78-Year-Old SF Cyclist Is Hit By Metro Bus With No S1 Guard
SF Weekly’s Joe Eskenazi details a horrible incident last fall where an elderly man carrying full bags of recyclables was involved in a collision with the municipal bus where the victim was crushed beneath the rear of the bus due to it not being outfitted with “S1 Gard” protectors, which keep cyclists from falling in the path of the rear wheels. The police report makes no mention of this and attributes the collision to the cyclist “making a sudden left turn” into the bus. Read more below:
“Cheng Jin Lai may just be the unluckiest man in all San Francisco. This continues to be the case even after his violent death.
In the early morning of Oct. 18, the 78-year-old father of seven was peddling through SOMA with two large sacks of recyclables strapped, awkwardly, to the rear of his bicycle. A 27-Bryant bus rumbled past him and, moments later, Lai was dead, his head crushed beneath the bus’s right rear wheel.
SF Weekly subsequently revealed that Bus No. 8410 was not equipped with a polyurethane bumper-like device called an “S-1 Gard,” the sole purpose of which is to prevent people being crushed beneath a bus’s right rear wheel. These came installed on the Orion coaches of the sort that killed Lai; having one on a bus has been Muni policy since 2007.”