Dangerous Intersection on Freitas Parkway Claims the Life of Beloved MTB Coach

We are heartbroken to report that a bicyclist was killed in a crash in Terra Linda on Saturday, June 28th. The victim was Chris Brignetti, coach of the Terra Linda High School MTB team, and father of two of the team’s riders. The entire Marin County Bicycle Coalition (MCBC) team would like to extend its sincere condolences to Chris’s family and community. 

While official reports often take months to complete, our understanding of the crash suggests that it was highly preventable and should have been anticipated due to a history of similar collisions at the same location. 

The crash occurred near the top of Freitas Parkway and at the intersection with Lea Drive. This section of Freitas Parkway is just a few hundred yards downhill from the Mission Pass Path, which connects to Fawn Drive in San Anselmo, and is a very popular route for travel between the Ross Valley and Terra Linda. It is one of Marin County’s official bike routes, Route 28. Despite this, Freitas Parkway is far from bicycle-friendly. When it was built, the road was intended to be a multi-lane highway connecting to Sir Francis Drake via Sleepy Hollow, a project that was never completed. This history results in a road that is far wider than traffic demand warrants, encouraging speeds far faster than is safe. 

Even on a dangerous road, this intersection sticks out. Between 2018 and 2023, four bicyclists were injured in separate crashes that each appear to exactly match the reported circumstances of Chris’s crash. In all four, a bicyclist traveling downhill on Freitas Parkway was hit by a driver making an uphill left turn from Freitas onto Lea Drive, failing to yield the right-of-way to the bicyclist. In all four of these crashes, the driver was deemed by police to be at fault. 

In the days since the recent crash, we have heard from multiple people whose lives were changed by collisions at this intersection. One was a 17-year-old who needed multiple shoulder surgeries and spent most of his senior year recovering. The earliest crash we’ve heard about was 18 years ago (!) in 2007. In that crash, the cyclist suffered a collapsed lung, a shattered leg, was in a coma for three months, and lost his livelihood (see coverage of the crash in the IJ here). Despite this gruesome history, the City of San Rafael made no meaningful changes to the intersection when resurfacing the road in 2023. This was after our Local Team, Walk/Bike San Rafael, urged the city to make safety improvements recommended in the bike plan as part of that project.

Some crashes are genuinely hard to predict or prevent. This is not one of those crashes. Had changes been made to the intersection after any of these four most recent collisions, this tragedy would have been far less likely to occur. 

Now that the unthinkable has occurred, what can be done to prevent this from happening again? We urge the San Rafael Department of Public Works to conduct an emergency safety assessment of this intersection and other similar intersections on Freitas Parkway and to implement its recommendations without delay.

To that point, we have our own recommendations:

• Implement the city’s own 2018 Bike Master Plan Project B-1, narrowing Freitas Parkway’s travel lanes and striping buffered bike lanes between the Mission Peak Path and Del Ganado Road (MCBC called for this project to be part of the 2023 resurfacing, but it was not implemented).

• Extend the existing Freitas Parkway median in both directions, forcing left-turning drivers to “square up” their turn, reducing their speed and increasing their ability to see a bicyclist traveling downhill (alternatively, the left turn lane could be eliminated entirely and the median channelized with a center line and stop control)

• Narrow the downhill lanes with flex posts or other landscaping to reduce the speed of downhill drivers and bicyclists, giving them more time to react to a driver failing to yield. 

• Eliminate or modify median landscaping to improve limited visibility.

Furthermore, the city must establish a system to communicate between the police department and the Department of Public Works to identify hotspots like this before fatal crashes occur. 

Nothing can erase this horrific tragedy. However, we must do everything possible to ensure it does not occur again. Failing to make changes after the four identical injury crashes over the last few years was a huge mistake. Failing to make changes now would be inexcusable.

To that end, we are holding a rally at the next San Rafael City Council meeting on July 21 and urge people to come out and demand swift action to ensure that no more crashes occur at this deadly intersection.

If you’d like to help the family out during this difficult time, please consider donating to the GoFundMe set up by their loved ones.