to a stop on the shoulder of the road.
“Overall,” he wrote, “the entire scene from the suspected initial impact to the blood stain was approximately 210 feet.”
The distance raises questions about Aker’s claims as to his speed and his actions upon seeing Glover. Pickup Trucks.com tested the brakes on the nation’s top pickups in 2015 and at the time reported the GMC Sierra had the second-best brakes in its 2015 Light-Duty Truck Challenge.
It was able to go from 60 mph to a dead stop in 138.9 feet when empty and 148.7 feet when fully loaded. The National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) estimates the stopping distance of the average American motor vehicle going 60 mph is 172 feet, significantly more than the stopping distance of the GMC Sierra.
The FPD reports do not say what the weather was at the time of the accident or report the condition of the roadway, but Adams’ notations that he found stud “marks in the asphalt” and “scuff marks in the dirt along the shoulder of the road…(that) led to the location of a small pool of suspected blood on the shoulder” would indicate the pavement and shoulder were dry.
Impairment
The FPD reports make no mention of anyone asking Aker where his phone was at the time of the accident although Alaska roads are full of drivers whose reaction times are impaired by their phones.
Phones are a key element involved in the issue of what has come to be called “distracted driving.”
There is no record of a phone being examined to find out if Aker had been talking or texting, common activities among drivers in Alaska, at the time of the collision.
Wixon did, however, conduct a field sobriety test. Of that, he wrote this:
“I proceeded to run Aker through some field sobriety tests….I did note that he failed the walk and turn (WAT) and one-legged stand (OLS) test, but based on the totality of the circumstances did not believe he failed due to impairment.
“My observations (were that) he failed both the WAT and OLS test due to balance issues. If I took away the poor balance, which accredited (sic) to being distraught from hitting a bicyclist that he would have passed the test.”
Aker did pass a counting test using his fingers, according to the report, and was aware of “what was going on in today’s time frame, such as who the president was, what year, where he was, and what town he was going towards, and he got all of the answers correct.
“Based on the totality of the circumstances, I do not believe that Aker was impaired by any substances or alcohol,” Wixon concluded. Still, as per FPD policy, Aker was taken to Fairbanks Memorial Hospital and blood was drawn.
Enter the oxycodone.
FPD investigator Robert Hall on March 29, 2023 – five months after the deadly collision – recorded that a toxicology report on Aker came back showing oxycodone in his system.
“Mr. Aker had an average of 7.0 ng/ml of oxycodone in his blood which had been collected after the collision. The State of Alaska does not have a ‘per se’ limit of ng/ml of oxycodone for driving under the influence statutes so I researched different jurisdictions to determine what 7.0 ng/ml disclosed,” Hall wrote “I learned the reporting limit for oxycodone is 5 ng/mL. One study titled the Independent Expert Panel on Drug Drive (New Zealand) recommended a per se limit of oxycodone to be set at 50 ng/ml.
“Based on the observations of Mr. Aker at the scene of and immediately following the MVC, there were not visible indications of impairment.
“Case status: Closed.”
Hall misinterpreted the New Zealand report, which actually set two limits for enforcement of impaired driving involving oxycodone: 20 ng/ml was established as the level for ticketing drivers in that country with 50 ng/ml level established as a criminal limit. The Kiwi study also had this to say:
“The blood concentrations found in seven impaired drivers ranged from 10 to 140 ng/mL (mean 80 ng/mL, median 50 ng/mL). Blood oxycodone concentrations detected in six hospitalized drivers ranged from 10 to 300 ng/mL (mean 90 ng/mL, median 50 ng/mL).
Norway has a per se limit of 16 ng/mL.”
In addition, the report added a warning that time is important when testing for oxycodone.
“The half-life of oxycodone in the blood ranges from three to six hours,” the report said. “It is eliminated quickly compared with some other opioids.”
The FPD did not report how long after the accident blood was drawn from Aker, and closed the case without bothering to go back to ask him when he took the oxycodone and in what dose. Standard doses range from 5 to 40 milligrams (mg), and the New Zealand report states that “studies have determined that a 20 mg dose of oxycodone is sufficient to cause impairment.”
