The late Matt Glover in his standard riding kit with a headlight on the front of his bike, an OSHA certified reflective vest on his body, and a Specialized Prevail helmet with a built in rear light on his head.
Driver explains death of well-known Fairbanks cyclist
The driver who killed 48-year-old Fairbanks cyclist Matt Glover on the Richardson Highway in October 2022 is now telling his version of what happened.
Then 66-year-old Fred Aker first contacted this website last month via Facebook to express his view on a Fairbanks Police Department (FPD) investigation of the fatal accident that would be characterized as shoddy at best.
“I agree the police report was bare bones,” Aker wrote in that initial Facebook message. “They did not put down what I told them happened.
“And your and everybody’s thoughts on what and how it happened are so very far from reality. Everything y’all said were assumptions, nothing even close. If you want to know exactly what happened, I would be willing to talk to you so you will have the accurate truth about this horrible accident.”
Subsequently asked to tell his story, Aker wrote what follows. (In fairness to Aker, his version of events is repeated verbatim but for some spelling and grammatical corrections. A breakdown of the events in light of Aker’s added observations does, however, follow.)
The FPD, Aker said, “did not ask for a written statement. Having never been in an accident while driving, I didn’t know about writing it up. I figured he (the police officer) would write up what I told him.
“Every morning, the same thing. I hit the on-ramp at around 5:30. It’s a merge lane, which means you are getting up to the traffic speed of the road you’re merging into. In all the years I’ve been going to work, I never saw Mr. Glover on the road.
“As I approached the time to check my mirror to merge, I always bend over to look into my convex mirror cuz it does not adjust up enough to just look down at it. I have a light bar and moose ditch lights on. They light up everything.
“I saw the road was clear, bent down to look and about four seconds later I heard a big thump. (I) immediately stomped on the brakes, looked up and Mr Glover was flying through the air as his bike rolled out across the fog line.
“He was riding up on the highway which put him behind my A-pillar. That is why I did not even know he was out there. Nevertheless, when I bent over to look in my mirror he chose that moment to pull over into my lane of travel without looking.
“I was square between the lane lines, and he was hit just to the right of my left headlights. The reason I say he didn’t look is that when the two gentlemen that pulled up behind me about a minute after the collision and laid down on the ground with him, he asked them: ‘I got hit by a car, didn’t I?
“For whatever reason even with all my lights on, he did not know I was coming. He did not practice due diligence for his own safety. Everything I’ve seen from the comments, evidently bicyclists never make mistakes and the motorists are always at fault.
“Nothing he had on would have made me see him. Even before this tragic event, I have (gone) down to Beaver Sports to try to get them to stop selling those little LED taillights for bikes. They are useless. All bikes should have the brightest strobes they sell for bikes on the back.
‘I might have known he was up there if he had a strobe. A bicyclist is not visible behind A-pillars and truck mirrors. I’ve had a full-size trunk completely hidden behind my mirrors. A thin bicyclist is completely hidden. Those are the facts. One can not avoid someone who is not seen.
“Every day I think about that man, and why he did what he did.”
The A-pillar
For those unfamiliar with the technical layout of motor vehicles, the A-pillar is the strip of metal that supports the front windshield on the right and left. The A-pillar in question here would be the one between the windshield and the driver-side window.
Edmunds Automotive Glossary
It is possible it could have blocked Aker’s view of Glover, but for that to continue for any length of time, Glover would have had to have been traveling very fast on his bike or Aker would have to have been going very slow in his truck.
An expert analyst might have been able to sort out if this was, indeed, what happened, but the FPD never sought an analysis of the collision. Instead, Fairbanks authorities rushed Glover to the hospital, cleaned up the scene and wrote the collision off as an accident.
There is a remote possibility that could have been the case.
When Aker says Glover was “riding up on the highway,” he is talking about a roadway that is higher than the Badger Road on-ramp that climbs to join the Richardson.
There is also a guardrail along the highway for some distance before the on-ramp merges. The guardrail could obscure someone riding a bicycle on the shoulder of the highway above, but the guardrail ends 100 feet or more before the roads join.
