The June deaths of two bicyclists spurred a renewed focus on the safety of Cambridge city streets and the trucks that use them, including how to get more operators adopting safety measures voluntarily in the absence of enforceable laws.
Following up on a promise to look into truck regulations and intersection safety, the city’s Neighborhood & Long-Term Planning, Public Facilities, Arts & Celebrations Committee held a public meeting Monday to outline options.
“In the past 10 years, there have been 22 fatal crashes in the city. Seven crashes have resulted in the death of people on bicycles. Every one of those crashes involved a truck,” transportation commissioner Brooke McKenna said.
While the city continues to work toward its Vision Zero goals, including creating barriers for bike lanes, narrowing some lanes and lowering most speed limits, the majority of Monday’s discussion focused on improving the safety of trucks themselves, through “side guards” that prevent cyclists and pedestrians from rolling under the wheels and with visibility improvements.
“We know that side guards are effective,” said Alex Epstein, safety and sustainability senior engineer at the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Volpe Center in Kendall Square. “They’re especially effective for people on bikes to reduce the chance of injury.”
Epstein, with the state Department of Transportation’s chief possibility officer Kristopher Carter, presented a “Direct Vision” study, which analyzed the visibility of large vehicles: “You can’t avoid what you can’t see as a driver,” Carter said.
The study, which rates different vehicles on their visibility and provides figures highlighting the blind spots of trucks, is intended to be used as a reference for cities such as Cambridge to upgrade the city’s fleet of trucks and work with commercial trucks operating in the region.
Limits of regulation
The City of Cambridge has already upgraded many of its own vehicles with safety and visibility upgrades.
City councillor Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler expressed some interest in what the state could do to require visibility and safety upgrades for private trucks.
Some states have regulated truck safety at the registration level, such as New York, Oregon and Washington, but the regulation affects only trucks registered in that state, Epstein said. For broader safety regulations, a federal change would be required.
“There is some that we can do that is within our control,” McKenna said. “But fundamentally, we need to make sure that we’re moving at the federal level in the right direction, because we are significantly behind where our European and neighbors are. Hopefully we can catch up.”
The European Union has required side guards on large trucks since the 1980s, according to Volpe.
Voluntary upgrades
Locally, MIT and Harvard have updated their fleets voluntarily with side guards since 2019 and require their vendors to do the same, said the city’s commissioner of public works, Kathy Watkins.
Tim Cavaretta, director of operations at the nonprofit Food for Free, said his company has been equipping its trucks with side guards, convex mirrors and backup cameras since 2020. He said the process was easier when acquiring a vehicle rather than retrofitting an existing one.
City councillor Sumbul Siddiqui suggested that the city reach out to the larger companies working locally and ask for a similar level of voluntary compliance – and McKenna said that work of reaching out to biggest truck operators in the city is underway as a first round of outreach. Discussion with smaller distributors will follow.
“A public health crisis”
Asked by councillor Ayesha Wilson what the city is doing to improve intersection safety in particular, McKenna said both of the intersections where the June fatal crashes occurred are undergoing “intersection audits,” to improve crossing safety.
In public comment, Harvard undergraduate and member of Cambridge Bicycle Safety’s strategy team Clyve Lawrence said the city needs to treat the recent deaths as “a public health crisis,” and work to protect the most vulnerable road users.
“It’s important to me as an advocate, but also as a resident of Cambridge, that we protect every single member of our community who is able to move around,” Lawrence said.
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quoted in a Globe editorial includes cyclist awareness, “experienced cyclists, too, often need reminding never to assume that drivers will do the right thing…the safest thing is to always assume no one can see you”.
@pete. This is victim-blaming. Even cautious cyclists can be hit.
The best solution is to improve street infrastructure and mandate truck safety features.
We need increased awareness and safety measures from those operating potentially dangerous vehicles.
Glad to see increased awareness, but we need action, not more delays and flimsy excuses. People are getting hurt and dying.
The biggest issue is the right turn at a light when a bike lane is present infrastructure in this city. That is what has to change or else we will keep seeing more cyclists die. Hampshire street between 5-6 PM is just wild. You have a line on bikes going straight on the right, where on the left you have a line of cars 10 deep, and every other one wants to take a right. It is a recipe for disaster.
@Brocktoon. +1. There are infrastructure fixes that will work. All it requires is giving up a tiny fraction of parking spots. Then lives can be saved and injuries prevented. But that seems to be too much of a sacrifice for some.
Pedestrians and cyclists are being injured on nearly a daily basis. There are solutions.
https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2024/09/13/watch-police-and-bystanders-lift-car-off-trapped-pedestrian-in-somerville/
“We know that side guards are effective,” said Alex Epstein, safety and sustainability senior engineer at the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Volpe Center in Kendall Square. “They’re especially effective for people on bikes to reduce the chance of injury.”
Please, Mr. Epstein, present some research results on the effectiveness of side guards. The way for bicyclists to avoid the chance of injury is to be knocked down and go under a truck feet first instead of headfirst? Granted, it’s more survivable. But really, this is safety theater. Injury prevention has to start with crash prevention. Injury mitigation (e.g., helmets, seat belts, side guards) is only a last resort.
Here’s a solution. Cyclist must follow traffic laws period.
They go through red lights and stop signs and go way too fast in the bike lanes. They also expect cars see them when the cars are turning right.
Cyclist must be responsible and they’re not.
my plan b, Cyclists don’t care what happens as long as they can keep on pedaling, pedestrians be damned. I guess this is one way to cull the population.