Wife of Kamloops cyclist critically injured in collision with truck questions city's road-safety approach
CBC
Andrew van der Westhuizen was biking down to pick up his young daughter from the school bus when an accident changed his life forever.
The Kamloops, B.C., man was riding down a divided multi-use path from the city's Juniper neighbourhood when he collided with an industrial truck on the afternoon of May 11. He's been in hospital in critical care in Vancouver since the crash.
Now his wife is sharing their story in hopes of preventing another cycling tragedy, by getting the city to reconsider how it approaches multi-use infrastructure.
Most pressingly, Jen van der Westhuizen is looking for answers as to why large trucks would be allowed to regularly cross a multi-use lane used by cyclists.
The City of Kamloops has identified that vulnerable road users like cyclists are over-represented in high-severity crashes — being involved in 14 per cent of all crashes, but making up 50 per cent of major injury and fatal crashes.
Earlier this year, the Interior city committed to try to reduce accidents on its roads to zero, including collisions involving bikes and pedestrians. So far, it has gathered survey information from residents about their collisions and is now gathering more data.
Jen said her in-laws were visiting the week of the crash, so the whole family had planned to bike down to pick up the couple's eldest daughter from the school bus. They were running late so she went ahead to make sure someone would be there when the bus arrived.
She was waiting at the bottom of the hill when she got a call from another mom saying there had been an accident and traffic was blocked in both directions.
She assumed Andrew would be helping out since he has a medical background, being a radiologist at Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops.
She waited with a group of children, but started to get worried when her calls didn't get through to Andrew and her mother-in-law. Finally she reached her father-in-law, who told her Andrew was in the crash.
She said police officers in an unmarked vehicle witnessed the crash and called it in immediately, meaning first responders were able to start providing care as soon as possible.
"Those moments at that period of time made all the difference," Jen said.
Andrew was taken to hospital with severe abdominal injuries and a major concussion. Kamloops staff stabilized him enough to be flown to Vancouver.
Since the crash, he's undergone six surgeries at Vancouver General Hospital and received more than 50 units of blood.
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