Thomas MacMillan File Photo
Word spread fast when a stop sign-running driver crashed into Rebecca Weiner’s bicycle — and neighbors flew to the scene.
Two doctors arrived to find Weiner and her 2‑year-old daughter (who had been riding on the back of her bike) on the ground.
The doctors insisted the pair go to the hospital to get checked.
Scott McLean helped Weiner’s daughter out of her car seat. He and another neighbor scooped up the pieces of the smashed bike, Weiner’s daughter’s lunch bag and diaper bag, and brought them to Weiner’s backyard.
Frank Redente, a security and truancy officer at nearby Edgewood School, sprinted over after learning about the accident from an arriving student. He scooped up Weiner’s daughter, who knows him as “Mr. Frankie,” to help her feel better.
One neighbor, Stacey Maples, helped “manage the police, firefighter and EMT traffic-flow,” in Weiner’s words. Other neighbors phoned Weiner’s husband Mike at his Stratford office; he headed over to Yale-New Haven to meet his family.
That was the inspiring part of a crash that occurred around 8:30 a.m. last Friday at the intersection of West Elm Street and West Rock Avenue in Westville.
The rest of the story wasn’t so inspiring. It’s more of a cautionary tale, as well as a reminder of how basic bicycle safety can save lives.
Weiner, a 49-year-old business consultant, had just dropped off her older daughter at Edgewood School. She was pedaling home on her one-seater bike equipped with a Co-Pilot child seat.
Traveling westbound on West Elm, she paused at one of the four stop signs at the intersection of West Rock, a road where cars are known to travel fast at times.
She saw a 2001 Audi A6 a ways down West Rock traveling southbound toward the intersection.
“I am usually very defensive and don’t proceed even at a four-way stop til I am sure oncoming drivers are slowing down. In this case I saw the driver coming, but unfortunately this one time assumed he would stop as required, and proceeded into the intersection without waiting to be sure,” Weiner related.
“I will never be so trusting again. The driver did not stop. He never even slowed down, and may in fact have been accelerating as he approached the intersection.
“By the time I realized he wasn’t stopping it was too late for me to get out of the way, though believe me, I tried, screaming all the while. I was thrown onto the hood of his car at impact.
“Fortunately I was able to kick out and push the rear end of my bike forward so my 2‑year-old didn’t hit his car, though she was badly jolted as the bike was pushed forward by the car, and then fell.”
The driver, a 57-year-old man who lives in Beaver Hills, hopped out of the car and apologized.
“I only took my eyes off the road for two seconds!” he cried out.
Officer James Evarts responded to the scene. He subsequently wrote a report faulting the driver for the crash. He also discovered that the driver’s Audi wasn’t registered, and that the driver wasn’t insured. He charged him with both offenses.
Weiner and her daughter went by ambulance to Yale-New Haven. Weiner was treated for a mild concussion and bruises and scrapes. Her daughter was fine. Her helmet had “crunched against one of the ‘wings’” of her child seat, “and both wing and helmet dented,” Weiner reported. “But they did their jobs.”
Mom and daughter went home and surveyed the other damage: The crash had crushed mom’s and daughter’s helmets beyond repair, along with the daughter’s bike seat. Weiner felt lucky for how, thanks in part to “good helmets” and a “proper child seat,” they were spared potentially horrifying injuries.
She felt thankful, too. For her neighbors. She sent them a thank-you email message detailing all the help they gave her.
“I can’t begin to say how incredibly comforting and moving it was to feel that the entire neighborhood was there in support,” she wrote. “My husband Mike and I have said to each other many times that we can’t really imagine living anywhere other than Westville because where else could we have neighbors the likes of which we have here? And so it was this morning, yet again.”
I am so glad everything ended up okay. Our street is an amazing community and the response is as I would expect from our neighbors.
Our block watch has been trying to get the city to implement measures to get drivers to reduce speed for years and, even after putting in a safe streets study over one year ago, the city has done nothing (or at least not communicated effectively if they are doing something).
This accident is further proof the city needs to do something on the entire stretch of W. Rock Avenue from Whalley to the Yale Bowl. Drivers often blow through stop signs, they speed and they are, generally, in their own world with total disregard for the people who live and work on the street.
So happy no one was killed.