The Richardson Highway/Badger Road intersection/Google Maps
In some follow-up Facebook messages, Aker did offer a little more information on what was going on in the dark on the morning of Oct. 13 when he says he missed spotting Glover on his bike, failed to detect the 800-lumen beam of the headlight on Glover’s handlebars cutting into the darkness along the highway, did not see the flashing rear tail light on the back of Glover’s bike or another on his helmet, and did not detect any reflection from the reflectorized safety vest Glover was wearing.
“Nothing,” Aker said. “(I) did not see anything, and I was looking in my mirror for a couple seconds when I heard the impact. I’m telling you, the brightest strobes you can get are the way to go.
“Whether he was behind my mirror or the A-pillar, he was invisible. In that situation, even the most reflective clothing would not have done a thing. I have seen bikes with those headlights, they are super bright. But like I said, I had a light bar and four very bright, ditch lights on. His light from behind would probably not have been visible.”
There was one other factor at play, as well, as Aker prepared to merge.
“There had been a cow (moose) along that stretch from the ramp to the weigh station. That’s why the ditch lights. When it happened, because I saw nothing down the road, my first thought was he had crossed the median coming from Fairbanks to Badger and had come straight across the highway to get to the on-ramp to go down Badger, instead of going the long way around off the southbound off-ramp, cuz his bike rolled to the right to the fog line.”
A fog line is the solid, white line of paint that separates the roadway from the shoulder. It was named a fog line because the paint first went on the pavement “to help cars stay in their lane during foggy conditions and help pedestrians stay off the road.”
Aker believes that he and Glover were involved in an unavoidable collision or, in other words, an accident:
“It is long (ramp), and I believe he (Glover) was down toward the end, where when I got close to where he was, he was behind my mirror or A-pillar. (I) never saw even a flash of movement out there. I was neither impaired nor distracted.”
It is plausible that Aker does, as he said, think about Glover often and feels bad about what happened. Hopefully, most of those involved in a collision like this would.
But Aker, for the record, has over the years accumulated a fair share of traffic violations for speeding, following too closely, failure to exercise due care and twice for operating a motor vehicle under the influence, according to state court records. All of these incidents are, however, old.
By law in Alaska, the driver of every vehicle is required to “exercise care to avoid colliding with a pedestrian, an animal or another vehicle.” This is an offense for which Aker was cited in 1999, according to state records, and to which he offered a plea of no contest, according to state court records.
That law becomes relevant here in light of Aker’s statement that “I saw the road was clear, bent down to look (at my mirrors) and about four seconds later I heard a big thump.”
A motor vehicle doing 60 miles per hour travels 352 feet in four seconds. This is a distance greater than the length of a football field.
If Aker is right about the time, when exactly he took his eyes off the road, becomes very important because it could account for all of the distance between the end of the Richardson guardrail, which might have obscured Glover on his bike, and the intersection of the on-ramp and the highway.
This is a, however, considerable “if.” Four seconds is a long time to be driving down the road without looking at it. If you have any doubt, find a long, open stretch of roadway where you can see ahead for a mile and try it.
Aker may be overstating how long he took his eyes off the road but – if as he says – this is what he told the FPD, his failure to pay attention to the road should have warranted a citation. Aker’s claim to have been using his mirrors to scan the highway for traffic instead of looking to his left to make sure the lane was clear only adds to this lack of due care.
Still, there is no reason to disbelieve Aker’s claim that he failed to see Glover because drivers regularly fail to see people on two wheels be those fitted to a motorcycle or a bicycle.
Study “participants were twice as likely to miss a motorcycle compared with a taxi,” the authors reported. “Moreover, participants reported that they would expect to miss a motorcycle on the road…suggesting that motorcycles are afforded the lowest level of attentional bandwidth.
“The findings here are important because LBFTS crashes can be reduced if we can change the expectations of road users around the presence of motorcycles on the road.”
It’s debatable whether motorcycles “are afforded the lowest level of attentional bandwidth” when it comes to these LBFTS crashes. The lowest rung might belong to bicycles, which are even smaller than motorcycles. And in this particular case, any attention Aker had might have been taken up by his being most intent on looking for a moose he had seen regularly along the on-ramp.
