COLBERT, WA -- A woman running the Spokane to Sandpoint relay race Friday morning was hit by a car on the Newport Highway near Colbert, according the KXLY News web site.
KXLY repported the accident happened around 8:15 a.m. at the intersection of Newport Highway, also known as Highway 2, and East Colbert Road.
Officers say the woman was attempting to cross the highway when she was hit by a 17-year-old driver.
A MedStar helicopter was called to the scene and airlifted the woman to Sacred Heart with serious injuries.
Officers say the driver was not at fault because there was no crosswalk.
2 comments:
Wait--driver not at fault because there's no crosswalk?
Maybe the law is different for a highway intersection than for city streets or different in Idaho than in Washington. I thought the law read that ANY intersection is a legal pedestrian crossing with or without a crosswalk.
All drivers and cyclists must yield to a pedestrian the minute he/she sets foot into the street at an intersection. (I don't know the law on mid-block crossers--they're jaywalking but that doesn't mean I don't yield.)
And of course there was a second accident, this time with a fatality, in the same event the next day when a driver (possibly under influence of alcohol) crossed the center line and struck a cyclist and runner. The cyclist was killed; runner is in the hospital in critical condition.
As they said at the end of Hill Street Blues, "Let's be careful out there."
--barb
I think we'll be hearing more about this Barb, because there are a lot of elements here that add up to trouble. I also heard on TV this morning that local law enforcement hadn't been notified about this event in advance, and were not pleased about it, because they would have liked to provide some sort of traffic management or support, considering how busy some of the roadways being used for this relay are.
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