Before a truck hit and killed cyclist Maridee Bonadea in West Seattle this month, the 76-year-old Vashon Island resident spent decades trying to make the world safer — for women, for gay people, for immigrants and for bike riders like herself.
In the wake of Bonadea’s death, her family and local bike safety advocates are picking up her baton, calling on city officials to make safety changes to streets known for being especially dangerous for cyclists.
The fatal crash marked the third cyclist killed in Seattle since December, and the latest to prompt demands for better protections.
Shortly before 8 a.m. on June 15, Bonadea was biking east on Southwest Wildwood Place near 47th Avenue Southwest when a Vashon Trucking box truck started passing her. A person driving behind the truck at the time told police Bonadea appeared to lose her balance as the truck drove next to her. The witness reported seeing Bonadea bump her bike against a parked car, then fall into the street, where she was struck by the truck’s rear tires, said Seattle Police Department spokesperson Detective Brian Pritchard.
Bonadea, who was wearing a fluorescent safety vest and helmet, died at the scene.
News of the fatal crash was a “gut punch” to local cyclists like Lee Lambert, who was already reeling from a similar crash two weeks before. A Recology waste collection truck struck and killed Christian Salyer, a 30-year-old Thurgood Marshall Elementary School teacher, on June 1 as he was biking near East Yesler Way and 12th Avenue South.
A third cyclist, Allie Rodriguez, was struck and killed in December by a hit-and-run driver while biking in Beacon Hill. Rodriguez, 38, was an “avid biker and advocate for safe transit and streets,” Seattle City Councilmember Eddie Lin wrote in a statement two days after her death.
Seattle police are investigating the June crashes, Pritchard said.
Despite “great strides” city officials have made over the last 20 years at making some streets safer for cyclists, this month’s back-to-back deaths highlight that more work is needed, said Lambert, executive director of bike safety advocacy group Cascade Bicycle Club.
The Atlantic and Fauntleroy neighborhood streets where Salyer and Bonadea died have reputations for being treacherous for bike riders, according to Lambert and Don Brubeck, a member of street safety advocacy group West Seattle Bike Connections.
Cyclists face heavy traffic and sometimes speeding vehicles at 12th and Yesler, where bicycles and vehicles have crashed at least five times within the last three years, according to Seattle Department of Transportation data.
In West Seattle, just south of the Fauntleroy Ferry Terminal, parked cars lining Wildwood between 45th and Fauntleroy Way Southwest make the route “uncomfortably tight” for cyclists, especially as drivers try passing them on the narrow road, said Brubeck.
City officials could change the infrastructure on both streets to prioritize bike riders’ safety over vehicle parking and traffic, Lambert said. The price of not making such changes “can be people’s lives.”
“People should be able to ride their bikes safely anywhere in the city,” Lambert said. “These crashes are proof that that is not true.”
Bonadea’s wife and daughter traveled to West Seattle last Wednesday to visit the crash site. Both said they hoped city officials would do something to make Wildwood safer for cyclists.
“The city needs to immediately do something to make it safe,” said Bonadea’s wife, 66-year-old Laura Belt. “(They need to) make it happen, and make it happen fast.”
For Bonadea, biking was ‘everything’
A lifetime of adventure, advocacy and cycling preceded the morning of June 15, when Bonadea took a ferry from Vashon Island to Seattle and started biking toward a waterfront protest against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, her family said.
Bonadea first started protesting against the Vietnam War, Belt said. She became an ardent feminist and threw herself into the 1980s gay rights movement, igniting a passion for political activism that never waned, said her daughter, Lani Bonadea, 41, of Bremerton.
While growing up in Seattle’s Central District, Lani Bonadea said her mother was one of the few to identify openly as lesbian. She helped organize Seattle’s annual Dyke March, participated heavily in the city’s Pride events and took photos and wrote for the LGBTQ+ news and entertainment publication Seattle Gay News.
Bonadea served in the Peace Corps in Mali and volunteered with Habitat for Humanity in Madagascar. Closer to home, she sewed face masks for Real Change workers during the COVID pandemic so they could continue selling newspapers, and joined a protest drumming group, the Vashon Island Bucket Brigade, her family said.
About three weeks before she died, Bonadea played drums made from plastic buckets at a Capitol Hill rally in support of transgender people seeking refuge in Seattle.
“I have a lot of trans friends,” Bonadea told a reporter for The Seattle Times at Cal Anderson Park. “With the kind of awful stuff that’s going on today, we need to say something.”
The list of ways her mother tried to help others “goes on and on,” Lani Bonadea said.
“She just wasn’t afraid to speak up for what she believed in, and she just really wanted to help people,” she said.
Bonadea’s passion for political activism was nearly matched by her love of cycling. She biked across Canada and through Yugoslavia in her 20s, and was a member of Rainbow Riders, a group of lesbian cyclists from around Western Washington who bike together about once a month, her family said.
She enjoyed sailing, gardening and travel, but biking was “like everything” to Bonadea — exercise, an escape and a way to feel in control when life grew stressful, Belt said. The couple started dating in 1995 and married in Seattle in 2015 before moving to Vashon Island.
“She was such a big person,” Belt said. “Always ready for the next project, always full of life, always trying to get onto the next trip.”
A week before the crash, Bonadea accomplished her goal of visiting all 50 U.S. states and took a ferry with Belt back home from Alaska. Her next goal was to travel in a camper van across the country to see the fall colors, hopefully ending with a visit to Prince Edward Island in eastern Canada, Belt said.
In the days after the June 15 crash, tributes and condolences poured in from people who knew or were inspired by Bonadea. To Belt, one message received last Wednesday rang especially true: “The community, the world, the universe has a hole in it now.”
Safety changes underway
The Seattle Department of Transportation has spent years tweaking the infrastructure at and near 12th and Yesler — the site of Salyer’s June 1 crash — “to address recurring crash patterns” and has more changes planned to make by the end of the year, a department spokesperson said Tuesday by email.
Safety improvements made there since 2021 include adding a concrete barrier next to a westbound bike lane and a no-turn-on-red sign. By the end of this year, the agency plans to install signs warning cars to stop for pedestrians and bikes and add bike box markings to the southbound lane, designating where cyclists can position themselves in front of traffic before the light changes, the spokesperson said.
Transportation officials are also “exploring the feasibility” of a protected bike lane along 12th between Yesler and South King Street, according to the email.
The department’s approach to Wildwood is unclear.
Five crashes were reported on Wildwood between 45th and Fauntleroy in the three years before Bonadea’s death. None resulted in injuries or involved bicycles, transportation department data shows.
After Seattle police finish their investigation into the June 15 crash, the transportation department plans to complete its own review of the site within four weeks to “determine next steps,” the department spokesperson said.
“We hope the families, friends, and communities (Salyer and Bonadea) touched find peace and healing,” Angela Brady, Seattle Department of Transportation acting director, said Tuesday in a statement. “Each loss of life weighs heavily on us. We remain committed to preventing deaths and serious injuries on Seattle streets.”