The FPD report also made no mention of the rules of the road that govern all vehicles, including bicycles, in Alaska. The Alaska Driver’s Manual stipulates that drivers merging onto a highway from an on-ramp are required to “yield to approaching traffic.”
Glover was “approaching traffic” on a road-legal vehicle when Aker slammed into him.
An unlit rider?
Despite the claims of Glover’s friend as to the cyclist’s attempts to always make himself as visible as possible with lights and reflective attire, the two-page, plus one-line investigation into his death written by Adams goes to considerable lengths to suggest the collision took place because Glover was hard to see.
“The crash occurred on the on-ramp as the lane is about to merge onto the Richardson Hwy,” Adams wrote at the start of his report. “I found that there were no overhead streetlights on this section of the northbound lane.”
There were such lights on the opposite side of the Richardson, he added, but they were “approximately 150 feet from the scene.”
He then recounted finding the scratch marks of bike studs on the highway and noted “the multiple items of debris on the roadway and shoulder…consistent with broken vehicle and bicycle parts” as he followed intermittent bike stud marks to where Glover’s body and bike came to rest.
“Lastly,” he wrote, “I observed the bicycle.” Adams noted the damage to the bike, the studded tires, the three attached cargo bags that matched one found under the truck, and a lack of lights “attached either to the front or to the rear. I did see what appeared to be a mounting bracket for a light on the back rack of the bicycle, but no light was found on the bicycle at the scene.”
His report does not indicate how much time, if any, was spent searching the debris field for such a light or the remnant of such a light, or for any other lights that might have been ripped off the bike in the collision.
“I also found there were no standard reflectors mounted to the bicycle,” Ace added. “There were reflectors on the front and back of each pedal, and there was a small amount of material on the two back cargo bags which appeared to be reflective.”
The report does not specify what small means. It also does not specify what reflective clothing Glover was wearing. It was simply reported that his clothing was unavailable.
“After clearing the scene, I responded to Fairbanks Memorial Hospital,” Adams wrote. “I found the patient had already been sent by medevac to Anchorage. Additionally, his clothing had reportedly been turned over to his wife.”
The report did not specify whether this included Glover’s helmet, which Wixon reported at the scene of the crash, and which might have had a headlight attached as is common practice for most cyclists regularly commuting in the dark in Fairbanks.
Adams said he did review “some of the initial responding officers’ body camera footage. I noted the footage appears to show the bicyclist had been wearing a green safety vest and and orange sweatshirt at the time of the incident. This would be consistent with the green and orange fibers seen along the side of the roadway.”
The report does not mention whether the vest was made of reflective material as Glover’s friends have claimed. Adams, according to his report, made no attempt to recover the clothing to determine if it was reflective or the helmet to see if a light had been attached.
Stranger though, was this in Wixon’s report:
“Officer (Sean) Lai informed me that he talked to a witness (unnamed in the report) who showed up on the scene, but didn’t see the accident. He stated that the gentleman on the bike, identified as Glover, had seen him biking into Fairbanks before.”
It is unclear if the “before” in that sentence means “before the accident” or in the past. But there is no indication FPD ever bothered to ask the witness how well Glover was lit up in the past or on the day of the collision. Nor is there any indication FPD asked his wife what he was wearing when he left home in the morning and what lights he had mounted to his bike.
These are important details.
It is one thing to hit a bicycle ridden by a man in black emerging out of the early morning darkness and another to drive into a brightly lit two-wheeled vehicle legally using the roadway.
The FPD report makes it possible that, as Aker claimed, he ran into a cyclist who “appeared out of nowhere,” but Glover’s friends presented a wholly different picture of the cyclist to Alaska lawmakers considering a name for the North Pole to Fairbanks bike trail.
“My friend Ariane Glover (Matt’s widow) had expressed concern to me just over a year ago about her husband’s early morning commute on the highway even though he kept himself extremely visible with reflective gear and lighting,” wrote Chelsi Cacciatore.
There have been many more friends and acquaintances of Glover who have made similar observations wholly at odds with the unlit cyclist FPD reported, but it is always possible Glover totally changed his behavior on the day leading up to his death.
