Crash Turns Injured Cyclist’s Life Upside Down
Chris Farney is a cycling advocate who helps neighbors, local kids, and coworkers with bike mechanic work. He advocates for safety and awareness of cyclists when talking to people day to day. Chris tries to educate everyone that he meets about the local laws. He attends city bicycle friendly planning meetings and participates on committees to help start a local free bike share in Saint Joseph, Missouri. He races mountain and cyclocross for his local bike shop but enjoys MTB the most. Chris has a hand in building and planning the singletrack network.
From 2005-2011, he was a part-time bike commuter, but started riding every day, anywhere he needed to go after starting his first job. After surviving a Colorado winter with his car never leaving the garage, he sold it to buy another bike. Chris has been a car-free bike commuter since September of 2011. He owns eight bikes and rides seven of those regularly.
Chris’ six-year-old son is also a bike enthusiast. His fourth word was “bike” and his life has followed accordingly. At 16 months, he was scooting around on a balance bike. Chris and his son spend most of their time together riding bikes in any weather, season, or terrain.
Bikes are Chris’ life. Everyone knows this about him, but few understand how time off from the bike truly affected him.
On June 7, 2017, a 19-year-old driver hit Chris with the left front end of her SUV when she was making a left turn. Chris was on his way back to the office from a ride during his lunch hour. As he was coming down a hill, he noticed a white SUV sitting at a stop sign about three to four blocks ahead of him.
As Chris was coming to pass the SUV on his right at the stop sign, the SUV pulled out into the intersection in front of him. Chris was going about 30 mph. He remembers trying to swerve around the SUV and was almost out into the oncoming lane, but the car just kept coming.
He remembers thinking that if the driver would even just tap the brakes and slow down a little, he could get clear and swerve around the entire front of the car. In the moment before the driver hit Chris, the car only seemed to speed up like the driver never saw him at all. In his mind, Chris was thinking “How could they not see me? I’ve been coming down this hill, completely unobstructed view with no traffic in front of me, and I’ve seen them for at least the last 4-5 seconds!”
As a daily cyclist, Chris is used to riding defensively and has avoided many crashes where people “didn’t see me” when he still had the right of way. He has a bright green backpack with a Rando-style slow moving vehicle reflector on the back of it. This was not a situation where he did not expect to be seen.
Chris is convinced that the driver was using her cell phone while waiting at the stop sign, then looked up, thought it was clear, and went. He believes that she never saw him at all.
What would Chris say to the driver or any other drivers about cyclists/safety? “Please understand the gravity of the situation of simply pushing your foot forward to propel a 6,000-pound-projectile of metal and glass forward, and how it could affect people around you if you aren’t being 100 percent attentive to where that 6,000-pound-projectile goes.”
The impact caused Chris to flip over the hood, landing down the street. He flew 50 plus feet through the air. Chris was wearing a helmet, but luckily his head never hit the pavement.
“The next thing I know I’m lying a ways down the street on my right side, and it’s like everything from my waist down hurts and is numb at the same time. I instantly knew my cervical spine was intact, as I could move my head, and I was holding my head up off the street while lying on my side,” says Chris. At first, it was like the wind had been knocked out of him. A witness called 911 and told him to lie still.
Chris looked down at his legs and saw that his right foot was bent in, and he could not move it. Initially, he could not really move anything, and it crossed his mind that his whole right leg was either broken or paralyzed. Then, a paramedic ran Chris through tests, and he was able to slightly wiggle his toes. Paramedics put him in a neck brace and put him onto a stretcher.
He realized that it was very painful to put any weight on both feet, but especially the right one, and it hurt a lot to put weight on his left hip/buttock. Chris was then transported to the hospital by ambulance for multiple areas of road rash to his body, deep cuts to the top of his right foot, and a large patch of black tire marks from the car’s front tire impact. An EMT suspected that Chris had multiple broken bones and internal injuries due to the nature of the crash.
In the ER, Chris had an ultrasound of his abdomen, then x-rays of his cervical spine, pelvis, left femur/knee, right and left foot and ankle. Chris also had a CT with contrast of his abdomen. He suffered seven broken bones between both feet (four on the right and three on the left).
