Last night at the City of Portland's Bicycle Advisory Committee, the new Captain and Lieutenant of the Traffic Division announced an official change in Bureau policy.

From now on, any crash that involves "physical injury to vulnerable road users where the vulnerable road user is transported by ambulance" will be investigated by an officer. In the past, the threshold for investigation was that someone had to be entered into the "trauma system" by the emergency responders en route to the hospital.

Because people can have very damaging injuries without being entered into the trauma system, and because sometimes a patient's condition will worsen after they are taken away by an ambulance or even after they get to the hospital, the past threshold left many badly injured people without a police investigation of the crash that hurt them.

While car drivers are generally defended to some degree by their insurance companies after a crash, a bicyclist can be left with big medical bills and a complicated, costly and possibly fruitless legal battle ahead of them after a crash, even if they have some form of insurance (auto, home, renter's) that might cover their bills. The lack of a police investigation can make their situation even worse.

This is a really positive change in Portland Police Bureau policy and we are very grateful for it. This is something the BTA asked the police to address, in public and in private meetings with police and city staff. We are also excited about working with Captain Larry O'Dea and Lieutenant B.H. Parman – they plan to come to most PBAC monthly meetings, and I think their interest in these meetings bodes well for the safety of Portlanders on bikes.

Another change in policy gives these crashes a distinct code in Bureau records, so that it will be easier to search for and analyze vulnerable user crash data in the future.

We're also very pleased to see the Vulnerable Roadway Users bill used in this way. When the BTA worked on this legislation last year we hoped that it would not only give prosecutors a more powerful tool than a simple traffic ticket for dealing with drivers who kill a bicyclist or a pedestrian, but that it would also enable local jurisdictions to differentiate in their enforcement practices between vulnerable road users and big-vehicle drivers, since the two groups are so very different. And it did!

Thanks, Chief Sizer, for your leadership on this! We really appreciate having bike safety taken seriously by the Portland Police Bureau.

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