Accountability
FPD’s handling of the Glover case is, however, in line with the handling of other deaths involving vulnerable road users in Alaska. Drivers who kill or seriously injure vulnerable road users in the 49th state are rarely – as was the case with Aker – charged with anything and if they are, the charges tend to be minor.
“When asked why the driver who killed Higgins did not face criminal charges, despite the finding that the driver had broken the law and was fully responsible for the collision, APD told the Landmine that no ‘other factors’ supported criminal charges” wrote reporter Paxson Woelber. “APD stated that the driver was not impaired, was licensed and insured, and was following all rules of the road other than those he broke when he killed Higgins.
”This was an unfortunate event,’ APD told the Landmine, ‘but not criminally negligent.”
This is how APD has normally handled serious and deadly collisions involving vulnerable road users. The only unique thing about the Higgins case was that APD identified the driver in the deadly collision as Russell E. Webb.
When another driver in 2019 failed to yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk in Anchorage, resulting in U.S. Nordic Team skier Hannah Halvorsen suffering a skull fracture, a bleeding and bruised brain, a fracture tibia fracture, and torn MCL and PCL ligaments in her knee torn, APD for weeks refused to say how the candidate for the U.S. Olympic Team had been nearly killed on the streets of Alaska’s largest city and never did identify the driver.
A now-former reporter at the Anchorage Daily News (ADN) finally got APD to reveal that Halverson’s hopes of going to the Olympics had been shattered by an “80-year-old woman driving a Jeep west on West Seventh Avenue (who) stopped at a stop sign before turning south on L Street, where she hit Halvorsen.”
But the police department shielded her. Such behavior provides little incentive for motorists to remain attentive when driving.
The problem is that Brayton, like many streets in Anchorage, has no sidewalks. And “partially in the roadway” would appear to indicate Turner was walking as close to one side of the road as possible. The driver who killed Turner has never been named. Whether the driver was ticketed is not known.
But the driver was never charged with anything for his inattentive driving. The Contra Costa County District Attorney (DA) decided there was “insufficient evidence to satisfy the requisite standard of criminal negligence on the part of the suspect driver.”
As is often the case in these kinds of collisions, not even the driver’s name was released, but the Contra Costa DA did issue a public statement reminding drivers that “the dangers of distracted driving are well known; to truly promote road safety, motorists need to be attentive drivers as well.”
It’s nice for authorities to ask drivers to be attentive, but it’s like addressing murder by asking people not to kill each other. There is no indication such requests result in better behavior.
The new Matt Davis Bike Trail, once completed, will make a five-mile stretch of the Fairbanks area safer for vulnerable road users, but it will do nothing to protect cyclists elsewhere.
“Although exposure data for vulnerable road users (VRUs) in the U.S. is lacking, the rapid observed increase in the overall proportion of traffic fatalities they make up reflects
potentially increased risk per user as well as increased risk per resident,” the National Safety Council declared six years ago. “Implementation of aggressive and innovative policies and solutions to protect VRUs are needed on the road to zero traffic fatalities.”
Since then, there has been no indication that anyone in the U.S. wants to get “aggressive” about protecting vulnerable road users when it is easier to find excuses after motorists run them down and kill them.
Blinded by the sun is a common excuse for dismissing deadly collisions as accidents in the U.S.
“‘And boom, I never saw them. It just happened so fast I thought I had hit a cow,” Anderson said.
“Anderson’s truck kept going for a while, dragging what she hit with it. It wasn’t until she got out that she realized it wasn’t a cow that she hit. (It was) ‘children. One of the girls had been thrown to the left side of the road. The other girl was still on my windshield sliding down my truck,’ she said.
“Ten-year-old Joshua Leinbach, who had been driving the cart, was pronounced dead at the scene.”
The last line of the story said this: “A Missouri Highway Patrol spokesman says that Anderson will not face any criminal charges related to the accident.”
Why? Because when people kill with motor vehicles in the United States, law enforcement considers the deaths collateral damage, the “accidental” cost of motorists being expected to share the road with non-motorists. This belief is so ingrained that it took Salt Lake City law enforcement seven months and six seriously injured pedestrians to realize the city had a driver targeting women.
Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill told the newspaper this happened because collisions with pedestrians are almost always accidental, although the Salt Lake Police Department did try to push back on that conclusion.
SLPD spokesman Brent Weisberg was described as struggling “with Gill’s description of investigators’ thought processes, saying officers take these types of crashes – where a driver hits a pedestrian and flees – seriously.”
On the national level, however, there is no evidence to support Weisberg’s conclusion, and the reality appears no different in Alaska.
Categories: News
Aker did not seem very intent on helping and stayed in his truck the whole time except for about 45 seconds when he came to tell me he “came out of nowhere”.
Matt always rode safe. I saw him every weekday at near the same spot on his bike while I was driving to work. He always had reflective gear and lights on his bike, front and rear. It was a clear crisp morning. No fog, no snow coming down.
The findings in the report are lazy at best, and more likely are just plain wrong. This whole thing stinks of BS. – DIRK TAYLOR
This is crazy. I was the first person to be at Matt’s side right after the accident. I drove by and saw matt on the ground and pulled over cuz no one was there. Aker was sitting in his truck 200 feet or so back from Matt, while Matt was on the ground on the shoulder. I immediately went to Matt to help him and did not leave his side until he was loaded into the ambulance.
Your take on ‘the accident’ really resonated with me. It’s intriguing how events can seem random but often hold deeper meaning or lead to unexpected outcomes.
Good story at the time, even more relevant today. Failure to determine , or seriously pursue whether Glover, a top notch biker had a working light leaves a mystery. But the result underscores need for every bike rider to not only use lights, but carry a spare.
More of a mystery is why the FPD did such a shabby investigation. I have since talked to someone who drove through the scene shortly after the collision. It appears FPD never closed the on ramp to do a thorough investigation. They just moved everything to the side of the road and waved traffic on by. It’s little wonder why they didn’t find Glover’s taillight. It was likely smashed into a million pieces.
It’s all rather amazing given that when there is an MV accident this serious on the Seward Highway south of Anchorage authorities are willing to close the road and inconvenience thousands of people for hours in order to complete an investigtion. Last time I checked, you could still get onto the the Richardson via Hurst Road.
Wouldn’t seem to have taken much effort to close the ramp and direct traffic wanting to gain access to the Richardson back to the Hurst/Badger intersection. How far is that? If memory service me right it can’t be much more than a quarter mile, maybe a half. Not exactly as large an inconvenience as sitting in a miles long line of cars on the Seward for hours.
Thanks for investigating this and writing about it, Craig. I am passing this on in the Fairbanks Cycle Club media and seeing if we can get some people willing to focus on advocacy for non-motorized transportation safety. An active and persistant effort by concerned citizens can make a big difference.
Good luck and good hunting. The state has long need some group advocating for transportation safety. Especially when it comes to vulnerable road users, Alaska authorities have been doing a bad job of providing it for a long time. I’d personally love to know just how underrreported pedestrian/cyclists deaths in this state given the big flaw in the reporting system.
FYI the great majority of road bikes do not come with lights on them. The ones you buy are often attached to the handle bars or frame with rubber or velcro straps. Also common are plastic parts you snap / twist lock the fixture into. These attachments secure against the usual road surfaces encountered while riding on the road (cracks, rumble strips, potholes etc). However, the odds of them staying on the bike after being hit by a truck at highway speed seem close to zero.
The odds that Matt Glover was unlit when hit are extremely close to zero.
This would now appear true, Greg. Since the story was written, I have been in communication with Mr. Glover’s widow, who sent me this and more in an email:
“Further, when FPD returned the evidence to me, Matt’s headlight was included. It appears to have been sheared off his handlebars (as the base was broken and unable to be reconnected to the mount), but the light on the front of the bike in the photo you included in the article was the same light my husband was riding with on the day of the accident. It was critically important for his commute to be able to see road debris in front of him to avoid flats, in addition to being a safety measure for visibility to oncoming traffic.”
