We shared these reflections in a BikeWalk Provo email and wanted to give them a lasting home here on our blog.
Stan Benfell’s death has left a profound absence in our community. In this special newsletter, we share reflections from George Handley, Aaron Skabelund, and Jason Lane.
Join us for the Day of Remembrance Ride on November 15. Details are at the end of this email.
Stan’s daughter, Grace Benfell, also wrote about her father’s death in The Salt Lake Tribune. Read Grace’s op-ed.
Photo courtesy of Grace Benfell.
Photo courtesy of Grace Benfell.
George Handley
Stan Benfell, age 63, was tragically struck and killed on his bike at the overpass over I-15 at 1860 South on the morning of September 7 as he was headed over to his favorite ride along the Lakeview Parkway. He had found a loop to his liking, about 25 miles, that he had been enjoying for the better part of the summer. Stan and I shared almost 30 years of a very close friendship that included working, worshiping, socializing, and recreating together. My life will never be the same without him. He was a universally admired professor and administrator at BYU, a beloved local church leader and member, and a generous friend to many. He left behind his beloved wife and three children and two daughters-in-law.
Stan Benfell with Dan Nielson on the White Rim in Canyonlands. Photo by Stan Benfell.
He commuted by foot or by bike and loved recreating on a bike whenever possible. It was a spiritual practice for him as much as it was an effort to stay healthy. He especially loved the ride he was on that morning because it was a loop he had discovered that swung through southwest Provo and up and around the Provo River Delta before he would head back to his home on the east bench. He had recently told a friend about how much he loved this loop but had specifically mentioned that the only part he didn’t like was the overpass. I spent many hours riding with him over the years, and I can attest that he was a very cautious and careful rider.
Stan Benfell riding in the JEM Trail area near Hurricane, Utah. Photo by George Handley.
It was clear that the impact of the collision was fatal from the moment it happened. Some witnesses saw his body on the road before the ambulance had arrived, and no one was attending to him, presumably because he was already gone. He was located considerably farther to the north from the intersection on the overpass as it starts to drop down to University Avenue, suggesting, of course, that the car hit him at a high speed. The police informed the family that Stan had run the red light, not the driver. I still haven’t been able to verify that they used the UDOT cameras to come to this conclusion, which I hope they did, because that would at least bring many of us and his family some peace of mind, knowing we have an accurate account of what happened. I say this especially because it would have been very much out of character for him to have decided to run the red light intentionally.
Whoever made the mistake, the overpass remains dangerous. If you have ridden that overpass, as I have, you know that you must be on high alert because the cars are moving quickly and they aren’t expecting to see bikers. There are several places moving in both directions where things could go wrong. I only learned after Stan’s death that there is an unmarked access by bike path, even though it is convoluted and passes through some sketchy areas beneath the overpass. The bottom line is that it is clearly an intersection that needs our attention.
As someone who served for 8 years on the city council, I feel sick that I had not ever given this intersection my attention. I am glad to hear that Provo engineers are taking a closer look. I don’t think Stan would want his death to turn into a political battle. He was a patient and forgiving man, and human error is always a factor. However, as a former elected official, I know that chief among the responsibilities of government is public safety, and the point of those efforts is to reduce the likelihood of human error as well as to minimize its consequences. Stan’s death is simply not acceptable to me. I owe it to my dear friend to make that overpass and many other locations in the city safer for bikers. This location feels especially urgent since the city invested a great deal into one of the most beautiful and safe bike paths in the city along Lakeview Parkway. We don’t want to have gone to that effort, only to then invite riders to put themselves at risk at the overpass.
I am more grateful than ever for friendship and for advocates like BikeWalk Provo who work hard to make this a safer community.
Aaron Skabelund
On Labor Day morning, I learned that a cyclist had been hit and killed in a collision around Lakeview Parkway and University Avenue. This is the sort of news I dread. I am familiar with just about every street in Provo. I bike nearly everywhere in the city, completing almost all my trips within Provo on a bike. I walk with my dog at least once, sometimes twice, a day within and sometimes beyond my neighborhood. And I jog several times a week and for nearly two decades I have often used those runs to think about how we can make our streets safer for those on bike and foot. I had ridden across University Avenue on Lakeview Parkway, at least once with George, and have biked on the Lakeview Parkway Trail, where Stan was headed, many times. I recognized that the area, where I-15 highway ramps converge with city roads, is treacherous.
Rarely does this dread become personal. This time it was. That afternoon when I learned that the cyclist was Stan, I broke down. I was not a close friend of Stan’s, merely a friend and work associate. Unlike George, I had never biked with him. We had interacted at BYU’s Kennedy Center for International Relations, where he had served for years as an associate director. I chatted with Stan at events and had meals with him as we hosted guest speakers. Our longest conversation was on the train when we happened to run into each other as we traveled to the airport. Stan was smart and amiable, gifted at putting people, including socially awkward folks like me, at ease.
Part of my dread of learning about automobile-bicyclist or automobile-pedestrian collisions is related to regret. Because I have identified many of the dangerous places in our active transportation in Provo, when a crash happens, I wonder if I could have done more to make the location safer. That was true this time too. When I first learned about the collision, the specifics of where it had occurred had not yet been announced. (We still don’t, and may never, know for sure what exactly happened.) Because I was familiar with the area, in my mind I immediately thought of several likely spots where it may have happened. After creating a ghost bike by spray painting white one donated by the Provo Bike Hub, my sister Becky and I placed it at the beginning of the Lakeview Parkway Trail and surveyed the area in person. I recalled several places I had previously identified while biking or running that needed to be made safer. But it was too late for Stan.
