No charges have been filed in the bicycling death of Rachel Giblin, but a story in Wednesday's Charlotte Observer raises some interesting questions.
Rachel, 15, and her brother, Tommy, were riding a tandem bicycle in a paceline with their parents in September's Breakaway to the Beach MS 150 charity bike ride. The bike went down, Rachel was run over by a passing trailer pulled by a pickup truck, and she died soon afterward at the hospital.
Observer reporter Kirsten Valle examined the key question in the case — what made the bike fall — in a story headlined “Family pushed S.C. on cyclist's fatal spill.”
The South Carolina Highway Patrol has laid the blame on unsafe cycling. The police report concluded that the tandem tipped over when its front wheel caught the back tire of the father's bicycle.
A witness told investigators that the tires overlapped when they passed him earlier, but he he was 80 to 100 feet behind when the accident happened and he couldn't see what happened. However, Tommy, who piloted the tandem, said they were riding with 18 to 22 inches between the tires.
Interestingly, the Highway Patrol report didn't include its interview with the driver of the Ford F-350 pickup, a wide vehicle with dual rear tires. The Observer quotes the interview:
“I passed (the Giblins) in my truck, you know, cleared them, and then all of a sudden, I heard something hit my trailer, and I looked in my rearview mirror, and I seen several bikes go down.”
The Giblin's attorney, Judson Orrick, said he concludes that the sound the driver heard was the trailer hitting the bike.
Two accident reconstructionists contacted by the Observer came to different conclusions. One noted that the bike rotated as it fell because it was struck by the trailer for behind. Another said such a rotation is possible because of a sharp turn, such as from wheels touching.
Something not reported, and possibly not available, is how close the truck passed the tandem. Leaving a safe margin could have avoided the fatality, even if the tandem did go down on its own.
South Carolina doesn't set a specific minimum to pass cyclists on the road, although a 5-foot clearance has been proposed in the state legislature. Current law, the Observer reports, requires only that “a safe distance” be maintained.
That sounds like useless language if it isn't enough to prosecute the driver of the truck in this case.
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