Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to reflect information from a Caring Bridge page posted by users believed to be family of Nicholas Watson. Previous versions of this story published on February 2 covered Watson’s status in “critical condition.”
Nearly two weeks after being injured on West Franklin Street, a bicyclist who crashed from being hit by a car door has reportedly died.
A Caring Bridge page set up for Nicholas Watson posted an update on Monday, saying Watson passed away on Friday due to his injuries suffered from a crash on the afternoon of January 25. Caring Bridge is a company that allows patients or family of patients to share updates on their health journeys.
Prior updates from the page described Watson as being in “critical condition” due to severe head injuries, with the decision being made last week for Watson to donate “multiple life-saving organs.” The Caring Bridge posts indicate that Watson’s family and friends will soon be organizing a “celebration of life” for the Chapel Hill resident.
Chapel Hill Police previously said their investigation into the crash revealed Watson was traveling west on West Franklin Street when a parked car opened its door for a person to exit the vehicle. The open door hit the passing cyclist, throwing Watson from the bike and causing him to land on the road. He was taken to nearby UNC Hospitals, with police describing the injuries as “life-threatening” on January 26.
The crash is the latest incident involving injuries to bicyclists and pedestrians in Chapel Hill in the last year, leading to renewed calls for solutions and additional measures for safety.
Chapel Hill Town Council member Karen Stegman spoke with 97.9 The Hill on January 27. She described the latest string of pedestrian and bicyclist collisions as “a really horrifying time” for the Chapel Hill community.
“We’ve been hearing from many concerned members of the public about what we can do to make our streets safer,” the council member said. “We talk so much about wanting to be a bike-able, walkable town, and yet we still are extremely car-centric. That has got to change. And one of the only ways we’re going to do that is to make sure people feel safe walking and biking.”
In 2021, the Chapel Hill Police Department reported 16 pedestrian-involved collisions, which is more than 2019 and 2020 combined. Since 2017, the town has reported 53 such collisions with pedestrians. Bicyclists are not counted in that total.
Stegman said the town government and the North Carolina Department of Transportation, which owns most of the roads in Chapel Hill, are in talks to install improved pedestrian safety measures with both short-term and long-term measures. One change includes adding flashing lights for pedestrian signs along Estes Drive, the site where a car struck two middle school students who were using a crosswalk on December 31. Emails from Chapel Hill Town Manager Maurice Jones to the town council confirmed the plans by NCDOT to install such lights, known as Rapid Flashing Beacons or RFBs.
Stegman said while the town is committed to finding improvements, she also believes drivers in Chapel Hill need to be more engaged and aware of others.
“I know people are stressed, they’re overwhelmed right now,” Stegman said. “But if you look at the incidents in the last year, two years…they’ve been from speeding, from distracted driving, from not yielding to pedestrians. We really need people to take a deep breath, slow down and really understand the vulnerability of people who are not in cars on our roads. I’m really hoping we can embrace that as a community.”
The full conversation with Stegman and 97.9 The Hill can be found here.
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So sad that this accident occurred just before bike lanes were approved for West Franklin Street. The new lanes will be set away from the door zone and help prevent this type of dooring accident.
Motorists who use on-street parking, please remember to look back before opening your door into the travel lane to prevent dooring a cyclist or losing your door to a passing vehicle.
Cyclists, please remember to ride three feet out in the travel lane to avoid the door zone.
Very sad. Please, always wear a bike helmet.
It’s always sad when a cyclist is killed. My heart goes out to his family.
That said I feel that the resent efforts made by Chapel Hill in adding the dedicated bike lane along Franklin, to help cyclist has only made things worst.
From my experience the dedicated bike lane is always obstructed, used by pedestrians, or storefronts from more space, deliveries, and is never used by cyclists. This means that cyclist and cars are now consigned to a single lane with little room. Someone needs to investigate how effective this bike lane is because from my estimation it’s about window dressing, not about really protecting anyone. Indeed what may have been good intentions quite possibly may have led to this death.
Bike lanes work when obstructionists to these lanes are aggressively ticketed combined with a good communication campaign about fines that are incurred. I witnessed aggressive police ticketing with heavy fines in DC given to store owners, uber/taxi drivers, etc. This dramatically changed habits in less than 1 year.
The Chapel Hill police do little or nothing to enforce the speed limit on Franklin Street. If you doubt what I write, go watch traffic in the afternoon and observe how many vehicles are exceeding the posted speed by a factor of two or more.
Fire the current chief of police in Chapel Hill and replace him with a man who wil actually DO HIS JOB.