Accident Spurs Cyclist to Make Case for Safety

These weren’t the kind of wheels David Curnow had planned to spend the rest of his life riding.

He had figured on countless, breathless hours atop his sleek 12-speed bicycle, pedaling along the scenic California coastline--training for the grueling triathlete competitions that he thrived on.

He didn’t count on a wheelchair. It’s just one of the hard realities now facing the 48-year-old Solana Beach man. The former trial attorney who once confronted high-profile criminal cases now finds himself doing battle over a decidedly more pedestrian issue--bicycle safety.

Next month, Curnow will go to court against two local government agencies over a stretch of scenic Highway 101 in North County where an accident robbed him of his cherished athletic life.

Three years ago, as he cycled along the road’s shoulder in Encinitas--on a stretch known as “Blood Alley” for the frequency of biking accidents--Curnow was struck from behind by a motorist whose car had drifted into the bicycle lane.

The violent force of the crash threw the lanky Curnow against the car’s windshield and flipped him over the top of the car--leaving his neck broken, his body battered.

Paralyzed from the chest down, Curnow spent more than 2 1/2 years recuperating from his injuries. Last fall, he returned to work, to a job he left 14 years ago to enter private law practice-- assistant prosecutor with the U.S. attorney’s office in San Diego.

Now Curnow is preparing for the legal battle of his life--beginning July 1 in Vista Superior Court, where he has filed a $5-million claim against both San Diego County and the city of Encinitas for maintaining what he calls unsafe bike lanes.

In the trial, Curnow’s attorneys will claim that tarmac berms commonly used along busy roadways throughout Southern California and the nation may well have protected him from the bone-crushing impact.

The bike lane near Cardiff’s Restaurant Row where Curnow was injured is marked only by a painted stripe. Both Encinitas and the county were named in the suit because the stretch of Highway 101 was designed as a county road and has been maintained by Encinitas since the city incorporated in 1988.

Curnow is also critical of Encinitas’ new master bikeway plan, in which the replacement of existing tarmac berms throughout the city with signed and striped bike lanes has been proposed.

The city’s report claims that the berms offer only “symbolic protection from motor traffic” and don’t allow street sweepers to reach bike lanes--causing a buildup of glass, dirt and rubbish that discourages runners and cyclists from using the safety lanes.

The clutter-filled berms, many cyclists claim, trigger collisions between cyclists, roller-skaters, dog walkers, runners and other users.

“You’ll find biking enthusiasts on both sides of this issue--whether berms are helpful or not,” Encinitas Assistant City Manager Jim Benson said. “And we’ll be sure to have all of their input before we move ahead with our plan.”

The bikeway plan--a three-year, $21,000 study recently presented to the city’s Traffic Commission and still facing approval by City Council--also recommends creating a $9.1-million, 49-mile network of bike lanes and trails throughout the city.

Curnow says the decision to do away with the berms could affect the multitude of cyclists who use the stretch of coastal road like he did--mornings, evenings and weekends. Just weeks before his own mishap, a 51-year-old Solana Beach physician was struck and killed by a drunken driver along the same stretch of road.

“The city has denied that the area is dangerous,” he said. “But, from what I hear so often from local emergency room people, it’s a real dangerous spot--people are being hit there.”

Curnow insists that the berms reduce accidents by alerting inattentive drivers that their vehicles have drifted from the roadway. And steep berms can cause vehicles to hit bottom before they reach the bikeway, creating a noise that would alert pedestrians and cyclists before the vehicle was upon them, he says.

“Any protection is better than no protection,” Curnow said of the berms. “Anyway, if I had the choice of fixing a flat tire on my bike from a shard of glass or sitting in this wheelchair, I’d pick the flat tire.”

Bob Babbitt, editor of Solana Beach-based Competition Magazine--which circulates between San Diego and Santa Barbara--acknowledged that safety is a major issue for the growing number of Southern California cyclists.

“The number of cyclists out there in San Diego is absolutely gone off the charts--especially in the North County,” he said. “It’s what people do around here. They ride on dates, they pull baby strollers, ride with the kids.”

He said he’s heard the complaints from bikers--that the bermed lanes become littered with glass and force cyclists onto the roadway to avoid getting a flat tire. “I’d still rather have the berms,” he said. “A berm would have saved Dave Curnow’s athletic life.”

Curnow doesn’t remember the collision that rocked his life. He only remembers taking an afternoon ride. While on that ride, a car driven by 37-year-old Russell Braun struck Curnow from behind.

Braun was charged with a minor traffic violation and has been dropped from the lawsuit.

The impact caused Curnow’s back tire to collapse, throwing him into the windshield, snapping his neck as he flipped over the top of the car. His helmet was shattered. Without it, Curnow believes, he would have been dead.

At age 45, Curnow was living his own version of the Type-A personality dream. A successful trial attorney, he exercised incessantly. Early-morning ocean swims. Evening bike rides after work. Weekend surfing, camping and hiking outings with his three boys.

Suddenly, though, he was forced to trade in the grace and speed of his racing bike for the low-slung clumsiness of his electric wheelchair. His distinctive Saab was replaced by a bulky white van equipped with the mechanical levers and ramps to get him around. Curnow had become a prisoner of wheels, which had once given him so much freedom.

His life became a struggle for normalcy. A former assistant U.S. Attorney in both Los Angeles and San Diego who who went into private practice in 1977, the necessary insurance proved too expensive for him to return to private law practice after his 2 1/2-year recuperation.

So he rejoined the federal prosecutor’s office. Although he feels lucky to work, he knows he will never again be the high-profile trial lawyer, doing the work that made his reputation. Instead, he will settle for a behind-the-scenes job doing criminal appeals work.

Even that is enough to fatigue Curnow most days. His injury allows him partial movement of his arms--but not his hands--so that he labors to type legal documents or perform other manual tasks with the aid of typing sticks.

Each morning and evening, a male nurse helps him in and out of bed--a dressing and undressing process that often takes 90 minutes or more. Still, he tires so easily he must be in bed by 8 p.m.

At night, he lays helpless, unable to move without his wife’s assistance. But he is wary of leaning too much on her help. “My wife just can’t move me around physically,” he said. “And neither of us want her to. I don’t want to become a patient for my wife. I’d rather remain her husband.”

And, no matter how hard he tries, life with his teen-age boys isn’t the same. Where they once surfed and hiked together, they now bond by going to movies or maybe the mall--places where he can angle his wheelchair.

“The sad thing is, this is the time of life you want to relate to your boys by doing active things with them,” he said. “I can’t go hiking or bike riding with them, obviously. I can’t even go to the beach.”

Such constant frustration, he says, has led to thoughts of suicide. “It’s worst when I’m not able to do things--like open a refrigerator door, or my wheelchair gets stuck in the road and I can’t move it.

“Or the night after I returned home from the hospital and saw a National Geographic magazine feature about a spot in the High Sierra that I had hiked to once. I looked at the picture and knew that I had once stood there with my backpack. And I knew that I’d never get there again. Not ever.”

With no small amount of irony, Curnow stresses that the reason he moved to the North County in the first place was to take advantage of the countless opportunities for outdoor thrills.

Now, as he faces a wheelchair-bound life, many of his former cycling friends have left him behind. And, from his chair, Curnow can only watch as the bicyclists race by on the coastal straightaways he once called his own.

“I never knew until recently that they called it ‘Blood Alley,’ ” he said of the accident scene. “I only wish I would have known. I would have stayed away from there. I would have done something else that day--maybe gone surfing.”