Different vehicles, different rules
Had Aker sideswiped another motor vehicle because of “inattentional blindness” and caused someone to be injured while merging, however, he almost certainly would have been cited by the FPD for, at the minimum, the “failure to yield.”
Glover’s death was, however, treated as an event for which no one was responsible.
This is the way many, if not most, collisions between motor vehicles and bicycles, and often motorcycles as well, are treated not just in Alaska but nationwide. In a nationally high-profile case in 2021, National Football League coach Greg Knapp was run down from behind and killed by a car while riding in a marked bike lane in San Ramon, Calif.
In the wake of Knapp’s death, authorities investigated and concluded that an inattentive driver had let his motor vehicle wander into the lane designed to protect cyclists, but there were no consequences for his doing so.
After Glover’s death, the FPD reported even less. Not only was Aker not named, the Fairbanks media was left wholly uninformed of the collision and these days, if a government agency doesn’t report to the media that something happened, it hasn’t happened.
There was a brief post on the FPD Facebook page noting the collision, but it was quickly taken down after some comments were posted suggesting the collision was Glover’s fault for riding a bike along an Alaska highway.
The thin file that contained the FPD “investigation” of the collision was later obtained by craigmedred.news in response to an Alaska Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) filing. Only then was Aker identified.
That FPD investigation appeared, in general, to be an attempt to blame the dead victim for the collision that killed him, and that could be possible if one believes Aker’s speculation that Glover “chose that moment to pull over into my lane of travel without looking.”
Such a move, however, would constitute a suicidal act, and there was no attempt by the FPD to investigate whether Glover was suicidal. No such thing was suggested by anyone in the wake of his death, either. His wife said he left their home in North Pole on the day in question on a very normal ride to work.
Aker’s suggestion as to what Glover was doing before the collision, let alone where he was looking, is also undermined by Aker’s own claim that he never saw Glover at all before the truck he was driving slammed into the cyclist. It is impossible to know what is going on with what you cannot see.
Glover asking, “I got hit by a car, didn’t I?” would also seem to negate a suicidal move. Who asks if they got hit by a car after trying to intentionally get hit by a car?
This is more a question anyone might ask if they thought they were hit by a motor vehicle. It is not a claim to have put themselves in harm’s way,
Aker’s claim that Glover pulled “over into my lane of travel without looking….(and) did not practice due diligence for his own safety” is, on the other hand, a confession of Aker’s failure to understand the law that applies to highway merge lanes in this state.
“Remember a bicycle is a vehicle….The rules of the road and right-of-way apply to and protect these and other highway users. You must yield the right-of-way to them just as you would to another vehicle.”
The FPD did not, however, cite Aker for failure to yield, something that is required by law no matter where the other vehicle appears in the merge zone. This despite Aker’s own description explaining that he was merging without looking, ie. “I heard a big thump. (I) immediately stomped on the brakes, looked up and Mr. Glover was flying through the air.”
Merge zones are places where drivers are expected to have their eyes on the road to prevent collisions.
Aker has managed to rationalize all of this in his mind as the collision being Glover’s fault, and that is understandable. But the decision by law enforcement – in this state and others – to accept these sorts of rationalizations as an acceptable explanation for deadly collisions has become part of what makes the roads of America increasingly unsafe for cyclists, motorcyclists and other vulnerable road users.
U.S. truckers are among those who have taken notice of how law enforcement’s tolerance of bad driving has changed life on the roads of America. When RTS Financial and Carrier Services queried truckers, they found them of the belief the “motoring public…is driving more recklessly at higher speeds while paying less attention to large trucks and the road in general.”
Enforcement can’t get any less than none at all, which is typically the case in Alaska when a vulnerable road user is killed by a motorist. Despite Aker’s claim that “everything I’ve seen from the comments (says that) evidently bicyclists never make mistakes and the motorists are always at fault,” the data on the legal consequences of killing a vulnerable road user point to a conclusion exactly the opposite.
Bicyclists, pedestrians and motorcyclists killed or maimed in collisions are usually treated as the ones at fault. This applies even in cases where the dead were obviously not at fault as was the case with retired Anchorage dentist Carlton Higgins who was run down and killed while in a crosswalk in Alaska’s largest city last year.