I plan to ask FPD how officer’s collected a light at the scene of the collision, gave it to Mr. Glover’s widow as Mr. Glover’s light, and somehow failed to note this in an investigation suggesting he was on an unlighted vehicle.. She also provided some further information. There is so much of it that rather than try to update the existing story, I plan to write a follow-up start after asking FPD about the much left out of their reports.
Having worked in O&G for many years I can tell you that when something goes wrong, say a tool failure, where normally no death or injury is involved, there is an after action review and a root cause analysis done. People/companies are held accountable and often have to pay big bucks as compensation.
This was not the case when I started in the business. In those days the industry seemed to take pride in a type of “get’er done” mentality. But over time that has changed. Perhaps it’s time for MV accident investigations to evolve in a similar manner.
Police officers should be taught how to investigate an accident and how to write a proper report. Then, in the case of a fatality, a review board should assess the report and issue a set of findings, complete with action items…..just my two cents…….
Sounds like Alaskan police have the same training and attitude as Australian police. Even when police decide to take action and the rare offender faced criminal charges the juries are reluctant to find guilt in fellow drivers.
There needs to be an outcry and pressure on police to act for every incident where a rider is hit.
https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/brisbane-driver-cleared-over-cyclist-death-20180829-p500ks.html
The chances that Glover (an experienced cyclist) was riding without lights in the dark of winter in AK seems close to zero.
My front light is held on with simple rubber straps…my rear blinker just clips to my bag under my seat.
Neither would survive an impact by a motor vehicle.
I also wear a headlamp on my helmet after the sun has set.
Most cyclists prefer these simple systems so they can take their lights off quickly and keep them in warm environments when not riding the bike…saves battery life.
I am lucky to have a dedicated bike lane to Wasilla from Willow during the summer months, but I do take a break from biking on the roads during winter when snow limits shoulder room for cycling.
Drivers in Willow are actually some of the most considerate operates I have found in the state…very rarely does a vehicle pass close to me without slowing down…most drivers slow down and move to the other side of the roadway.
It might help that most of our roads are hardpack gravel without painted lines…
Life is dangerous and pedestrian travel seems to be getting worse in populated areas every day.
Keep hammering on this Craig. As a former very active cyclist, motorists need to be held to greater accountability in these fatal and near fatal events. The public and police need to get rid of this attitude that only 4 wheeled motor vehicles deserve to be on our roadways. Society needs to get over the collateral damage indifference.
Personally, I’d be happy if they just treated these accidents like any other MV accident and did through investigations. When people die in MV on MV crashes on an Alaska highway, authorities seem happy to shut the road down for hours to investigate and try to figure out who was responsible.
In this case, it appears FPD’s response was to get Glover’s body and the truck out of the way as soon as possible to keep traffic flowing.
Absolutely horrible occurrence.
It could have been anyone of us .
Thank you Mr medred for reporting on this .
The truck driver is clearly responsible for killing this man .
He was driving a deadly motor vehicle.
Major responsibility comes when you get behind the wheel of a deadly machine.
The cyclist didn’t attack him.
Since we all know that cars and roads put cyclists in danger and we haven’t built and maintained functional bike paths as needed- are we all partially to blame for this cycling death?
The court of law just put parents in prison for their children’s actions.
Are we all legally liable for not using our knowledge resources and vote to create safe travel corridors for all people?
We are knowingly letting people be killed. = culpability = liability?
The driver may have been responsible; the driver may not have been responsible.
That is the problem with these investigatoins. They are shit. They appear to start from the presumption the driver was not responsible, and then try to work backwards to “prove” the driver was not responsible.
At the very least in this case, 1.) the report should have noted the time the blood was taken to make it possible to estimate how much oxy the driver had in his blood at the time of the collision; 2.) there should have been a thorough search of the scene for any lights that had been on the bike or parts of lights given it sounds like they quickly moved Glover’s body out of the road so traffic could continue to flow; 3.) his clothes should have been obtained from his wife to find out just what he was wearing; 4.) the motorists who apparenlty saw him riding on the Richardson shoulder prior the accident should have been interviewed as to whether Glover was lit up or not; and 5.) FPD should have gone back after the blood test game in to ask the driver what dose of oxy he took and when.
There are a variety of other questions that should been asked, but those are some of the key ones.