Willamette Valley, OR Fatal Bike Crash, Waiting for the Cause...

Riding a recumbent, a cyclist Tuesday passes the area on Riverside Drive where a fatal bike crash happened the week before.
​

In fatal bike crash, waiting for the cause Hasso Hering

Willamette Valley, OR - One week after an Albany bicyclist died in a collision with a motor vehicle on a widened section of Riverside Drive, Linn County sheriff’s detectives are still trying to determine exactly how it happened.

The crash killed Kelli Kennedy, 52. Her family published her obituary in the Aug. 30 edition of the Albany Democrat-Herald. A wife and mother of three, she worked at Assurant, an insurance company with offices around the world including one in Albany.

My deepest condolences to the Kennedy family for their loss. Riding a bike was one of Kelli’s favorite things, her obit said.

The crash happened shortly after 8 a.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 23, on Riverside about 500 feet east of the junction with Bryant Drive.

The cyclist was riding west on Riverside, toward Bryant Drive, when she was struck by a 2002 Chevrolet Avalanche. The sheriff’s office has withheld the name of the driver but said in a press release the person was cooperating and “impairment does not appear to be a factor in the crash.”

I asked Sheriff Michelle Duncan for details, including the name of the driver and whether the cyclist was riding on the shoulder.

“Determination of the exact location of the bicyclist is still what we are investigating,” the sheriff replied by email this morning. “I do not have a completed investigation and detectives are still working on it.”

As for the operator of the Chevrolet, the sheriff wrote: “The driver is not being identified yet. There are some things we are being sensitive to in this case until we have the investigation completed.”

That section of the road is part of the 2.4 miles of Riverside, from Oakville Road to Meadow Road, that Linn County had widened and repaved in the spring of 2018. The project included wider shoulders.

Sheriff Duncan confirmed to me that both the cyclist and the driver were going in the same direction on Riverside that morning. The west-bound paved shoulder there is just shy of 5 feet wide.

This road is a popular Albany bike route — out Riverside and then back to town on Bryant Drive and Bryant Way.

Since Riverside was widened, cyclists have had less reason to worry about cars passing them too close — until now. Which is one reason why it’s important to establish exactly how this happened.

“Although we have some ideas of cause,” the sheriff told me, “we are still doing investigative work on this to confirm.”

Continue reading...

 

​

The accident that killed an Albany bicyclist on Riverside Drive on Aug. 23 remains “under investigation,” according to a police traffic crash report the Linn County Sheriff’s Office released on Friday.

The report is a standard form to be filled out after any crash. There’s a page for a narrative describing what happened, but the narrative page released by the sheriff is blank.

Kelli Lyn Kennedy, 52, who lived with her family in the Broadway Neighborhood, died in the crash about a quarter past 8 that Tuesday morning. Wearing her helmet, she was riding her bike west on Riverside toward Bryant Drive about 500 feet away.

She was hit by a 2002 Chevrolet Avalanche, also going west. The crash report identifies the driver as Charish Colleen Yvonne Norberg, born in 1991. The report blanked out her address and date of birth, giving only the year, but the sheriff’s office has said the driver was from Albany.

Three children were also in the pickup, two boys born in 2015 and 2018, respectively, and a girl born in 2020.

The report is silent on what caused the crash. There’s a box that says “distracted” for the driver, without saying what distracted her.

According to the form, the driver said she was going 53 miles an hour, and the posted speed is 45 mph. The vehicle had damage on the right front, but the air bags did not deploy.

The report shows no impairment or cell phone use.

On this blog, I don’t normally report on traffic incidents, but bicycling is one of my main themes, and I have a personal interest in this sad event.

First, it happened on a route I and other cyclists often use...

Continue reading...