The driver in that case was charged, which is unusual in and of itself. But the charge, as reported by the Alaska Landmine was a minor misdemeanor for failure to yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk for which the driver was assessed a $100 fine and given four points on his license.
And this appears the same everywhere in a state where the lives of so-called vulnerable users aren’t worth much.
Categories: Commentary, News
Powerful investigation, Craig. You might want to edit the typo on the driver’s name? Then 66-year-old Frek Aker
[…] Here is Medred’s latest piece, which includes extended comments by Fred Aker, the driver who hit and killed Glover on the Richardson Highway on October 13, 2022. […]
My data set may be old, before cell phones, but, my memory is that intersections are the most dangerous part of a road for a cyclist.
I stopped commuting by bicycle decades ago, but I did 3k+ each year.
I think there is much the driver could be faulted for, maybe there should even been a legal fault. Looking “down” for four seconds is beyond the pale. Try closing your eyes as you sit at home for four Mississippis. Would you want your eyes off the road at any speed that long? Having an essentially useless convex mirror that requires you to struggle to see it is problematic.
I have no idea what approach Mr. Glover took to intersections. But in my experience I found it a mistake to assume a right of way, even when I had a right of way. I have NEVER assumed a merging piece of traffic would give me the right of way even when they should have. Again, don’t know how Mr. Glover approached this topic.
Finally, Craig is CORRECT that AK LEOs and DAs need to change how they approach pedestrian and cyclist “accidents”. (Or, the law needs to change.) It seems ANC is a deathtrap for pedestrians. Every few weeks another one is killed.
When I tried to do four-seconds on a long stretch of road that I could see was clear for more than a half mile ahead, I couldn’t last that long even at 30 mph. It was scary.
I agree on your view of safe tactics for cyclists. You have to ride like everyone on the road is trying to kill you. And it is possible Mr. Glover was trying to do that, too, becuase there is a possible aggressive-driving scenario here that I don’t even want to think about but can’t wholly rule out given the number of people who’ve dangeorusly close-passed me over the years in an apparent effort to make a statement that cyclists shouldn’t be on or near the roads.
4 seconds might not be unreasonable if while merging there was overtaking traffic on the highway.
I take this to mean that you think looking over your left shoulder for four seconds while merging would not be unreasonable?
I suggest that you go out and try, as the story suggested, going down the road without looking ahead for four seconds. Feel free to keep you head faced over your left shoulder for that one-thousand-one, one-thousand-two, one-thousand-three and one-thousand four.
It’s a loooooooooooooooooong time.
Not to mention that the data would appear to disagree with your conclusion: “According to analyses of data from the 100 Car Naturalistic Driving Study of adult drivers, eye glances away from the forward roadway two seconds and longer doubled the risk of a crash or near crash.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3999409/
Do you think the risks of doubling the odds of collision “reaonsable?”
Those researchers actually noted four seconds as “a very long duration of inattention, even under relatively uncomplicated road conditions.” Merging is a complicated road condition. I’ve certainly never looked over my shoulder for that long while merging, and it is rather irrelevant in this in that this isn’t what Mr. Aker claimed to have done.
Furthermore, if he had been watching the merge lane for four seconds before the collision, he would have seen Mr. Glover for at least three seconds before before that A-pillar obscured his vision.
Frist of again, why was FPD involved? It is outside city limits. Secondly, why no mention of Glover’s vehicle violations? Thanks for all the research, that was very insightful.
There weren’t any that were pertinent. He once got a ticket for a brake light being out, and it was dismissed after he notified the court the light had been fixed.
“But Aker, for the record, has over the years accumulated a fair share of traffic violations for speeding, following too closely, failure to exercise due care and twice for operating a motor vehicle under the influence, according to state court records.”
