Biker Who Died May Have Been Trying to Break a Speed Record
Cyclist was part of an online 'virtual' racing group
The cyclist who fatally crashed while going down South Park Drive in Tilden Park on June 19 may have been racing down the hill to regain a speed record that he had only held for a week.
William Flint II, who called himself Kim, had raced down the same hill on June 6 in 2 minutes and 7 seconds, reaching a top speed of 49.3 miles per hour, according to his Twitter posts.
“49.3 mph, on a bike. How I find religion on Sunday morning,” wrote Flint on June 6.
“Set new personal records – Centennial, 3 Bears, some others. even a KOM [King of the Mountain] on south gate descent!” he added a few hours later.
But on June 15, another bicyclist, Pan Thomakas, bested Kim’s record by 4 seconds. That new time may have prompted Kim to try to go even faster, according to comments on bicycle chat rooms.
Flint and Thomakas are part of a subset of bicyclists who use GPS devices to track their routes and speed and then share the results on a social networking site called Strava.com.
South Park Drive in Tilden Park in Berkeley is well known in the bicycling community for its steep descent. The road from Grizzly Peak toward Wildcat Canyon Road is a 15 percent grade. Bicyclists can reach speeds of 50 miles per hour, according to Mark Sapiro, president of Grizzly Peak Cyclists, a 40-year-old bicycling club with 570 members. The posted speed limit is 30 miles per hour.
One bicyclist described the road this way: “South Park is the fastest descent in the East Bay; the top part has curves but isn’t twisty enough to slow you down, and then you can blast out of the last turn into the steepest part of the descent, a straightaway near a parking lot. I hit 88.5kph once (my fastest recorded speed anywhere).”
The hills of the East Bay are filled with bicyclists on the weekend, and some just want to see how fast they can go, said Sapiro.
“It’s one of the few roads in the Bay Area, especially the inner Bay Area, where you can exceed 50 miles per hour on a bicycle, so there is a certain element that wants to see how fast they can go,” said Sapiro. “I will admit I went more than 50 mph on South Park and it was really stupid and I won’t do it again.”
While the road is not too curvy, it’s dangerous, said Sapiro. There are families and pets hanging out in picnic spots along the road. They can wander into a bicyclist’s path unexpectedly. In addition, cars pull in and out of those spots.
“There are too many possibilities that something unforeseen can get in your way,” said Sapiro.
Sapiro said that bicycle chat rooms were buzzing with the news of Flint’s death, especially since he seemed to be trying to regain a speed record he had recently lost.
Flint, 40, of Oakland, was killed around 2 p.m. on June 19 when he broadsided an SUV, according to Lt. Dave Dubowy of the East Bay Regional Park District police. Flint was going downhill, in a northbound direction, when his bike traveled into the southbound lane and hit the left side of the car, said Dubowy. Flint had been going around a curve when his bike crossed over.
Skid marks at the scene show that Flint applied his brakes. He was wearing a helmet. He was airlifted to John Muir Hospital in Walnut Creek, where he was pronounced dead.
Flint, who was born in Berkeley but grew up Danville, got a joint engineering and computer science degree from UC Berkeley. He worked at NVIDIA, a visual computing company based in Santa Clara, and had assisted Sony in the development of the PlayStation. Flint lived in Oakland with his girlfriend.
Flint was an avid cyclist, going out on long rides almost every weekend, according to his Strava account. He frequently rode in Tilden Park, and had done a long loop in Niles Canyon in Fremont the week before his death. His friends say he was not a reckless person.
“I’ve known Kim for 8 years, and he is one of the brightest and most responsible people I’ve had the pleasure to call my friend,” wrote a friend under the screen name donthebartender in a comment on sfgate.com. “I’d like to let any readers know that he wasn’t a reckless individual. He was a consistent regular rider who knew the local roads well and was far too smart to take perilous risks intentionally. We can’t know what happened in that moment, except that what happened was a tragic accident that many people will feel the pain of for years to come.”
Flint also owned a Porsche 912 that his father had purchased just days before his birth in 1969. His father sold the car, but bought it back years later. Flint documented the car in an touching slide show with commentary on his website.
Friends will be celebrating Kim’s life Friday, June 25 at 7 p.m. at Heinhold’s First and Last Saloon in Oakland’s Jack London Square. It is not a formal memorial, but a gathering of friends.
Mayberry Machiavellian
The death of this man is a tragedy. The circumstances of his death highlight the inherent dangerousness of bicycling. I say this as someone who spent decades biking to work in various cities across the US, working at at the Palo Alto bike shop, and leading tours of cyclists on both coasts, traveling up to 100 miles per day on inter-city tours.
