He was wearing his “bright green shirt” that day, his whimsically self-described “Please Don’t Hit Me” shirt, the one he often wore in thinking that something like this, what follows, would never happen to him. It was around 4:30 PM on August 6, 2020, “in the middle of the pandemic,” fortunately the hospitals weren’t feeling the full effects of overcapacity as yet or things could have been even worse for BYU Professor Steve Goates on that dire day. Using active transportation myself I traveled this time to Orem for an interview, meeting Steve at a local cafe near his home to learn more about an accident he was involved in here in Provo. We had recently met during BikeWalk Provo’s “World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims” gathering in North Park where I first became aware of this traffic victim’s incident of injury that happened over two years ago on our busy city streets.
Steve doesn’t remember a lot about the accident that changed his life, he tells me that most of what he knows comes from witnesses, police reports, and medical staff at Utah Valley Hospital. He was on his way home from his office located on BYU’s Main Campus, riding his bike north on North University Avenue, a route he has biked for thirty-three years with “only close calls.” After passing 3300 N and coming up to the 3700 N intersection, where he routinely turns left towards home, Steve begins to move over into traffic so he can access the center lane and then the left turn lane. “A car waved me over, about half way over into the 2nd lane and the car behind me hit me.” He collided with the grill, was tossed up into and broke the windshield of that car, before flying over the top and landing hard on the pavement behind the car. Steve had texted his wife just before leaving the office, checking the app “Find My Friends” she was wondering why he was at Utah Valley Hospital. “Did he go to visit somebody,” she supposed.
Steve sustained a concussion, a broken clavicle and some ribs, a break in his C-1 vertebra and was in a cervical collar for four months, along with many stitches in his right arm, cuts and skin punctures. It will be years before the trauma of the accident subsides and, although he has a new bike now, he’s no longer commuting and rides his bike only for recreation on our local multi-use paths. In all the forty years he’s been teaching at BYU and riding a bicycle to campus, Steve's become well versed in bike safety. But not all automobile drivers are, the driver in this case “admitted to not watching the road.” What else can be done along with advocating for safer streets to prevent further traffic violence like this? Steve thinks “red light signal cameras” at intersections would help and he likes the many improvements spoken about by Councilor Rachel Whipple at the Remembrance Day gathering.
