“We can’t just give up at the intersection,” said Kevin Moses, a strategy team member with the advocacy group Cambridge Bicycle Safety.
Advertisem*nt
A vigil held Monday on the steps of City Hall drew hundreds of friends, family, and fellow cyclists to memorialize the two victims. One was Kim Staley, a 55-year-old visiting from Florida, who had been riding a rented Bluebike near Harvard Square. The other was Minh-Thi Nguyen, a 24-year-old MIT grad student who loved ones said was fond of adventuring around Greater Boston by bike.
A lot that is still unknown about the crashes, including how, exactly, the cyclists were killed, whether the drivers turned right on a red light, which is illegal in Cambridge, or whether they violated a state law that forbids right turns that endanger cyclists.
And it was too soon to say if any particular road safety improvement might have prevented what happened in either case.
Road safety advocates are urging Cambridge and other communities to assess conditions at intersections, particularly when large trucks travel through them.
The corner of Mt. Auburn and DeWolfe streets in Cambridge, the intersection where Staley was killed on June 7, was updated several years ago with changes backed by cyclists. Mt. Auburn Street, where both Staley and the truck driver were traveling, has a bike lane separated from cars by white, plastic flex posts. There is a separate light signal for bike riders, which gives them a green light to proceed straight, but only when right-turning drivers have a red arrow. And bikes get a red light when drivers have a green arrow to turn.
Advertisem*nt
Bike signals are not common in the United States, and it’s possible the bike rider or the truck driver misread the signals, said Peter Furth, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northeastern University.
“It’s a learning curve, people have to get used to new safety measures like bike lights,” he said.
Moses wants to see additional lights in that intersection and others like it, so a cyclist who misses one might see another.
Bike safety experts say other changes to roads might be in order, too.
Intersections are safest when a vehicle is forced to complete most of its turn before it ever encounters a bike, said Furth. In The Netherlands, Furth said, driving lanes and bike lanes are separated by 16 to 25 feet at intersections, giving bikes more time to slow down and drivers better visibility.
This can be done by adding concrete islands at the corners, with bikes traveling on one side, vehicles on the other. The extra distance involved in the turn should allow a vehicle driver to see an approaching bike through the windshield rather than relying on mirrors or looking back.
“When two road users meet at right angles, that is best,” he said.
But, designs like this can be challenging in places like Cambridge where the roads are narrow, Furth said.
On Hampshire Street, where Nguyen was killed on June 21, the city installed bike lanes last year that use a row of parked cars and flex posts to separate cyclists from the driving lane. Parking is not allowed near the intersection to create better sight lines. But there is no bike signal, meaning cars can turn right at the same time as bikes are proceeding straight, and drivers have to look far over their shoulder to see the bikes before they turn. Mirrors are often ineffective, Furth said.
Advertisem*nt
“Once they start their turn, they’re completely blind,” he said.
Trucks themselves are safer in some places overseas as well.
In Europe, unlike in the United States, they are required to have side guards that help prevent cyclists from getting trapped underneath and run over, Furth said.
A Massachusetts law passed last year requires side guards, as well as safety mirrors and backup cameras, on state-owned and -leased trucks. In 2025, the law is set to expand to include trucks contracted by the state. There is no such mandate for private vehicles, including delivery trucks.
“Trucks are killing machines,” said Furth. “They serve a purpose to deliver freight, but we know how to make them less deadly. The fact that we don’t is a disgrace.”
Both trucks involved in the recent Cambridge crashes were privately owned, according to the Middlesex district attorney’s office, which is investigating the bike deaths. The truck involved in the first crash was registered in Massachusetts and the truck involved in the second crash was registered in New Hampshire, the DA’s office said.
The first crash, which happened as the truck was making a right turn from Mt. Auburn onto DeWolfe, was a “sideswipe,” according to the record of the incident in MassDOT’s crash database. The truck was a 2020 Freightliner M2, which can weigh as much as 33,000 pounds when fully loaded, according to its vehicle identification number on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s website. It is not yet clear who the owner is.
Advertisem*nt
A truck driver collided with a bike rider at this Cambridge intersection on June 21, killing the bike rider
It was the second fatal crash in two weeks involving a truck and a bike
Ryan Huddle/Globe staff
The second crash is not yet listed in MassDOT’s database, and the Middlesex district attorney’s office did not provide any more details.
So far in 2024, four bike riders have been killed in Massachusetts, including the two recent deaths in Cambridge, state data show.
Cambridge averages about 145 reports of bicycle crashes each year, according to the city’s most recently available traffic analysis report.
State data show that trucks have an outsize impact on crashes involving bicyclists. Of the 36 reported crashes that have killed bike riders since 2020 in which the type of vehicle was known, 11 involved trucks and seven involved light trucks such as pick-ups, SUVs, and vans.
Some state lawmakers have said they would like to mandate the safety equipment on privately owned trucks, but how to do so is unclear, as states are generally forbidden by the US Constitution from regulating interstate commerce, including trucks that carry goods across state lines.
That is “the next big question,” said state Representative Mike Connolly of Cambridge. “I’m interested in any creative ways that we can take the current mandate that we recently passed into law and make it even broader.”
For its part, Cambridge has tried to be a leader on road safety, including when it comes to trucks and bikes. In 2016, the year it adopted Vision Zero, a goal to eliminate traffic fatalities, it reduced speeds on most streets from 25 to 20 miles per hour. It has mandated side guards on city-contracted vehicles since 2020, and in 2022, it banned right turns on red lights.
Advertisem*nt
Last week, after the first crash, the City Council called for a policy that would require audits of intersections where cyclists or pedestrians are seriously injured or killed.
On Monday, just after the vigil for the latest victims, councilors asked the Cambridge city manager to, among other things, “begin the process to make immediate changes to the 5 most dangerous intersections across the city.”
Moses, of the bike safety group, called the council’s moves “a good first step” in addressing a widespread problem.
“These intersections aren’t necessarily unique in the city,” he said. “So instead of waiting for the worst to happen, we really need to come up with a program to identify intersections that are dangerous, and also come up with a standardized approach for making them safe.”
Taylor Dolven can be reached at taylor.dolven@globe.com. Follow her @taydolven. Spencer Buell can be reached at spencer.buell@globe.com. Follow him @SpencerBuell.
