Why Our Tale Struck Gold (When You Become the Lead Story, part 7)

As we rode a Portland Streetcar train home from the radio interview and video shoot at the PSU Urban Center late on the morning of Wednesday, Oct. 21, I glanced idly over at the collision site and noticed several Trimet trucks gathered there. That was probably a signal that the story was about to break publicly, but I didn’t realize it at the time.

When Carole and I got home, there were messages on Facebook and in my emailer that my post to BikePortland.org four nights before had borne fruit. A commentary uploaded by Jonathan Maus on his blog that Wednesday morning was the first notice on public media that something had happened at the Tilikum Crossing bridge a week and a half before. Maus reprinted most of my nearly five-day-old email to him, as well as his comments, which opened with: “It has happened. And I hate to say that I’m not surprised.”

Going to the Media (When You Become the Lead Story, part 6)

On the evening of Saturday, Oct. 17, a little less than a week after the collision, I posted the following comment on Facebook: “So my wife has the dubious honor of being the first (so far as we know) to be struck and injured by a vehicle on the new Tilikum Crossing bridge, just under a month after it opened. Now that I’ve completed my personal, preliminary site investigation (since Portland Police did not respond to -- and probably were not notified of -- the 911 call last Sunday morning), I am surprised that it took that long. I predict there will be many more….”

Within ten minutes, a friend who works at a local radio station asked, “Want to talk to me about it for a news story?” I’d occasionally looked askance at the people who took their sob story about a dispute with a landlord, an obnoxious neighbor, or a government agency to the news media instead of “going through proper channels,” but in this case, the proper channels had utterly overlooked us.

The Search for Official Evidence (When You Become the Lead Story, part 5)

I began to think about the long-term implications of the incident. Carole told me she had pressed the button for the pedestrian crossing signal and waited until the light was with her. That suggested the cyclist might have run a red light, assuming the month-old traffic signals were working and properly synchronized.

But what if the cyclist’s insurer refused to reimburse any portion of our medical bills? What did we have if it came down to their word against Carole’s? One of the first questions an insurance company would surely ask was “What is the police report number?” There wasn’t one, of course. Did that mean we had nothing?

On Wednesday morning I started to make phone inquiries into what sort of official record this incident had generated, if any. Portland Fire & Rescue had responded to the scene, obviously; when I called them, a representative told me that AMR Ambulance would have taken the lead in filing an incident report. I looked up the ambulance company’s website and found a form I had to print out and mail to request a copy of whatever they had recorded.