This is all we need to know…
As I understand this from reading, Mr. Glover was riding on the shoulder of the highway as Mr. Aker was coming up the on-ramp. A guardrail could have obstructed his view of Mr. Glover. It was dark. Mr. Glover was struck on the left side of the merge lane. As Mr. Aker is viewing his mirror Mr. Glover is riding in front of him on the left side of the merge lane perhaps transitioning to the right shoulder of the merge lane. I have to wonder if headlights from other traffic coming up the highway may have misled Mr, Glover about the overtaking traffic in the merge lane. Is this a “limited access” highway (on-ramps)? Are bicycles legal vehicles on such highways? Sorry if any of this is incorrect. Condolences to Mr.Glover’s family and friends.
In Fairbanks,”Airport Way, the Johansen Expressway, and the Steese Expressway between Airport Way and Trainor Gate are 3 examples of local roads where bicycles are prohibited.” https://dot.alaska.gov/nreg/blog/blog19.shtml
Bikes are legal on the shoulders of the Richardson. The state has in some planning documents stated these shoulders were designed to provide access for bikes and pedestrians. The Richardson is also, as you can see in the photo, a divided highway, which certainly limits the affect of the headlights of oncoming traffic, if there was much traffic leaving Fairbanks at the early morning hour at which the collision took place.
If you read the original story, you might have noticed the FPD made a big deal of the poor streetlighting at the intersection, but that would have served only to make Mr. Glover’s lights easier to see.
I think, from Mr. Aker’s statements, that what happened here is pretty clear: You can’t aovid what you can’t see. So, if Mr. Aker was looking down as he merged, as he says he was, and looked up only after the thump to see Mr. Aker flying through the air, there is a pretty simple explanation for this crash.
On the other hand, it’s odd to me to be looking down at this point along an on-ramp, but that’s what Mr. Aker says he was doing.
Craig,
Your initial story said:
“Mr. Aker had an average of 7.0 ng/ml of oxycodone in his blood which had been collected after the collision.”
Any follow up to this, asking him if he regularly takes these, and if he had one that morning?
Last I checked, oxycodone is a narcotic that causes impairment in drivers.
Thank you for shedding more light on this, Craig.
4 seconds ?
apparently the driver just confessed to negligent driving and killing a man through his negligence .
he deserves prison.
From the sound of things Aker is maybe a not uncommon driver. Sober on that morning, driving within the speed limit. I doubt very much he hit someone intentionally. Perhaps a more skillful driver would have avoided the accident, but our roads should be designed for the worst driver, not the best.
It’s up to us how much effort we need to put into making roads safe for cyclists and pedestrians. A separate bike path would do it, and overpasses over intersections. Does Alaska want to spend that sort of money. Should we outlaw recreational bicycling? Especially in the dark?
I don’t ride a bike on streets with cars, or as little as possible it’s inherently dangerous. I’ve driven hundreds of thousands of miles on a motorcycle, none in the USA. Lights and reflectors help, but ultimately as our roads are now configured, riding a bike is dangerous.
Certainly a driver looking at the road would have had a better chance of avoiding a collision. And though I agree with your observation that there is little likelihood Mr. Aker intended to hit Mr. Glover, we can’t, as a country, afford to design our transportation system to prevent collisions involving drivers who take their eyes off the road for long periods of time although we can hope automotive engineers some day solve this problem with self-driving cars.
Because the problem, you see, doesn’t just involve vulnerable road users. Motorists kill far, far more other motorists in collisions and maim a huge number of fellow motorists as well.
To design our roads to avoid this problem, we’d basically have to turn them into railroads wherein every car drove a block or two to a trolley station where it was coupled to a system that took over the driving for the driver. And even then, some fool would probably manage to collide with someone or something on the way to the trolley station.
I do appreciate your comments here, but they made me feel sad for you and for a nation where the machines have so taken over people’s minds that many now think like you.
On a personal level, you misinterpret the data on cycling. Though motorists have been increasingly killing cyclists and motorcyclists, they still primarily kill each other. But, sadly, the big costs of motoring aren’t in deaths on the road. The big costs are in all-cause mortality, and the latest research shows that regular commuting by bicycle cuts your risk of early death almost in half.
