A boy who was riding his bike to school in Shawnee was injured Tuesday morning.
The crash occurred around 7:40 a.m. at the intersection of 55th Street and Rosehill Road. Police say that the 12-year-old boy was riding his bike towards Ray Marsh Elementary when he was struck by a driver heading eastbound in the intersection.
The boy was transported to an area hospital with non-life threatening injuries. The driver of the vehicle stopped and is cooperating with police.
“We’re relieved to hear that the boy will be alright and that the driver stopped, but this is still pretty alarming,” noted BikeWalkKC’s executive director Eric Rogers. “The last thing we want to see is a child deterred from riding or walking because they’re afraid of what may happen when they do so.”
“I think what this demonstrates is that education can only go so far,” said Eric Bunch, the policy director for BikeWalkKC. “The other part of the equation has to be physical changes to the built environment that decrease the possibility that something like this will happen.”
As BikeWalkKC has stated in the past, what deserves the brunt of the blame for these crashes is the culture that values car traffic efficiency over the safety of human lives.
For more information, contact Karen Campbell, director of development and communications, at (816) 205-7056 (ext. 2) or by email at karen.campbell@bikewalkkc.org.
BikeWalkKC believes that crashes are not accidents and clothing is not an excuse.