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QuickTake:
The map shows the places where vehicles were involved in crashes with pedestrians and bikes in the Eugene-Springfield area over the five-year period from 2018 to 2023, the most recent year for which data is available. Some intersections and stretches of road are particularly dangerous.
On Oct. 28, 2021, Fred Tepfer was on his bicycle, turning left onto Seventh Avenue from Blair Boulevard, when a car crashed into him.
The next thing he remembered was waking up in a hospital bed. The lifelong Eugene resident, and lifelong cyclist, had only foggy memories of the collision, due to a concussion. His leg was in searing pain.
You can see Tepfer’s incident marked in the map below, pinned next to another incident that happened at the same intersection two years later.
Seventh Avenue has long been a problem area for cyclists and pedestrians, but it’s not the only one.
In all, 34 fatal pedestrian and biking collisions with vehicles occurred in Eugene and Springfield between 2018 and 2023. Dozens of other crashes resulted in severe injuries for the cyclists or pedestrians.
In addition to Seventh Avenue, other areas with multiple crashes that resulted in death or severe injuries since 2018 include:
- The intersection at River Road and the Beltline, which adjacent to a large shopping center, has seen six serious accidents.
- The roughly 3-mile stretch of Highway 99 between Sixth Avenue and the Randy Papé Beltline saw 10 serious crashes or fatalities.
- A shopping center along Springfield’s Mohawk Boulevard saw five serious incidents scattered on the edges of the plaza.
The map below marks those places and more — all the locations where vehicles were involved in crashes with pedestrians and bicycles over the five-year period from 2018 to 2023, the most recent year for which data is available.
Heavy foot traffic and high speed limits
Red pins show crashes that resulted in a fatality or severe injury, meaning the crash victim sustained severe lacerations, paralysis, broken bones or any other kind of major injury that required hospitalization.
Most vehicle-pedestrian crashes happen around areas where there’s heavy foot traffic, such as through Eugene’s downtown, combined with higher speed limits.
Noah Birnel, co-chair for the Downtown Neighborhood Association, has heard people in his community complain about some of these hot spots for years.
Sixth and Seventh avenues are “essentially a six-lane highway going through downtown,” Birnel said, “which is the place where people want to be walking.”
There have been seven serious crashes on the sections of road between Jefferson Street and Highway 99. Birnel, for one, would like to see the speed limits reduced.
“I mean, people say, ‘You know that makes it slower to get around?'” Birnel said. “Possibly very fractionally, but is that worth people’s lives for you to shave 30 seconds off of going through downtown?”
Eugene and Springfield have adopted their own variations of the nationwide Vision Zero program, with the goal of achieving zero traffic deaths by 2040 for Springfield and 2035 for Eugene. While Eugene does not currently have projects planned for downtown, other high-crash areas, such as the intersection of River Road and Hunsaker Lane, have been overhauled to improve safety.
According to Marion Suitor Barnes, public affairs manager for Eugene’s Public Works Department, the city also has submitted several grant applications for additional bike and pedestrian safety improvements on River Road. While the applications weren’t successful, the city will continue to apply.
Springfield officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Springfield and Eugene both have a crash rate of between six and seven crashes per 1,000 residents each year. It’s higher than Corvallis, which sees about five, but still lower than Salem, which sits a little over 10.