You can read the study here – https://bmjpublichealth.bmj.com/content/2/1/e001295 – or, if you want, the New York Post, a good conservative newspaper, has a decent summary here about the “wheelie good news for cyclists”: https://nypost.com/2024/07/16/lifestyle/bike-commuting-lowers-risk-of-early-death-by-47-new-study/
The Post noted the “51% lower risk of dying from cancer, a 24% lower risk of hospitalization for heart disease and a 20% lower risk of being prescribed drugs for mental health problems.” But it overlooked the bigger issue – the huge amount of money this country now spends on healthcare because a large segment of the population is, to be blunt, “fat and lazy.”
This should not be taken as a criticism of those who are overweight, of which I am one myself, but we really need to get Americans up and moving more and sitting less whether that be behind a screen, in their car or on the seat of a motorcycle. In case you missed it, we just had hundreds of thousands of Americans die of Covid basically because they were unfit or had lost a lot of fitness due to a combination of inactivity and age.
Lastly, as to motorcycles, I hope you understand they are the riskiest two-wheel vehicle in the country to ride.
Motorcycle deaths hit a record 6,022 in this country in 2022. https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/motorcycles-and-atvs#:~:text=A%20total%20of%206%2C222%20motorcyclists,of%20motorcyclist%20deaths%20in%201997.
That’s more than six times the number of bicycle deaths from all causes. If you’re still on the motorbike (I gave all mine up years ago), it might be a good idea to find somewhere to ride it other than on the streets. Riding it on the roads is inherently dangerous.
Now, with all of this said, it does appear we are in agreement on the most important point which, as you wrote, is this:
“It’s up to us how much effort we need to put into making roads safe for cyclists and pedestrians.”
As a big believer in personal responsibility and a fiscal conservative, I’d put the oneous there on drivers. They need to pay attention and not run into people or things like other cars or trucks or parking lot lamposts or buildings or whatnot. You on the other hand, appear to be some sort of socialist who thinks the government should spend a shitton of money to build infra to compensate for drivers who can’t drive responsibly, or restrict personal freedoms (and in the process make Americans even fatter and more out of shape) to compensate for drivers who can’t drive without running into people or things.
Almost makes me wonder if this is a comment from a former resident of the USSR, which went kaput because it tried to manage societal problems in those sorts of ways.
Tragic end for a committed biker, a tragedy all the worse for FPD’s failure to hold the careless driver accountable. Pointing this out is a public service of the highest order.
Thanks!
Brian O’D
Thank you Craig. This is important reporting that touches on a variety of issues.
I’m too ignorant to comment on much of this, but Aker is right about one thing. If you ride near the road in the winter, find a bright strobe light for sale. Then go but a brighter one. Affix it where it isn’t obscured, and allways keep it charged.
Red rear strobes that are very bright became common 15 years ago and are a game changer. They are probably a more important safety item than helmets, and definately more imporant than your white headlight.
Sort of depends on where you are riding. A rough and rocky MTB trail at night without a headlight can be pretty damn dangerous unless you decide to walk the bike, but in general I agree with you on lights in urban environments even though the data is somewhat mixed.
Drivers appear to have a difficult time judging the distance to flashing lights. Germany and the Netherlands, two countries with a lot of cyclists, banned flashing bike lights for that and other reason: https://bikeshed.johnhoogstrate.nl/bicycle/light/blinking/
My personal feeling, which is Alaska specific, is that anything a cyclist can do to bring attention to him/herself in this state is a good thing because the low volume of cyclists in general means that they are seldom on the minds of drivers, which compounds the inattentiveness problem.
Having spent some time riding in communities where there are a lot of cyclists on the road, I can testify that this alone makes the roads safer. Drivers looking for cyclists are far less likely to run into them. There is little doubt about that. But in Alaska drivers just aren’t looking for bike, which would lead to me to say the most important safety element in 49th state is this:
Ride like every driver on the road is trying to kill you. I have friends now using rear-facing radar and raving about it as a safety device, but that tech is expensive. And there is only so much you can do to protect yourself.
At a general, public policy level – let’s not forget here that a lot of cyclists are children – the best and easiest things that could be done to improve safety would be to lower speed limits in urban areas and dictate that law enforcement take MV-bike collisions seriously.
Sadly, my gut feeling is that there’s little chance of either happening.