An MIT professor died Wednesday from injuries sustained in an Aug. 21 bicycle crash at Massachusetts Avenue and Memorial Drive, an intersection where bicycle advocates had warned of safety problems and mounted a campaign for improvements just weeks before the crash.
Thomas Rose, 37, was struck in a collision with a motor vehicle around 6 a.m. on Aug. 21, according to the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office. Rose was taken to Massachusetts General Hospital and died Sept. 2. The driver remained at the scene.
Authorities have released few details about how the crash occurred, including what direction Rose was traveling or how the collision happened. The crash remains under investigation by the district attorney’s office and Massachusetts State Police.
Rose, an archaeometallurgy expert who studied ancient metal production, joined MIT in January and was in the process of establishing a new laboratory and welcoming his first graduate students.
On Friday afternoon, members of the MIT community, local cyclists and other mourners gathered at Killian Court, a block east of the Mass. Ave. and Memorial Drive intersection, to hold a silent vigil in honor of Rose. Around 60 people attended, with many tearing up as they filtered forward to place tealight candles before a makeshift memorial of bicycle helmets and flower bouquets.
State Rep. Mike Connolly said at the vigil Friday that he had received new information about the crash.
“It’s my understanding that a truck was involved, and some of the reports that I’ve heard would suggest that the driver would appear to be at fault,” Connolly said. “I certainly am calling for accountability for the driver of the truck.”
Connolly said he had spoken multiple times Friday with the Middlesex District Attorney’s office and had also spoken with State Police, the Department of Conservation and Recreation (who manages Memorial Drive) and Cambridge officials.
The vigil was organized by Alexa Gomberg, a member of MIT’s Graduate Student Council whose friend, fellow MIT graduate student Minh-Thi Nguyen, was killed by a truck while biking to campus in 2024. Gomberg said she and Nguyen met in middle school before attending the same high school and enrolling into MIT together. Gomberg said the experience of losing her friend taught her that a fatal crash can deeply affect people regardless of whether they knew the victim.
At the vigil, Gomberg said she “wasn’t surprised at all to see people publicly mourning [Rose],” and that it would be “weird” if the preventable death of a young human didn’t evoke feelings.
A top crash site
The intersection had already been the target of Cambridge Bike Safety advocacy. The volunteer group put up banners there in July highlighting what it says is widespread disregard of a red right-turn arrow and calling on residents to support broader safety improvements along Memorial Drive. The group has advocated for changes along the state-controlled roadway since 2019.
Chris Cassa, a Cambridge Bike Safety volunteer and MIT lecturer, said the placement of the traffic signals can confuse drivers. The signal telling drivers not to turn right is positioned off to the side, while green lights for traffic continuing straight are directly in front of them.
In a video uploaded by the YouTube channel Petru Sofio in 2023, 55 of 102 drivers who encountered the red right-turn arrow proceeded through it anyway. The observation was not an official traffic study and compliance could vary at other times.
Advocates are calling for both signal changes and physical alterations to the intersection. Cassa said a “protected intersection,” which uses curbs or other barriers to tighten the turning radius, could force drivers turning from Massachusetts Avenue onto Memorial Drive to slow down before crossing the paths of bicyclists and pedestrians.
“If you can just kind of put some obstruction there, it makes people turn at a little bit more responsible speed,” Cassa said. Slower turns, he said, also give bicyclists and pedestrians more time to recognize that a vehicle is turning and react.
MassDOT identified the intersection as one of the state’s top 200 crash clusters based on crashes from 2020 through 2022. The agency also identified the area as a top 5% bicycle crash cluster based on data from 2012 through 2021, with 61 reported bicycle crashes.
Rose is at least the fifth pedestrian or bicyclist killed in a crash along Memorial Drive since 2014. Pedestrians Mark C. Keiser, Molly Doub and Juzhen Feng were killed in crashes in 2014, 2017 and 2020, respectively, while bicyclist John H. Corcoran was killed near the BU Boathouse in 2024.
Communication concerns
The crash has also exposed confusion over how information about serious incidents on state-controlled roads moves between state and Cambridge officials.
Cambridge Police and Fire responded to the crash alongside State Police, according to the district attorney’s office. But because Memorial Drive is under state jurisdiction, State Police took responsibility for the investigation.
Cambridge Police communications director Jennie Lopez said the department is “not necessarily provided with additional information or updates” once State Police takes over a case. City spokesperson Jeremy Warnick similarly said Cambridge may not learn the subsequent medical status of someone injured in a crash when a state agency is leading the investigation.
Massachusetts State Police, which is investigating the crash with the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office, has released little information about what happened. When asked Friday for more information about the crash and how agencies communicated about it, State Police directed Cambridge Day to the district attorney’s office, which responded by sending a link to the press release.
Without timely follow-up from state authorities, bike safety advocates grew concerned about a communication breakdown between the state and the city. Although the city was involved in the emergency response, it remains unclear what information Cambridge received afterward or when city officials learned Rose had died.
Cassa said the lack of information after a serious crash is troubling because officials need to understand what happened before deciding whether safety interventions are necessary.
“That should trigger some sort of communication and some sort of thought about what interventions might work,” Cassa said.
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