Tam Valley bicycle accident jump-starts call for road safety
Jim Staats
Marin IJ, June 14, 2009
A San Francisco woman is continuing her recovery from devastating injuries suffered last month when she was hit by two cars while riding her bicycle in Tamalpais Valley, and local residents and groups have jump-started a call for safer road conditions.
The busy stretch of Highway 1 near Tam Junction has been the subject of numerous calls for speed-limit signs and wider shoulders by community members over the years.
The May 26 accident in which Claire Diepenbrock, 26, was struck twice while riding the slim shoulder on Shoreline Highway near Tennessee Avenue might be the unfortunate impetus for new safety measures to help pedestrians, bikers and drivers.
Community activists and groups including the Tamalpais Community Services District and Marin County Bicycle Coalition have been re-energized by the incident.
"The collision has really underscored the dangerous scenario on Shoreline Highway," said Kim Baenisch, executive director of the Marin County Bicycle Coalition, noting letters seeking changes were sent to local politicians and the state department of transportation.
"Unfortunately, it often takes a great calamity for people to wake up to a great problem," she said. "We've been asking for changes for years for that particular stretch of road."
Diepenbrock, a frequent cyclist in the area who works for a Mill Valley adventure company, was showing improvement and transferred Friday to a rehabilitation center at Kaiser Permanente Vallejo Medical Center, according to her mother, Helen Diepenbrock.
Diepenbrock spent last week at a trauma center at Kaiser hospital in Sacramento following recovery time at Marin General Hospital for injuries including multiple fractures to her skull, jaw, cheekbones and ribs, a broken clavicle and punctured lung, her mother said.
"Doctors are very hopeful about her condition," said Diepenbrock, a Sacramento resident.
She said health officials were still assessing trauma to her brain.
"They've really been impressed with the rate of her improvement."
Requested road improvements near the site of Diepenbrock's collision included lowering the speed limit from 35 mph to 25 mph between Loring Road and Flamingo Avenue, wider shoulders, interactive speed signs and a crosswalk at Flamingo Avenue, Baenisch said.
County Supervisor Charles McGlashan has expressed interest in helping to seek road improvements in the area.
A Caltrans spokesman on Friday declined to comment until further investigation into the requests could be made.
From 2006 through August 2008, that stretch of Highway 1 was the site of five collisions involving bicycles and one involving a pedestrian, according to the California Highway Patrol. There were 85 collisions on that section from 2003 to 2007, resulting in 38 injuries.
Tamalpais Valley residents recently celebrated a new crosswalk at the intersection of Tennessee Avenue as the latest achievement in years of effort to slow down drivers on the state highway bisecting the region.
Michele Samuels, a Pine Hill Road resident, said as a mother, cyclist and frequent pedestrian on local roads, more safety measures were long overdue. She blamed Diepenbrock's accident on a lack of any shoulder on most of that roadway.
"I hate for Claire's accident to be in vain," she said. "People have been great trying to move this along, but there's nothing like a tragedy and someone almost losing their life to get things in motion.
"How many more accidents are going to happen just because it takes this kind of time to get things approved?"
