When You Become the Lead Story, part 3

A little earlier that morning, Carole had started to cross Tilikum Crossing bridge with Pixie to the other side of the river as part of their daily hour-long walk. She had ridden across the bridge on the streetcar and MAX light-rail preview rides with me in August, but had not yet traveled the brand-new span on foot.

As the pair climbed the west slope of the bridge, however, Carole became concerned that the fairly lively pedestrian and bicycle traffic was making the dog nervous, and that a panicked Pixie might slip between the horizontal spars below the railing and fall into the river.

So Carole decided to turn back and continue their walk north along the west bank of the Willamette instead. To do this, she and Pixie would have to cross the road and rails that lead up to the center span of Tilikum from the west bank, and travel the breadth of the bridge instead of its length. The first pedestrian crossing Carole encountered came at the east end of the lengthy platform where Orange Line MAX trains and Trimet bus lines pick up and drop passengers, toward the western terminus of the bridge.

In the photo above, which is looking north at the south side of the Collaborative Life Sciences Building (which includes the OHSU dental school), the Trimet platform stretches roughly the entire length of the building, as well as to the right of it, below the orange molecule model that looks like a vertical bunch of balloons. (If that’s not visible in your browser, click on the photo itself and a larger copy should come onscreen.) Carole was waiting to cross just below and to the right of the tall silver light pole next to the right edge of this photo; coincidentally, I was standing below the corner of the building at the other end, at the extreme left edge of this photo, but neither of us knew the other was there.

Seeking to avoid the cross traffic of trains, buses, and streetcars, Carole pushed the pedestrian crossing button and waited for the light. When it changed to alert her and Pixie to stroll north across the rail and bus lanes, she stepped out. You saw the result in the video that played over and over on local TV news last week.

In the video, you can also see the impact flipped the cyclist off his bike, but he jumps up immediately to see to the pedestrian he hit. Several other walkers showed up almost as swiftly, and one of them undoubtedly called 911. Carole remembers being in pain all over, and having a hard time keeping her eyes open. She noticed a motionless white pile of fur near her and feared Pixie had been killed. But people told her the dog was okay, an ambulance was on the way, and she should try not to move.

Someone placed Pixie next to Carole. She told the bystanders her cell phone was in her pocket and someone should notify her husband with it. As I described in my last blog post, a woman called me, and because of her misleading instructions, I went racing away from the site on foot.

I ran up the stairs of the aerial tram tower and along the 700-foot span of the Gibbs Street Pedestrian Bridge over I-5, headed west and ever farther away from my injured wife. When I got to the west end of that other bridge, there was no one there. [The photo to the right shows the Gibbs pedestrian bridge shortly before its completion and opening in 2012; copyright and courtesy of Jonathan Maus, editor and publisher of BikePortland.org.]

I called my wife’s cell several times to ask where everybody was; Carole heard it ringing at the other end, but no one answered, and everyone kept telling her not to move.

After racing futilely back and forth around the quiet residential neighborhood of upper Corbett, it dawned on me what must have happened, and I started back across the pedestrian bridge. Eventually in the distance to the north I could see the flashing lights of emergency vehicles gathered at the west end of Tilikum bridge.

By the time I got to the site, roughly a half hour had passed since the collision, and the ambulance was ready to leave. Carole was strapped in, with Pixie lying under the blanket on her lower abdomen. By that point, my wife was obsessing about her keys: she couldn’t find or feel them anywhere on her person and was worried about having to get them replaced. The emergency care personnel checked the pockets of her coat and turned up nothing. (The keys were later found on the ambulance bed beneath her.)

I was asked if I wanted to ride to the hospital with Carole. I would have preferred to, but I realized I needed to take the dog home. Pixie would not be comfortable with anyone but me (she had already pooped in fear on Carole and an EMT, I later learned), and so would only be a burden. I needed to take her home and request a Zipcar (we have chosen not to own a vehicle for the past 13 years) to meet Carole at the emergency room.

I retrieved the dog and was dimly aware of the cyclist trying to talk to me. A firefighter/EMT handed me a sheet of paper with the cyclist’s name and phone number on it, as well as that of a witness. I left Carole in the ambulance and walked home with Pixie, posted a Facebook update at 9:51 a.m. to let our family and friends know what had happened, and reserved a car until 6 p.m. to get me to the hospital and back.

I know I saw a fire truck and an ambulance at the scene, as well as their corresponding EMT personnel. But at the time I’m not sure I registered the fact that -- other than the drivers of a Trimet bus and a Portland Streetcar train that were backed up and waiting for the accident site to clear -- there were no officials on the scene from the Portland Police Bureau or Trimet, the organization that runs the bus and light-rail system (and whose engineers were responsible for designing the entire intersection where this took place).

LESSON NO. 2: ALTHOUGH BICYCLES ARE LEGALLY DEFINED AS A VEHICLE IN THE STATE OF OREGON, AND THE PORTLAND POLICE BUREAU MANUAL, IN SECTION 640.50 (c), “Investigation Criteria,” REQUIRES AN INVESTIGATION OF “ACCIDENTS INVOLVING PHYSICAL INJURY TO VULNERABLE ROAD USERS WHERE THE VULNERABLE ROAD USER IS TRANSPORTED BY AMBULANCE,” AND THE INVESTIGATION “WILL INCLUDE COMPLETING AN OREGON POLICE CRASH REPORT,” THE POLICE DON’T NECESSARILY RESPOND TO EVERY 911 CALL. NO REPORT WAS FILED IN MY WIFE’S CASE.

Carole was clearly a vulnerable road user; she was transported to the hospital by ambulance; and you’d think a six- or eight-lane thoroughfare for buses, streetcars, and light-rail trains leading to a bridge across a river would constitute a roadway. Even now, I’m not entirely sure why neither Trimet nor the police responded to this incident, but this fact would have huge potential repercussions, which we’ll get into later in the story.

Read “When You Become the Lead Story, part 1” -- introduction

Read “When You Become the Lead Story, part 2” -- the setting and a bum steer