A beautiful Appalachian highway became a death trap for members of an elite college cycling team yesterday morning.
Two members of the Milligan University cycling team were killed, and seven others injured — four critically — when a 69-year old driver plowed into the whole fucking team.
Sophomores Haylan Engdahl and Brayden Rogers, students at the small Christian liberal arts college, were killed. The small private university is located in Elizabethton, Tennessee, in the northeastern corner of the state.
A CNN report offers photos of the victims, one of whom, 19-year old Haylan Engdahl, graduated high school in Kenosha, Illinois.
And yes, it feels like an extra gut punch to share my last name with one of the victims.
The driver, Newland, North Carolina resident John Benfield, was arrested and charged with two counts of vehicular homicide by recklessness and five counts of aggravated assault by vehicle by recklessness. At last report, he had not been released on bond.
It’s not known at this time if he was under the influence.
According to NBC News,
Sam Rogers said he passed by the accident. At first, he saw Carter County sheriff’s vehicles and ambulances arriving, and then he came upon the aftermath.
“I was horrified to see numerous crumpled bikes. There was a person on the road injured and another covered in blood being helped,” Rogers said. “The bicycles were completely destroyed.”
They were only 11 miles from the campus when Benfield somehow managed to take out over 80% of the 11 team members on the training ride.
At least the other seven beat the odds. The speed limit on that section of Tennessee Highway 19 is 50 mph, which means the victims had a 25% chance of survival if the driver was doing the speed limit, according to AAA.
And as we all know, the chances of a driver actually doing the speed limit or less is somewhere south of nil.
One victim has been released from the hospital, and two others were in stable condition.
Below is a statement from the university.
According to CBS News,
“This is an elite cycling team. It’s not a bunch of club guys getting together to ride. They know what they are doing,” said Carter County District Attorney Steven Finney.
Milligan’s men’s cycling team won the team time trial at the USA Cycling Collegiate Road Nationals in Wisconsin earlier this year.
There’s no word at this time on how the crash occurred, other than it was at or near a curve in the roadway.
This is yet another tragic reminder that a driver’s license allows someone to operate a weapon of mass destruction, which even in the right hands is just one critical error from becoming a ground-hugging ballistic missile.
As for the wrong hands, just go back and read this again.
To argue that something like this should never happen is an obvious understatement. Yet it does, far too frequently.
And I’m sick to death of shedding tears and saying prayers for people I don’t even know.
To wit, see below.
Thanks to Mike and Al for the heads-up.
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Michigan driver Mandy Marie Benn could have her sentence shortened for the 2022 crash that killed two people and injured three others taking part in a Make-A-Wish bicycle ride.
A jury found Benn guilty on 15 counts, including two counts of 2nd degree murder, possessing prescription drugs, operating while intoxicated causing serious death and reckless driving causing death. She was sentenced to two consecutive 35- to 60-year terms in prison.
According to WLNS 6 News,
The deadly crash happened four years ago on Stage Road in Ronald Township, northeast of Ionia, as Mandy Marie Benn was driving north. She tried to pass a truck, driving into the path of bicyclists participating in a Make-A-Wish bicycle tour. Two cyclists were killed: Edward Erickson, 48, of Ann Arbor, and Michael Salhaney, 57, of Bloomfield Hills. Three others were hurt. The prosecution said evidence showed that Benn had a prescription medication called Lorazepam, a sedative that had not been prescribed to her, in her system at the time of the crash.
Now her attorney is arguing that her sentences should have been applied concurrently, rather than consecutively, and an appeals court has sent it back to the trial judge to explain why the consecutive sentences were imposed.
She’ll have a hearing in November to argue her case.
Personally, I don’t care if her sentences are consecutive, concurrent or inside out as long as she never gets out from behind bars.
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Somehow, this seems like a good place to mention that I have a new and improved design for one of my earlier T-shirts, which also comes in yellow and blue versions, now that I have a slightly better idea what the hell I’m doing.
Because it’s true, and they do. As too many of us have learned the hard way, myself included.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
A judge ordered work on a Crown Height, New York bike lane halted, after a resident asserted the city had broken the law by failing to notify her, and hadn’t provide equired certifications showing consultations with FDNY, NYPD, Small Business Services and the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities; needless to say, the NYDOT begs to differ.
A Canadian website argues that The Ontario Court of Appeal’s recent unanimous decision allowing the provincial government to rip out Toronto bike lanes over the objection of city leaders is about much more important issues than just bike lanes. I’m sure that will come as cold comfort to the riders now forced to confront city traffic, or the impatient drivers following behind them.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
A 59-year old British Columbia man now believes bicyclists should be licensed and insured, after he was struck by another rider while on his own bike, after the second man crashed into him at a signalized crosswalk, leaving him with a broken humerus, a crushed rotator cuff, metal plates, stitches and screws in his shoulder; without a ride home, he posted his situation on Facebook, and a kindhearted stranger picked him up from the hospital, and got his pain meds for him.
