Student Biking Killed on El Camino Real

We are saddened to share news of the death of a young man while bicycling on Friday evening in Palo Alto. A Greene Middle School student on a bicycle died Friday night, March 6, when he was struck by a person driving a flatbed truck at El Camino Real and California Avenue in Palo Alto, police and school officials said. Palo Alto Online reported that the preliminary investigation found that the boy and the person driving the truck were both traveling eastbound on California Avenue approaching El Camino, with the boy riding on the sidewalk. The person driving the truck made a right turn to head southbound on El Camino and hit the boy. The boy was pronounced dead at the scene, according to a police press release issued Saturday. It is the first student fatality in Palo Alto in seventeen years.

El Camino Real, despite being a community hub, has a higher rate of collisions for people walking and biking than other streets in San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties. Last year, there were several major collisions on El Camino Real in different parts of our region. Making El Camino Real safer has long been a priority for SVBC. We will continue working with Palo Alto and Caltrans to make improvements to this key corridor and other areas of concern to prevent these types of tragedies from happening again. In particular, the Palo Alto City Council should adopt a Vision Zero policy and plan and work to make El Camino Real, and all Palo Alto streets safer.

Anyone who may have witnessed this collision and who has not already spoken with police about it is asked to call the department's 24-hour dispatch center at 650-329-2413. Anonymous tips can be emailed to paloalto@tipnow.org or sent by text message or voicemail to 650-383-8984.