Cyclists demand safety improvements after teen hurt in Wellington Crescent crash

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This article was published 30/07/2024 (428 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A teenage cyclist was injured Monday evening after she was struck by a vehicle near the intersection of Wellington Crescent and Academy Road, renewing calls for better active-transportation infrastructure.

Winnipeg police said the crash happened at about 8:45 p.m. Monday.

The teen, who was cycling with her father, was hospitalized but has since been released, Winnipeg Police Service spokesperson Const. Dani McKinnon said Tuesday. Her father was not injured.

McKinnon said the driver, who remained at the scene, may have been experiencing a “medical event” at the time, and the investigation is continuing.

Mark Hildahl blocked traffic with his vehicle immediately after the collision. He used his paramedic training to keep the teen’s spine stable.

“My heart sunk,” he said Tuesday. “She wasn’t moving; at first I thought she might be dead.”

He said he didn’t notice that the vehicle’s driver was in medical distress, but observed that she was “very distraught.”

He said he was told the driver was later taken away by an ambulance.

Hildahl described what happened Monday night as “everybody’s worst nightmare” at a notoriously unsafe intersection.

“My heart sunk. She wasn’t moving; at first I thought she might be dead.”–Mark Hildahl

“I travel through this intersection multiple times a week, and it’s just horrible,” he said.

“The entire design of the intersection at Wellington and Academy is designed for cars, there’s nothing that’s designed for pedestrians or cyclists. So it’s extremely dangerous for everybody.”

The crash happened a short distance away from where Rob Jenner, 61, was killed in a hit-and-run on Wellington Crescent near Cockburn Street June 6.

Jenner had been cycling to his job at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

Beckham Keneth Severight, 19, has been charged with dangerous driving causing death and failing to stop at the scene.

Last week, more than 100 cyclists calling for improved infrastructure gathered outside the museum to honour Jenner’s memory.

Among them was Patty Wiens, a director of Bike Winnipeg, who blamed poor infrastructure for the crashes.

“Do you think this kid will ever get on a bike again? This is not OK. Our roads need better design,” she said. “That’s what it’s going to actually take. It’s not about enforcement, it’s about design.”

About 180 cyclists blocked cars at the intersection of Academy and Wellington as a protest on Tuesday evening.

Wiens said she wonders how many pedestrians and cyclists need to be hurt or killed before bike infrastructure becomes a priority.

“We are tired of protesting…. I don’t want to be shutting down intersections once a week,” she said. “It’s going to take some serious political will.”

Fort Rouge-East Fort Garry Coun. Sherri Rollins called the stretch of Wellington Crescent a “known gap in the cycling plan for the city”after Jenner was killed last month, and suggested her calls to install 30 km/h zones around the ward hadn’t been heard due to a lack of political will.

“We are tired of protesting…. I don’t want to be shutting down intersections once a week.”–Patty Wiens

Brent Bellamy, a Free Press columnist who writes on urban planning, was hit by a driver while cycling at the same intersection in 2019. He witnessed the aftermath of Monday’s collision.

Both Wellington Crescent and Academy Road are designed for commuters but are in the middle of a pedestrian-dense residential area, and cars “fly by” the slip lanes on Wellington Crescent, he said.

He noted that just across from where the crash happened, a piece of the fencing at St. Mary’s Academy is missing after being hit by a driver.

“It doesn’t even have a stop sign for five kilometres, from Academy all the way to Assiniboine Park… it’s actually designed to be unsafe, it’s designed to prioritize speed and traffic volumes,” he said.

Streets should be designed to account for medical emergencies, mistakes and freak accidents, Bellamy said — slower traffic, more narrow intersections, and fewer lanes all reduce the amount of time cyclists and pedestrians are interacting with cars and give them more time to escape dangerous situations.

“We have to design our streets to allow things that aren’t normal to happen, and provide as much safety as we can, as much room for error as possible on our streets,” he said.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca

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Malak Abas
Reporter

Malak Abas is a city reporter at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg’s North End, she led the campus paper at the University of Manitoba before joining the Free Press in 2020. Read more about Malak.

Every piece of reporting Malak produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.