BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

Sucks!

10:25 p.m., so pitch dark, but good weather.

I was at Northland Library all evening; got there by bike but my son rode the bike home. Same bike & helmet. It was good to see how I look in the dark.

I hope the cyclist is ok., And I offer this just for context:

The PG article identifies the location as "Armco Road." There is no Armco Road in Butler Twp., but there is Armco Drive - which is in the Lyndora neighborhood, and still a fairly busy residential neighborhood fronted with a strip-mall type business area. My recollection is the area is pretty well-lit between street lights and illuminated parking areas and businesses, etc.

(Point being, this was not a dark, lonely country road.)

Being bright like that may be worse than a dark, lonely road. Nearly all strip mall business districts have lights glaring straight sideways, and serve more to distract and obscure than illuminate properly.

Agreed.

Some clarification to what ALMKLM said above. I ride Armco Drive pretty regularly as part of one of my routes. What you've described sounds to me like Hansen Avenue -- strip mall access, residences, well lit, fairly busy.

Armco Drive runs west off Hansen Avenue at the Pullman Viaduct that crosses Connoquenessing Creek. It runs about 3/4 mile till it intersects Bessemer Avenue Extension on the west end.

The road runs beside AK Steel (formerly Armco Steel hence the name) with it on the south side of the road and the AK parking lot for workers on the north side. Overflow parking from the lots is along ths south side of the road.

The road is pretty wide through here and has good sight clearances. Going west to esat is a slight downhill and it's possible to do 18-20 mph without much effort.

AK runs odd hours for their shifts; I'm not sure if this is at shift change and could be the result of that.

The only other places that are likely are a couple of intersections at the east end near the Viaduct. Becuase Armco intersects these streets obliquely, the sight lines along Armco from these streets is not good. It would be pretty easy here to pull out in front of a cyclist riding eiter direction on Armco.

Then there's the possible/probable "invisbility" factor here. Since no car driver expects for a cyclist to be on this road at 10;30 PM, you simply aren't there. Even if you're lit up.(Same old problem. Sigh.)

I hope whoever it is is going to be OK. Life Flight sounds pretty serious, though.

Checked the local rag, the Butler Eagle about 1:45 PM for additional info. It was a male cyclist, but as of Saturday morning when they put the paper to bed, his name or condition had not been released.

If we take those scumbs off of their ACCESS csrds we would have money to do lots in this state! Also if the cyclist ride facing traffic perhaps they would have a better chance of survival! —Debbie Sue Lauth Croyle

Amazing that people could ever think riding into traffic would be safer. I can't even imagine how terrible that would be.

Hope the injured person is ok and they find justice.

@rsprake -- remember, this IS Butler County, after all.

@cdavey - thanks for the better description - I am more familiar with Hansen Avenue, and thought it worthwhile to point out.

@ALMKLM - You're welcome. When I first read the PG article, I caught the mistake with Armco Road like you did, but you had already pointed it out. i just added to it.