Police are looking for passengers of a packed bus who may have witnessed a gruesome fatal collision on the Stanley Park causeway that killed a female cyclist and shut down the Lions Gate Bridge Saturday night.
The standing-room-only West Vancouver bus had just passed the bridge into Vancouver when it hit and instantly killed the woman, who was travelling into downtown when she hit some people on the sidewalk and fell onto the road, according to police spokesman Const. Brian Montague.
Police are reviewing the video from a camera mounted on the front of the bus, but are also looking to speak with any of the passengers who left the scene before telling officers what they saw, Montague said.
“There’s lots of people that we haven’t spoken to,” Montague said.
Anyone who was on the bus and witnessed the crash is asked to call the VPD Collision Investigation Unit at 604-717-3012.
The woman died at the scene and has not been positively identified, but may have been commuting to work alone at the time of the crash, Montague said.
The collision, which was Vancouver’s fifth traffic-related death this year, shut down traffic over the bridge in both directions until just after 11 p.m. Saturday.
It should act as a reminder to cyclists and pedestrians to share the sidewalk Montague said.
“Pedestrians have the right of way,” he said. “Everyone needs to watch out for each other, needs to pay attention, we need to respect the fact that everyone has to share the roads and we want to make sure everyone gets to where they’re going safely.”
— With a file from Tracey Tufnail