Bicyclists share the road with cars, and when things go wrong, bicyclists pay the price, all too often with severe injuries or death, even when the cyclists are careful, prudent, and wear helmets.
This comment will no doubt elicit howls of protest, but it's just a simple fact. Talk to any emergency-room doctor or nurse, take a look at injury statistics.
Throw in the adrenaline-junkie demographic, who like to swoop down twisting hills at 40+ mph -- even though a car or pedestrian could appear at any moment causing a fatal swerve -- and you have a recipe for tragedy.
Mayberry Machiavellian
... and by the way, I include myself in the adrenaline-junkie demographic. I have been fortunate to avoid serious injuries on a bike, but I recognize it as good luck, and don't think it's because I'm particularly skillful at riding.
Lemoore
A lot of cyclists speed, whether in a hurry, breaking records, habit, etc. In fact, speed is glamorized. I don't participate in speed, and if others prefer to speed, to each their own. Fortunately nobody else was injured when William Flint II hit the SUV. Imagine if William Flint II injured or killed somebody besides himself during his stunt. That would be tragic.
Dan Gavilan
"The circumstances of his death highlight the inherent dangerousness of bicycling."
I disagree. Not with the inherent dangerousness of cycling -- it is clearly dangerous to be on a 15-pound bike sharing the road with 6000 pound cars sometimes going 5x your speed in tight confines. But the specific circumstances of his death highlight the results one risks when one chooses to break the law (speed) and endanger oneself and others for a thrill. It's the height of selfishness and another example of our "me-first" culture.
Let's count the obvious possible outcomes of his thoughtless actions: 1) He breaks a personal record. 2) He severely injures himself and or others, incurring massive health care costs for society and potentially ruining a stranger's life; or 3) (The actual outcome) He dies, devastating friends and family. And let's not forget the SUV driver (and any passengers or other witnesses) who now get to live out their lives with this horrible memory. Selfish and stupid.
Michael Boehm
Yes, his death is tragic. But to say that it was purely an accident is incorrect. It was an avoidable accident. Riding a bicycle at 50 MPH down that road is simply insane and stupid. Their tires and brakes are not built to handle the kinds of energies involved. I ride a motorcycle, and even I would not take that road at that speed. There are simply too many things that can go wrong - such as having an SUV pull out in front of you. Wearing a helmet and applying your brakes would not make a difference under these circumstances.
In motorcycle circles, someone who takes stupid risks on the road is called a "squid." We tell those people "You want to go fast? Take it to the track." Unfortunately there are no tracks for bicyclists.
John a
I agree.
Safety is No Accident.
Mayberry Machiavellian
In my ongoing and undoubtedly quixotic effort to keep the level of discussion here a cut above that of the jeering mob at SFGate, can I appeal to those commenting here to show some sensitivity to the friends and family of the deceased?
Online comment boards, in particular at sites like SFGate, have become the equivalent of public executions for those who die in tragic accidents or murders. The comments above are nowhere near as vile as the ones routinely posted at SFGate, they are more in the realm of insensitive, but before you post, please ask yourself how you'd feel reading your comment if it was someone you cared about who had died.
Mayberry Machiavellian
Clarification: by "the equivalent of public executions" I meant that with the advent of instant online commentary to news articles a person's death caused by virtually anything but old age has become an occasion for a howling mob, in the form of cretinous persons making hideously insensitive comments in a public forum where they are read by friends and family of the deceased. These are often in the form of blame-the-victim commentary. The cyclist who died in Berkeley may in fact have been riding in a way you find reckless or dangerous, but is it really necessary to proclaim that with smug self-satisfaction here?
In short, de mortuis nil nisi bonum.
Dan Gavilan
Re: ". . . cretinous persons making hideously insensitive comments . . ."
I'm not seeing that here. I would summarize the few comments here as:
1) His death was tragic.
2) He is responsible for his death, not biking or anything else.
3) His behavior was ill-advised and selfish.
Lemoore
re: Mayberry Machiavellian's insensitivity accusation....
I'm not concerned if friends or family of William Flint II are on this board or not, and perhaps you are within that category. We can only be thankful that William Flint II inflicted bodily damage only upon himself. It could have been worse, and hopefully the next incident on South Park Drive will also exclude the innocent.
Mayberry Machiavellian
Like I said, "undoubtedly quixotic"...
John a
his friend commented on sfgate.com: “I’d like to let any readers know that he wasn’t a reckless individual. He was a consistent regular rider who knew the local roads well and was far too smart to take perilous risks intentionally. We can’t know what happened in that moment, except that what happened was a tragic accident that many people will feel the pain of for years to come.”
while he may not have been a reckless individual, he certainly did a reckless THING. Not sure what the difference is in this case... doesn't really matter now. He did take a perilous risk after all.