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Local
Culver City is the first SoCal city to have Amazon deliveries made by e-cargo bikes, even if they look like mini cargo vans.
Long Beach is hosting its sixth annual Long Beach Safe Streets Awareness Week, returning with the theme of “Long Beach Moves Together.” Which is undoubtedly the most times I’ve ever used “Long Beach” in a single sentence.
State
California Streetsblog’s Damien Newton talks with Streets Are For Everyone founder Damian Kevitt about the last minute votes pending in the state legislature before it adjourns next week.
Streets For All says your help is needed to keep critical transit funding off the state chopping block.
This is who we share the road with. Heartbreaking news from Huntington Beach, where a 74-year old man in a motorized wheelchair was killed by a driver as he was crossing the street.
This is who we share the road with, part two. San Jose police are looking for a road-raging driver who stabbed two people during an altercation, at an intersection where residents have long complained about speeding drivers. But apparently not stabbing ones, until now.
National
A 17-year old high school senior from Arizona likely set a new record for riders under 18 by finishing the 2,700-mile Tour Divide Race in just 20 days, as well as completing both the Arizona and Colorado Trails, making him the youngest person to finish the Triple Crown of bikepacking. And I was today years old when I learned there’s a Triple Crown of bikepacking.
A Washington State newspaper patiently explains that bike riders aren’t breaking the law by running stop signs, because the Idaho Stop is legal there — and not stopping is safe than stopping. Would someone please explain that to Gavin Newsom, who’s vetoed it twice? Wait, don’t bother. He’ll either be President Newsom or unemployed in a couple years, anyway.
A Colorado man claimed he thought he’d hit a deer when police tracked him down three weeks after he hit and killed a man riding a bicycle, and just kept going; he had the car repaired in the meantime, and evidently no one bothered to tell him the damage came from a human being. Call me crazy, but wouldn’t most people at least stop to examine the damage to their car if they thought they’d hit a large animal — let alone see if it was okay?
As if today’s news wasn’t bad enough, the family of a Springfield, Missouri couple filed a lawsuit against the parents of a young child, arguing the couple encountered the kid in the roadway as they were riding their bikes, and had to choose between hitting the child or crashing into an embankment; they chose the embankment, and both suffered catastrophic injuries, with the husband dying two weeks after the crash, and the wife suffering “permanent and disabling” injuries.
Streetsblog celebrates the “one-of-a-kind” bike path on the new Gordie Howe International Bridge between Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario, despite — or maybe because of — Trump’s unsuccessful efforts to kill it.
Hoboken, New Jersey risks its perfect Vision Zero record after the city council voted to end a bike lane project a couple months early, even as the mayor pledged to keep it open in the planned October end date.
When is a bike lane not a bike lane? When a Philadelphia funeral home uses the protected bike land to stage funeral processions, while apparently trying to drum up additional business.
International
Cycling Electric offers tips on how to choose a cargo bike, as well as loading and riding it safely.
Good for them. A group of English kids faced down a bulldozer to save a 20-year old DIY bike park.
That’s more like it. Reported bike thefts from UK train stations dropped 11%, while the number of thieves charged for stealing bikes from them more than doubled after police reversed a policy of not investigating thefts if the bikes had been there more than two hours.
Must be nice. A South Korean city is automatically insuring all of its more than 900,000 residents against injuries or liability when riding a bicycle or personal mobility devices.
A New Zealand writer places tongue very firmly in cheek, and writes about the harrowing passage of crossing the street outside the prime minister’s former residence, after he complained “to a crowd of no doubt weeping voters” about “a whole bunch of bike lanes…that made it very difficult for me getting from my apartment into the parliamentary precinct,” even though it’s been two years since he’s lived there. I need to send The Spinoff politics writer Lyric Waiwiri-Smith a thank you card, because I really needed that after today’s news.
Competitive Cycling
Dutch pro Lorena Wiebes responded to the death of 19-year old Welsh cyclist Finlay Tarling as she lined up for the opening stage of the women’s Tour of Britain, saying “Parents shouldn’t fear their children not coming home from a race.” Or a training ride, for that matter.
EF Education-EasyPost chief Jonathan Vaughters blasted UCI for its focus on “ridiculous little” safety measures, such as minimum handlebar widths, “when they’re unable to keep traffic off the road.”
A Colorado man set a new course record in winning the 53rd Annual Mount Washington Auto Road Bicycle Hillclimb, shaving two minutes off the previous mark, and moving LA-based former pro Phil Gaimon’s 2022 course record down into third place.
Finally…
Call him the Pied Piper of bicyclists. That feeling when you campaign against drug use by popping a 1,400 mile wheelie, convincing everyone else you must be on drugs.
And if you’re attacked by a grizzly, don’t try to whack it with your bike.
I mean, seriously.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin.
