SDPD Still Silent on Crash That Killed Cyclist
Last November, Walter Freeman, an experienced cyclist and University City resident, was killed at the intersection of Governor Drive and Genesee Avenue by a San Diego Police Department officer in a cruiser responding to a call without lights or sirens activated. The SDPD claimed at the time that the officer was travelling the posted speed limit of 45 m.p.h., and witnesses at the scene said that Freeman turned out of a gas station parking lot, crossed two lanes, and entered the path of the cruiser. Freeman was wearing a bright reflective vest and a helmet at the time.
In the weeks after the crash, Freeman’s family pleaded publicly with the SDPD to communicate with them about the investigation. They knew Walter to be a conscientious, experienced, and safe cyclist, and could not understand how or why the deadly crash occurred.
In the months since Freeman’s death, Bike San Diego has tried to contact the SDPD several times to learn more details of the incident and the status of the investigation. The typical response from the SDPD has been silence, and we have been explicitly denied the official report into the crash (which was supposedly finished in February) on the grounds that we are not family members or holders of an official media credential. When we applied for a media credential, we were denied.
Safety for All Road Users
by Larry Hogue
Larry Hogue is a writer. He lives in San Diego.
Imagine you’re standing at the corner of Governor Drive, waiting to cross Genesee Avenue. You’re waiting, and waiting, and waiting, as traffic rushes by at 45-50 miles an hour. When you get your walk signal, you have to wait as two or three of those left turners run the red light. Then a driver in the right-turn-only lane next to you decides to play “beat the pedestrian into the crosswalk,” nearly hitting you. As you’re waiting to cross Genesee on your return trip, you notice that drivers making a right turn on red onto Governor rarely come to a complete stop, and few of them check for pedestrians about to enter the intersection.
Or, imagine you’re biking eastbound on Governor, waiting at that same red light on Genesee. You’re positioned in the right through lane because it’s really too narrow to share safely. You can sense the impatience of the drivers stacking up behind you, who are just as tired as you are of waiting more than three minutes for a green light. The instant the lane becomes wide enough to share, the driver behind you hits the gas. You feel the backdraft as the car passes within a foot of your handlebars, then the driver slams on the brakes and turns right in front of you into Vons parking lot.
This is daily life at the intersection of Genesee Avenue and Governor Drive: a quiet, walkable neighborhood collides head-on with infrastructure that privileges auto-dependent commuters traveling quickly through on their way to somewhere else.
In that respect, it’s not much different than a lot of other intersections in San Diego, sharing many of the same problems: freeway-like speeds, signal timing that turns the major arterial into a barrier to cross-traffic, a refusal by city personnel to approve safety measures. Add to the mix three nearby schools, and the safety issues become even more complex.