His bike was totaled.
A police officer talked to Chris at the emergency room shortly after he arrived. Chris later found out that the driver was not ticketed, as she had followed all traffic regulations—she came to a full stop. The police officer told Chris that he could not give the driver a ticket just because she did not see him and went on to state that a ticket was not necessary to assign fault, as the police report clearly did that.
No ticket. No legal consequences. No points or fines. No change in the driver’s behavior.
Three months after the crash, Chris was finally able to get back on the bike. “I was so thankful just to be back on the bike again, three months off it was an eternity for me, I think I actually cried a few tears of joy on the first bike ride.” It took him a few weeks of riding to get comfortable again on the bike. He got very apprehensive when cars were at stop signs waiting for him to pass, wondering if they would remain stopped when he passed in front of them. “It certainly does mess with your head. Every time I’m cruising down a hill at 30 mph, my mind goes back to thinking about how it would feel to get launched through the air over the hood of a car again,” he says.
Chris missed out on a lot of time on his bike and could not attend bike events as a result of his injuries. He missed approximately 60 days of riding, 60 days that he would have ridden his bike had it not been for injuries sustained in the crash. He missed racing in an MTB race called the Meltdown, Gravel Worlds, which he had participated in the last three years, and a 100-mile MTB race in Missouri called the Ozark Trail 100 which he won last year.
He was not able to ride on a family vacation to Winter Park and had planned to do the Breck 100 MTB race in Breckenridge while he was there. He could not participate in cyclocross season, as the doctor did not allow him to run. Chris has raced competitive cyclocross for the last six years, and this was the first year he was not able to race a season of cross.
In addition, his injuries kept him from going on a bikepacking trip with his friends. “Most importantly, I missed the camaraderie and social aspect of going to these events and meeting with people that I have formed friendships with over the last few years. I missed the camping and riding with my good friends,” says Chris.
The crash affected his home and work life, too. For the 10 weeks that he was limited with his weight bearing status, his wife and co-workers had to drive him to/from work and anywhere else he needed to go. He was unable to participate in daily parenting duties such as carrying his two-year old to bed or getting up at night to help the kids; duties that he and his wife typically share.
While recovering, Chris missed out on a lot of fun with his kids and friends that summer. He typically rides around the neighborhood with his son in the evenings. Chris says that it was very difficult having to tell his son every evening that they could not do that or do their Saturday morning ride to the bike shop. He was unable to swim with his kids in the pool or the lake for the first six weeks after the injury. He went to the playground down the street with his son a few times but was unable to play with him there.
He could not go to an MLB game with his friends, because he could not walk or sit in a hot stadium as that would cause too much swelling in his foot.
Going through all the doctors’ appointments and dealing with the extra trips and appointments caused Chris a great deal of stress, although he says it was more stressful not being able to exercise or move like he is used to. This affected his attitude, sleep, and mood. “Exercising is a big part of my life balance, and after the crash I was way out of balance,” says Chris.
In order to make cycling safer, Chris believes that stiffer penalties for endangering or injuring bicyclists or pedestrians are needed. He would like to see the minimum driving age raised a year or two. “Teenagers aren’t able to vote, but they can pilot a huge hunk of metal around people and cyclists/pedestrians willy nilly? Seems crazy. If kids didn’t have cars, they would bike/walk more, too. They would think about solving problems in our communities regarding transportation from a young age,” says Chris.
According to a report by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, cyclist and pedestrian deaths rose in 2018 compared to 2017. There were 51 more cyclist fatalities in 2018, which is a 6.3 percent increase. This is the highest number since 1990. That is 859 too many cyclist fatalities. Experts say that distracted drivers and bigger vehicles could be the reasons.
Chris feels that distracted drivers are the number one issue and that we need to keep trying to fight that. Texting while driving means you are distracted. “I see people scrolling through their newsfeed and driving all the time. That’s insane. I don’t know how to solve the distracted driver issue. I think that’s the biggest safety threat to cyclists that has come up big in the last 5 years.”
For the latest on distracted driving legislation in Colorado, check out this blog post.