The ghost bike Aaron and his sister Becky placed at the start of the Lakeview Parkway Trail in Stan’s memory.
I hope it won’t be too late for others. Motivated by a desire to try to prevent another tragedy, Bryce Johnson and I visited the site repeatedly and then met with city transportation engineer Vern Keesler at the crash site to discuss what the city and UDOT might do. Stan had been hit crossing the east intersection where the northbound freeway off-ramp crosses Lakeview Parkway and becomes University Avenue. That intersection is under state jurisdiction, so Vern said he’d follow up with his colleagues at UDOT about what could be done to enhance safety.
The only alternative to going through that intersection for cyclists coming from the east is to leave the roadway at the corner of the driveway to the old Novell building and use a multi-use trail that crosses under that road and then makes a tight switchback over I-15 to the start of the Lakeview Parkway Trail on the west side of the highway. The best route for bicyclists coming from east Provo is to take Lakeview Parkway from South State Street, and if a cyclist had just ridden on that dangerous road, with its narrow shoulder, over two railway bridges, and drivers speeding by just feet away, it seemed likely they would continue to stay on the Parkway across that interchange and not opt for the multi-use path. How, we wondered, could we make it more attractive for cyclists to use the pathway, which would reduce the risk of a catastrophic crash?
Years earlier, I had noticed that the transition from the road to the path at the corner was uneven, and I wished I had brought it to the attention of the city then. Would that have made a difference? Would the city have acted? Who knows, but all we could do was to do what we could now. Vern agreed to improve that section. He also suggested the city add better signage along the pathway to make it more inviting and visible. (In our conversations with other cyclists, we discovered some who didn’t even know the pathway existed and thought the only option was to stay on the Parkway.) We also discovered that the fencing along the pathway on the bridge over I-15 was leaning at a dangerous angle and was a hazard for those on foot and bike and a possible danger to drivers below.
An uneven transition from Lakeview Parkway to the multi-use path near the former Novell building.
Leaning fencing on the path over I-15, one of the hazards Aaron and Bryce identified during their visits.
Without entirely rebuilding the intersection at the cost of millions of dollars, this was probably the best we could do. It felt—and is—reactive and narrow in its focus. We need to act proactively and in a more comprehensive fashion. It shouldn’t take human sacrifices to make our public streets safe, and in this case, a tragedy to make access to one of Provo’s most popular trails safe.
Jason Lane
Words That Kill: How Language Fails Cyclists and Their Families
By Jason Lane, Member, BikeWalk Provo | Director, Utah Chapter of Families for Safe Streets
On Labor Day, September 7, Stanley Benfell rode his bicycle near the intersection of Lakeview Parkway and the University Avenue I-15 off-ramp in Provo. A driver exiting the freeway entered the intersection and struck him. He was transported to Utah Valley Hospital, where he died.
By midmorning, Utah newsrooms had covered the story. KSL reported that a man had been "hit and killed by a vehicle." Fox13 reported that "a car collided with a bicycle." In every account, a human being -- Stan -- disappeared from the sentence entirely, replaced by a machine.
I didn't know Stan. But I know exactly how his family is feeling right now. The yearning to have a loved one back brands a person in a way that changes them forever. Memories become unbearably precious because you can't make any new ones. That absence doesn't fill. It becomes a presence of its own -- always there, in your home, in your quiet moments, in the spaces where that person used to be.
I know this because I lost my son Caleb in a crosswalk in Provo in 2018. And I know that the language used to describe these crashes matters -- not just as a matter of journalism, but as a matter of justice for families like Stan's, and like mine.
Researchers call it "agent erasure"; the grammatical removal of the person responsible for a crash. When a newsroom writes "a car collided with a bicycle," no driver made a decision. No driver entered an intersection. A machine acted alone. That framing shapes how the public assigns blame, how investigators approach their work, and how far a grieving family can get when they seek accountability. Studies show that passive, vehicle-centered crash language makes readers 30% more likely to blame the victim, and before any investigation has concluded.
This is not a new problem. In August, two 13-year-old girls riding an e-scooter together were struck and killed by a pickup truck at an intersection in Syracuse. Their names were never released. Days before Stan died, a University of Utah first-year student from California was killed in a scooter crash on campus. The university called it "an accident involving an electric scooter" and said nothing more. Five people killed in Utah in the span of weeks -- and in nearly every account, the same pattern: no driver named, no decision described, no one held responsible in the language of the story.
The Associated Press Stylebook has been clear for years: use "crash," not "accident." Make the driver the subject of the sentence. These are not political choices. They are accurate ones.
Stan Benfell deserved accurate coverage. So did Brandon Rogers, 43, a Grantsville business owner struck by a car before dawn on the I-80 frontage road in Magna in August; his wife was running nearby training for a half marathon when it happened. Police called the crash "an accident." So did the 70-year-old cyclist who died in Kaysville just weeks after Stan (his name still has not been released), described only as having been "involved in a crash with a vehicle." No driver in the sentence, no decision made, no one responsible. The pattern did not pause after Labor Day.
Stan's pencil is down. So is Caleb's. But those of us still here -- family members, friends, advocates, journalists, elected officials -- can pick up their pencils on their behalf. We can choose language that tells the truth. We can pass laws that match the gravity of the loss. We can build roads that stop making these choices so easy to ignore.
As we gather on November 15 for the World Day of Remembrance, we carry that responsibility with us. We honor Stan, Caleb, and every person whose absence now lives in someone's home, and we recommit to the work their memories demand.
Photo courtesy of Grace Benfell.
