On July 29, 2023, Magnus White was riding his bike along the shoulder of Colo. 119 just south of 63rd Street.
Shortly after noon, a vehicle traveling along the same road crossed from the right-hand lane and onto the shoulder. The front of the vehicle struck the rear of White’s bike, according to an eventual arrest affidavit. The force of the impact threw White from his bike. He landed 60 feet from where the collision occurred.
The rising multidisciplinary star — who won a junior national championship in cyclocross in 2021 and earned a place on the U.S. national team — was pronounced dead at the hospital. He was 17.
A young woman, who was 23 years old at the time, was arrested and charged with vehicular homicide. After a recent postponement, her trial is set to begin in March.
It was, through and through, a tragedy. That simple fact must be recognized before all else. Magnus White was, above all, just a kid, a son, whose life was cut devastatingly short. The reverberations of that loss have rippled throughout our community.
But this tragedy should also be galvanizing — because we have the power to do more to prevent these sorts of crashes.
This is something that U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse has also recognized. Late last year, Neguse, D-Lafayette, introduced the Magnus White Cyclist Safety Act of 2024 to Congress. The goal of the legislation is to improve safety for “vulnerable road users.” It should get full support from the rest of Colorado’s representatives and be passed into law.
The bill would require the Department of Transportation to issue a rule requiring car manufacturers to install automatic emergency braking (AEB) systems on all new passenger motor vehicles weighing under 10,000 pounds that are capable of detecting and responding to “vulnerable road users” — like cyclists and pedestrians.
If this seems like common sense, that’s because it is.
AEB systems use a variety of sensors, including cameras, radar and lidar, to recognize when a crash is about to happen and warn drivers. If drivers don’t properly respond, the system automatically applies the brakes.
Automakers have already been voluntarily including AEB systems in cars. By one estimate, up to 90% of new vehicles include AEB systems, which, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, an industry group, could prevent 42,000 crashes and 20,000 injuries in the U.S. by this year. A small but sizable dent in the roughly 6 million police-reported crashes at occur every year.
But the voluntary inclusion of AEB systems is not quite enough.
For starters, there has been no standard for AEB systems, meaning some are likely excellent, while others are potentially subpar.
Thankfully, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration unveiled new legislation last year to address just this. The new rules, which will go into effect in 2029, will require that all new vehicles include AEB systems, and that these systems must be able to avoid hitting a vehicle in front of them while traveling at speeds up to 62 mph. And AEB systems must be able to at least apply the brakes when the vehicle is traveling at speeds up to 90 mph.
(These rules are a good start, but in the future, it could also be worth exploring whether technology can also disincentivize driving at such reckless speeds.)
The Magnus White Cyclist Safety Act looks to build off of this. The forthcoming NHTSA standard dictates that AEB systems be able to stop and avoid a collision with a pedestrian at up to 40 mph, depending on the pedestrian’s location and movement.
Neguse’s legislation would also require AEB systems to be able to detect “vulnerable road users” and recognize “the entire range of colors and complexions presented by skin, clothing, and protective gear.” Essentially, the bill would ensure that AEB systems are able to see and respond to people no matter what they are doing or what they are wearing.
The list of “vulnerable road users” in the legislation includes bicycles, e-bikes, electric scooters, hoverboards, Segways, kick scooters, monowheels, skateboards, e-skateboards and e-mopeds — basically all the ways in which people travel on our roads and infrastructure outside the protective shell of a motor vehicle.
No matter how someone is traveling, they deserve to be protected. Especially now that it is possible. AEB systems exist. And they work. And they aren’t even prohibitively expensive.
According to one estimate, including an AEB system in a new vehicle costs just $82. Considering that the average price of a new car in 2024 was $47,542, an additional $82 to save lives is worth every penny.
Of course, it is worth noting that AEB systems will not stop all collisions or prevent some pedestrians from being hit by a vehicle. In part because there are always going to be limitations to how fast a vehicle can stop traveling at 65 mph.
And in part because most people don’t drive new vehicles. Roughly 15 million new cars are sold each year in the U.S., which is just a small fraction of the 283 million vehicles registered throughout the country.
The vast majority of these vehicles lack AEB systems.
But mandating AEB systems in all new vehicles and ensuring that they are adept and capable of saving lives is absolutely essential nonetheless.
And while these new vehicles proliferate, it is important we continue investing in all the other ways we can keep people safe on the roads.
To start, we can continue studying and improving the designs of our roads to prioritize safety. It can also include creating more infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists — like the bike path the county is designing along the very road where White was killed. More than anything, though, it includes drivers taking personal responsibility for safe driving.
The woman charged with White’s death texted a friend shortly before the crash saying she was tired. According to witnesses quoted in the arrest affidavit, the driver said she had fallen asleep behind the wheel.
We have the technology to prevent these kinds of crashes — or to at least mitigate their severity — and we should absolutely embrace it. But in the meantime, we must also remember, every time we get behind the wheel of a car, that we are driving two-ton boxes of metal at deadly speeds. Each and every one of us has a responsibility to make sure we are driving responsibility.
(See Colorado’s safe driving resources at codot.gov/safety.)
And our leaders have a responsibility to pass the Magnus White Cyclist Safety Act and make the cars of the future as safe as possible, for drivers and pedestrians and cyclists alike.
— Gary Garrison for the Editorial Board.