The Boulder Police Department has closed its investigation into a crash last August in which a driver struck and killed a cyclist on Edgewood Drive, concluding the cyclist was at fault for failing to stop at a stop sign.
On the morning of Aug. 4, Daniel Bench, 88, was turning off a bike path onto Edgewood Drive when he was struck by the driver of a 2019 Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck, according to a police report. Bench was taken to the hospital with serious injuries and later died. The driver, Jeffrey Finley, 55, remained on the scene and told police he was driving between work locations at the time.
The Boulder Police Department concluded Bench was at fault based in part on a witness statement and video footage from a Ring camera, according to an incident and crash report provided to Boulder Reporting Lab. The report states that Bench had his head down and did not appear to slow down before entering the roadway. A stop sign is posted at the end of the bike path.
The report states that Bench was required to stop at the sign. The report does not mention Colorado’s “Safety Stop” law, which allows cyclists to treat stop signs as yield signs and stoplights as stop signs while yielding to vehicles or pedestrians.
Finley was driving within the posted speed limit at the time, police said. The junction is located just after a sharp right-hand turn for eastbound drivers and shortly before a speed bump. Finley told officers he was looking ahead at the speed bump when the crash occurred.
The report states that Finley did not brake before the collision. Officers did not ask whether he was using his phone. The report also does not mention two signs positioned before the junction with the multi-use path instructing drivers to yield to pedestrians in the crosswalk.
The Boulder County District Attorney’s Office declined to file charges in the case. “This is a tragedy so we examined it very closely, but it was not a crime that can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt in light of the video evidence,” Shannon Carbone, a spokeswoman for the district attorney, told Boulder Reporting Lab.
The crash is the only fatal collision involving a driver and cyclist reported in the City of Boulder so far in 2025.
Some transportation advocates criticized the police department for issuing a news release during the investigation stating that the cyclist rode in front of the truck, saying the message downplayed the responsibility of drivers to protect more vulnerable road users.
Darcy Kitching, chair of the city’s Transportation Advisory Board, visited the scene and said she observed at least one driver fail to yield to a cyclist. She said she did not want to assign blame to anyone in the fatal incident.
“This tragedy needs to remind us how vulnerable bicyclists and pedestrians are, and how vital it is to be mindful of our responsibility to look out for those around us as we’re traveling,” Kitching said.
My condolences to Mr. Bench’s family. And my heart goes out to Mr. Finley, who I am sure is also suffering from this unintentional crash that took someone’s life.
What is needed is a review of the infrastructure at this location to see why this crash happened and to prevent something similar from happening again. The stop sign that was at the end of the path at this location was mounted at a non-standard height at least 8 feet up and hard to see. It has since been replaced with a new stop sign on a shorter pole, as well as with a “stop ahead” sign about 50 ft. before the end of the path. This is at least an implicit admission that the design was faulty. At this crosswalk there is a curve in Edgewood to the west, so people driving come around the corner (often speeding) and have a short period of time to recognize that there is a crosswalk ahead of them and they need to pay attention. I can think of several steps that could mitigate this problem:
1) Put a solid raised curb or flex posts between the bike lane and driving lane on Edgewood, to prevent drivers from cutting the corner into the bike lane, thus slowing their speed (rumble strips might serve the same purpose, just less effectively).
2) Put a “State Law: Yield to pedestrians” sign in the centerline at the crosswalk.
3) Most effectively, make this crossing a raised crossing, forcing vehicles to slow down as they approach the crossing. There is currently a speed hump just to the east of this crossing, so vehicles are going to need to slow in about 50 feet. I don’t understand why the speed hump was not just integrated with the crossing in the first place, making a raised crossing that is safer for pedestrians and cyclists.
The new stop sign on the path should be more visible to crosswalk users, and slowing vehicles approaching this blind curve crossing should reduce collisions and make any that occur much less likely to be fatal or even severe. This is the Vision Zero approach. If the city takes VZ safely, they should immediately review this crash site and develop mitigation steps to make sure this terrible tragedy is not repeated.