Teen fatality last night marks 40th traffic death for San Jose

A 17 year old boy was killed last night while crossing a large intersection in south San Jose with his bicycle. The driver of the silver Toyota RAV-4 stayed on the scene, according to media reports.


This collision occurred at Branham Lane and Vistapark Drive, which features low radius turn pockets that enables drivers to make right turns at high speed at the expense of pedestrian and cyclist safety.

Investigation is ongoing, but photos from Mercury News journalist Eric Kurhi seem to show the cyclist was hit hard from behind. The Toyota’s passenger right side fender was crushed and the windshield smashed. The bike’s rear wheel is mangled.


2013 has been a particularly deadly year for cyclists and pedestrians in the Bay Area’s largest city, with this teen’s passing hitting the quarter century mark.

Story in the Mercury-News: San Jose: Boy, 17, identified as bicyclist killed in collision with SUV.

3 Comments

  1. Branham Ln is an extremely valuable east/west cycle route that should be prioritized for bike/ped improvements. It is long and has many great connections, including Ross/Leigh and Cherry going north, Dent Ave 85 crossing going south, the 87 south bike path connection to Chynoweth light rail, the 87 north bike path connection to downtown, with easy connection to Coyote creek and the Silver Creek Valley bike paths at its east end. It is the biking backbone of this area of town.

    Improving Branham is the key to increasing mode share in this part of town and making it more livable. This section is in desperate need of a road diet, from 3 to 2 lanes (goes to one lane anyway after that intersection), taking advantage of Braess’s Paradox, and allowing a proper buffered bike lane, vs the narrow sliver that exists. The intersections like Vistapark should be converted to the more standard ones like Narvaez, The turns like at Vistapark are treated as high speed on-ramps and are extremely unfriendly to both peds and bikes.

  2. RIP Anthony Garcia. After reading this article.

    I went to YouTube to see if I could find any more information about Anthony and ended up finding this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Euu2QRIuEPk

    I really hope cyclist will band together behind this video so that we do not have to lose another cyclists.

    All the Best,

    john

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