Amanda Whitaker was walking with friends on the B-Line trail Aug. 22. A cyclist speeding down the Grimes overpass ran straight into her.
(WTIU News)
Bloomington has received a gold rating from the League of American Bicyclists nine years in a row. But a recent collision on the B-Line trail raised questions about how to keep both groups safe on mixed-use paths.
Amanda Whitaker was walking with friends on the B-Line trail Aug. 22. A cyclist speeding down the Grimes overpass ran straight into her.
“I had a partially collapsed lung on the left side, a left rib fracture, a concussion, and then just multiple contusions,” she said.
A security camera caught footage of the Aug. 22 collision. (City of Bloomington)
An officer arrived twenty minutes later to question witnesses.
“He said basically, any sort of criminal charges would have to be intentional.”
The cyclist, who told police he was homeless, violated state law by riding without brakes: a class C misdemeanor on par with a speeding ticket.
Still, the officer sent the cyclist on his way without a citation.
Whitaker said she wants to see changes to how bike laws are enforced.
“If people saw more enforcement and ramifications of not following the rules of the road, like you get your bike taken away or you'll get a citation or something like that, then maybe that can help to decrease events like this in the future,” she said.
Amanda Whitaker wanted to see changes to public safety after her injury on the B-Line. (Ethan Sandweiss / WFIU-WTIU)
How common are these events, and just how stringently does the BPD enforce bike laws?
BPD spokesman Ryan Pedigo turned down an interview to talk about the bicycle crash. He also declined to talk about enforcing bicycle laws in general.
Pedigo did confirm that no citation was issued and says the department rarely issues citations to bikers.
To find how often that actually happens, the records division said it would have to go through every citation issued by the department individually to check which involved bikes, a process that would be “very time consuming.”
Not every incident gets reported, but Beth Rosenbarger, assistant director of planning and transportation, said pedestrian-cyclist collisions are uncommon.
“It is, as far as I’m aware, the first report I’ve heard of that type of collision,” she said.
In contrast, there were almost three thousand four hundred car collisions in Bloomington between September 2022 and 2023, including sixty-two with pedestrians and forty-three with bikes.
Some like Rosenbarger would rather prioritize preventive over punitive solutions.
“I think we have to be cautious of how much we rely on enforcement in terms of different outcomes for different members of our community,” she said.
Whitaker agreed that infrastructure changes might reduce if not prevent collisions like hers.
“I feel like the multi-use trails should have better signage should have lines to delineate between biking and pedestrians.”
Rosenbarger confirmed that the parks department is talking about adding a centerline on the B-Line.
“That wouldn't prevent a person from driving over the centerline or bicycling over or walking over it,” she admitted. “But it is a design cue that people tend to follow.”
City bicycle and pedestrian coordinator Hank Duncan also saw the collision as a learning moment.
“It's just unfortunate that it happened,” he said. “That said there is a silver lining that it is bringing up questions that probably should have been brought up early on how we best prioritize both pedestrian and cyclist safety.”
Duncan said the best solution to reduce traffic on the B-Line is by creating separated paths for bikers.
“If we built more protected infrastructure for those folks to get from north to south, I have a good feeling that a lot of those congested areas on the B-Line would even out.”
“As a transportation planner, our recommendation is to separate out modes,” Rosenbarger said. “A challenge with the B-Line is there isn't an alternative.”
Around one point eight percent of Bloomingtonians said they bike for their daily commute, around 1,500 people according to census estimates. There are 237 miles of roadway maintained by the department of public works, compared to about 15 miles of recreational and multi-use paths.
